(03-01-2022, 01:24 PM)TheO-LineMatters Wrote: Honestly, yes I do. Unlike you and me, Putin thinks differently. We allow checks and balances within our system to keep maniacs from causing international crisis'. Russia does not. Putin surrounds himself with "yes men" and never hears that he is wrong in any way. This can lead very powerful men to believe they are invincible. He will do anything not to appear weak. He doesn't care about human lives, be it Ukrainian lives or the lives of his own people. He just cares about his own power, so if he has to nuke someone to show his own power, he could care less if that means the ultimate destruction of himself and his own country. In his warped mind, it may be better off to go out with ultimate power, rather than to live and admit defeat.  

I believe very much that he may have suffered a breakdown, because I keep reading reports that people around him are saying he's being different and very erratic. With that said, their power system doesn't have a "Baker Act" type of thing. It would basically take a coup to overthrow him. With his history of human rights abuses, that would be a risky act, because if that happened and it failed, those who staged the coup would most assuredly be executed. It's gonna take 1 of 2 things for this to end. Some covert action will have to be taken by an outside country or within the Russian government to assassinate him or power will have to be taken from him via a coup within Russia. I don't see Putin ever backing down, because he is not thinking rationally and he's evil. If he loses power, he loses everything. Therefore every option is on the table.

After doing some reading on the 2014 invasion of Ukraine I have seen where people said the same thing about him back then, so this is just who Putin is. The following is a reply to then German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying Putin was acting erratic, "Putin is not mad, and he is not in “another world.” He is very much in his own world, which is for him a very realistic world of a new, frothy, determined Russian nationalism. Indeed, he is master of this world."

I think it will take the wealthiest who are losing boatloads of money to make him disappear. Whatever form that takes remains to be seen, but these people will likely pull the plug on this if it is a sustained invasion and they keep losing their money. The opposition by Ukraine is much stiffer than pretty much anyone expected as well as the world response being much stronger and I can't imagine these folks (Putin's buddies) are in it for the duration.

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