As far as Ukraine goes, it’s clear the Ukrainians will be more resistant than ever to any Kremlin stooge, and would fight back as they did in the Maidan revolution of 2014. Ukrainians don’t have any misty-eyed Soviet nostalgia about what Putin is really offering. They know the model for his reforged USSR is based on oppression, murder and gangsterism.
Russians, doped up as they are on RT and TASS and Rossiya 24, are also suddenly seeing their favorite singers, tennis players and actors speak up about what is now a hot war. They’re seeing photos of bombed apartment blocks, kindergartens, dead children. They’re seeing this isn’t going to be a walkover.
There’s a genuine danger to Putin that he has greatly underestimated the breadth of opposition he could now face with a war against a people whom most Russians don’t see as an enemy. He’s not just facing metropolitan protesters. He’s also humiliated his spy chief in public, lost his oligarchs billions of dollars and could well have to deal with thousands of traumatized mothers. For a paranoid former spy, always alive to risks, he now appears extraordinarily confident that no one from this growing base of foes can threaten him.
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