War, economy could weaken Putin's place as leader

Unlike the Soviet Union, there is little in the way of an institutional party structure that could intervene to topple him. Putin has cronies, yes men, and a coterie of “siloviki” — people of power awash in hard-nosed nationalist thinking of the FSB and military — none of whom so far dare to show the least independence from Putin’s Ukraine war "project."

Whether it is by elections, revolt or an internal mutiny, the long days of Putin’s rule may well be numbered.

Highly probable; but only after the world witnesses a long drawn-out, high-stakes and expensive Russian-led effort to change European politics, economics, and security structures. With diplomacy unfortunately proven to be completely unable to deal with today's despots and dictator-wanna-be's (at least in its current form), war-averse Western leaders will eventually be pressed to make a series of painful and long-term concessions, for a return to something resembling status quo.

Peace? Highly improbable, for the forseeable future.

Russians who initially opposed the invasion are now supporting Putin or close to supporting Putin because every Russian has been discriminated by the west from sanctions and bans! The only thing that these sanctions will do is bring Russians together and make them stronger!

Putin now functions like Kim in NK. He can stay in power, but only at the expense of his nation and people.

What may keep him in power are Western leaders, who can use a new Cold War to bump up security spending and surveillance (as they did after 9/11), and ration power to limit climate change, deflecting blame on to Putin.

Nationalists need a foreign enemy. Japan has North Korea, with China and SK as back-ups. The West were choosing China, but it would have cost them too much economically, and Xi is now reducing the threat China represented by curtailing his own economy with ideological bans and Covid lockdowns. So Russia can return to being the primary enemy that maintains the perpetual Orwellian threat.

Ukrainians threw a spanner in the works by bravely and effectively fighting back, but the West can limit their access to weapons to keep the war going, or cause them to lose it.

Ideally someone would be paid a million bucks in BitCoin to bump Putin off, but he may be so valuable to the West as a foreign threat, that their security services might actively prevent that.