What Could Possibly Go Wrong? These are the risks to worry about:
Europe comes round to sanctions that really do hurt;
Russia’s armed forces get bogged down and this turns into a long drawn-out conflict;
Putin overplays his hand and invades a neighboring NATO member;
Internal opposition brings down Putin and Russia lapses into chaos.
The strength and success of the Ukrainian resistance to date, the brutality of the Russian assault, and the support for Ukraine in the rest of the world and even among Russians has seen to that.
Now, two narratives are competing for primacy.
And maybe, just maybe, this is the moment when Russia turns on Putin. Liberalism at last wins the upper hand on authoritarian populism.
The other narrative needs just one word: “Chaos.”
Putin cannot turn back now. Like many invaders before, he will continue in the attempt to avoid humiliation.
The western financial upheaval, just to enforce Russia’s new pariah status, will be immense and painful
Many historical analogies are doing the rounds. I think the best might be with “Red Monday,” Aug. 19, 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev was detained in his dacha and a group of Soviet hardliners declared a coup.
Then Boris Yeltsin famously stood on top of a tank, the coup collapsed, and by the Friday, Yeltsin was thrusting a piece of paper in Gorbachev’s face and demanding that he sign a law outlawing the Communist Party.
Within five days, the narrative went from “Back to Brezhnev” to “Russia is no longer communist.”
John Authers Blooomberg 28 February 2022
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