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Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Putin needs some plausible excuse to scale back his "special operation" without looking like a lightweight or a loser, and big protests throughout Russia would give him just that. So this is a very shrewd move by Navalny that just might work to tip things over, even though you would rightly expect such protests to be generally ineffective.

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This would be a horrible approach, surely. He would give his citizens the precedent that exerting pressure on the regime yields results.

Well, even mainstream Russian TV started to criticize the war. Recently there were two guests, one a film director and another a member of their Duma (parliament), and they both said the war has to stop (for different reasons). Famously, the director said that the suffering of one group of innocent people (real of alleged - the Russians in Donbas) will not be alleviated by suffering of another innocent group of people. This sane rhetoric is quite rare in public Russian TV so my guess is they are preparing some room for potential retreat, or whatever they will call it.

This is was a bit of a misinterpretation of the exchange in the viral tweet I think you're referring to. Consider as well that the other 7 guests, as well as the next three days' incarnation of the talk show, were all-in on pro-regime propaganda. Tthat Russia is just pre-empting an inevitable war against the US and NATO in Ukraine; that Biden has bioweapons labs in Ukraine; that the Americans launched their russophobic sanctions with the "special military operation" as an excuse, and an absurdly implausible excuse at that; also that said sanctions will hurt the Americans a lot more than they hurt Russians.

These are not normal circumstances though, everyone ought to be aware of that. And even then, "exerting pressure" is not the same thing as, e.g. trying to oust Putin. One can very much allow the former and not the latter.

I agree that Putin could be looking for an excuse to pull back but this doesn't seem like the right one. His story is that Russians support him.

He has to be able to claim some sort of victory that fits with the denazification/liberation/"Ukrainian people love Russia" narratives. Maybe he'll be satisfied to turn Ukraine into cold war Germany with a wall through the middle of Kiev?

But even if he finds a way to pull out and save face, will the sanctions be lifted? I can't see that happening. It's not ok to go blow up your neighbor's cities then just pack up and go home. There would have to be reparations and Putin is clearly never going to agree with that.

He could claim "mission accomplished" and have at least a colorable argument that he's right. Reparations could be covertly agreed to and take the form of, e.g. significant liberal/pro-market reforms in both Russia and Ukraine to create a real, workable long-term alternative to NATO and perhaps even EU membership. Think the Chinese development model. That would mean Putin effectively gets the Russian Empire redux he wants, and stops squandering these countries' hidden long-term potential.

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