I think that Putin will never be kicked out by the people. Putin has a well organized terror system (FSB, Police and Army) to keep them under control. Penalties are very heavy and judges just execute the wishes of Putin. They put people in prison for 15 years, ban them to Siberia, or just kill them. Watch what happens with people who revolt against Putin: Alexander Litvinenko: died after poisining with Polonium-210. Anna Politkovskaya: shot and died outside her flat. Natalia Estemirova: abducted and found with gunshot wounds to her head. Stanislav Markelov: shot by a masked gunmen near the Kremlin. Anastasia Baburova: shot by a masked gunmen near the Kremlin. Boris Nemtsov: shot near the Kremlin. Boris Berezovsky: found dead in his bathroom. Paul Klebnikov: killed in a drive by shooting. Sergei Yushenkov: killed with one shot. Yevgeniy Khamaganov: neck broken by attackers in 2015. They finished the job in 2017 with a second attack. Nikolai Andrushchenko: beaten by unknown attackers, he died. Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky: died in prison, lack of healthcare. Yuri Petrovich Shchekochikhin: Doctors diagnosed Shchekochikhin with Lyell's Syndrome, but his clinical test results were classified as "medical secret." Denis Nikolayevich Voronenkov: Voronenkov was shot and killed. Nikolay Alekseevich Glushkov: found strangled in his home. Viktor Yushchenko: survived poisoning Navalny... etc... Putin also controls ALL media and internet in Russia. A lot of people believe his lies. On MSNBC's "Morning Joe": SCARBOROUGH: But, again: He kills journalists that don't agree with him. TRUMP: Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, too, Joe.
LOL one word plastics. Of friggen course. Geez what would we do without you .... and the spotted owl - which btw had to do with loooooooooooooogging, not crude extraction.
I agree with nearly everything you posted! However I have a different take on what I expect to happen eventually. Here's why. This Ukrainian War amounts to a huge miscalculation by Putin, and it will likely lead to an ending for him. I don't know in what form that will come, because there are multiple possibilities. Putin's Russia is not Stalin's Russia. Putin can jail and kill thousands of Russians, but not millions. Russian conscripts have families making it impossible to achieve a total shut down of information flow. By Fall, the sanctions will begin to inflict real inconvenience on all Russians and real hardship and pain on others. Russians that are now enthusiastically supporting their invasion of Ukraine will have become decidedly unenthusiastic. The Ukrainians will have killed thousands more young Russians. In the second world War the Russian homeland was invaded. Russians understood why they were fighting. Now they are the invaders and they will ask why. Putin could succeed if there was no stiff and concerted opposition; not much price to pay. But there is both! The answers Russians get will become less satisfactory with time. In the Vietnam war, the Americans were the invaders! Now the Russian experience at home will mirror the American experience during Vietnam but it will be magnified in intensity. Vietnam was a world away from the American homeland; Ukraine is right next door to Russia and populated with family and close relatives! During Vietnam, Americans asked why and got unsatisfactory answers that did not square with information coming back from the war. The American people ended that war even though in the meantime many went to jail for opposing the war and many more fled the country to avoid fighting in a war they did not believe in. Eventually U.S. National Guard Troops senselessly killed other young Americans over their objections to the war. The people rose up and said "enough!".
Russians invaded lots of countries in WW-II, (and were even doing it just before the war broke out). At home they didn't ask why, they just believed what the papers were telling them. Same shit... Russians were absolutely hated by the Ukrainians back then, but in Moscow the papers were touting how Russians were the heroes of the world and they are not invading but 'policing' all the poor and oppressed countries from the evils of Italy, Japan, Germany, and every other axis nation. When the Russian heroes rolled tanks into countries like Ukraine the drivers were all confused why they were so hated and loathed by the very same people they were told by Stalin they were 'liberating' against 'nazis'. Exact same shit now, just different time today.
That's news to the people of Ukraine since they were a country before USSR took them over. And USSR only came about in 1917 itself. The game can be played back, back, back. Milk and cookies follows.
It was never an independent autonomous country until the USSR dissolved. Before then it was a republic of the USSR. USSR=Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.