(#4784) putin has already lost no matter what he does going forward

      The good news is that putin is not going to rule the world. The bad news is that he still thinks he can. Thus the disconnect between how we can end this madness of his and move forward. The likelihood that putin will be deposed if he doesn't keep murdering in his invasion is greater than if he keeps murdering as a strategy. Go figure the Russian hierarchy! The whole head of the Russian hierarchy needs to be lopped off and a new government, hopefully headed by Alexei Navalny, should replace it. Bringing the Russian people into the world of nations as a democratic institution would be a triumph of immeasurable civilized modernization.
     It would leave China isolated as the last major authoritarian run government on the planet. Which to me would make it easier for the rest of us to move China toward democracy over time. But for now ending the unprovoked Ukrainian onslaught by putin is the highest priority. Lives are being destroyed and irreparably harmed without an immediate end in sight. The Ukrainian people are giving the whole world a lesson in courage beyond anything putin expected and because of that he will be weighed and measured and found wanting. The days of putin are on the decline toward irrelevance but how long that takes is the question that all the west and Ukraine itself is pondering.
     As the pressures mount on putin, both from inside and outside Russia, the desperation he is feeling is showing. There is no end game now for putin when it comes to Ukraine and there is not any quickly rebuilding the internal damage he has done to the Russian people through heavy sanctions by the west. How much longer the oligarchs and the military cabal in Russia will allow putin to destroy everything they have gained over the last 30 years is the question of the moment. Will Russia continue to back its confused leader or will they say enough of this shit? Because no good can come from anything putin does from here on out and now for me anyway, it is a waiting game to see how long the power structure in Russia will continue to support its failed leader.