Yes. Who'd have thought that an extremely visible, aggressive threat might induce smaller countries to pull together against it?
I think also (and I've already said) that Putin has this reputation as a political genius because he has, in some very high profile instances, made life very difficult for the USA. In today's short attention span, Twitter-dominated and superficial world, it looks brilliant.
Under Putin's watch Russia and the rest of the world were presented with the illusion of Russia as a world power that could expand its influence across the rest of the world, rather than the ''mere regional power'' Obama famously described it as. I think the thought of Putin having ''restored'' Russian power and prestige added a lot to his hype.
www.theguardian.com
Eh, that he has held onto power and siphoned money off for him and his friends could well be argued to be more indicative of a skillful politician that the state of his country.
Of course, the state of the country is also dire, with quality of life plummeting, inequality at a grotesque high (catching up on the US), and a vastly repressive state apparatus.
If his goal was to deter nations from joining NATO, it's a comical failure.
And now he's faithfully following the autocrat's playbook by distracting his people from his mistakes and crimes with nationalistic fervor, religious revival and war.
Even if he manages to take Ukraine, holding it is a whole other ball game. Some analysts suggest it might take a million troops to hold the country. Put that with the news this week about 70 soldiers dying in 3ish weeks in the taken city of Melitopl, population (at least was) 150k, I dont know how they are even going to hold the East
Actually I think holding the East is quite possible. The East was generally speaking relatively Russia-Friendly (and still is in separatist held territory, thank you Russian propaganda) but most importantly a lot of Ukrainians have fled the area and there are reports of Russia deporting people as well. If they basically repopulate these Areas with a sufficient amount of Russians it shouldn't be such a big problem. Obviously this would be impossible on a national scale, but for the Donbass region I can see it happen.
To be fair, up to 2013-2014 the Russian economy was actually doing relatively ok (now whether that benefited everyone is another question). If he had respected Ukrainian independence Putin's presidency wouldn't have been a total disaster. (ok, it still would have been on a lot of socio-ethical aspects, but economically speaking it would have been "ok")
Yes, a fire probably caused by a Ukrainian missile. Apparently, it set off a magazine explosion - ouch: they could consider themselves lucky the ship didn't catastrophically detonate.Today, Russia is claiming that Moskva has suffered an explosion as a result of a "fire", and has had to be evacuated.
Good thing to consider, actually: what's more embarrassing for a military, weakness or incompetence? Maybe weakness is a more sore spot currently, given how terribly the operation has gone from the start.
Eh, to be fair, submarines are notorious for that, no matter who is operating them. Though, yeah, not want to rely on the Russian military to ensure my sub would come back up.
We shouldn't also forget that admitting the ship caught fire because it was hit by Ukrainian forces also implies Ukrainian forces are still capable of causing severe harm to Russian troops. And this can further demoralize Russian soldiers.
For nuclear submarines, in recent years critical failures - to the point the whole vessel is lost or close to it - are very rare... except USSR/Russia. The USA lost a couple in the early Cold War. The USSR/Russia has lost over half a dozen, nearly all after 1980, plus a substantial number of major accidents in repairs or decommissioning.
