re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict.

quote:

---

Why Putin’s elites keep dying

---

quote:

---

Although I suspect few readers’ hearts will bleed for them, it’s been a bad week for Russian elites. There has been a spate of real or apparent suicides and the arrest of a gold magnate as he prepared to leave the country.

---

quote:

---

As the national pie shrinks, the fight to retain the size of your slice increases. Usually, this is through pulling political strings to win contracts or preference, or else reiderstvo, ‘raiding,’ using fake documents or corrupted judges to take over rival companies.

Sometimes, though, more severe methods are used: contract killings are again on the rise, and while most tend to use more unsubtle methods, some ‘suicides’ may be distinctly involuntary.

Yet for every death there are many more arrests of corrupt officials and businesspeople. Putin’s unspoken social contract with the elite is that they can steal, but only within certain limits and only so long as they are loyal to the Kremlin. That is unchanged, but the acceptable limits of personal enrichment and just what ‘loyalty’ means seem to be shifting, and in unpredictable ways. As one Moscow insider put it to me, ‘the elites are willing to stay within the red lines – but what terrifies them is that they don’t know where those lines are anymore.’

This even affects those who were once untouchable. Strukov, for example, was also a powerful figure within the Chelyabinsk region apparatus of Putin’s United Russia bloc, and deputy speaker of regional legislature. Starovoit likewise was a United Russia stalwart and a protégé of Arkady Rotenberg, one of Putin’s childhood friends, and – not uncoincidentally – one of the country’s richest men. So many other recent targets were once feted. Former defence minister Timus Ivanov, just sentenced to 13 years on bribery charges, was a Hero of Russia.

This looks less like a deliberate purge, and more like the convulsions of a system in slow-motion crisis. A business elite increasingly engaged in cannibalistic competition for diminishing assets, a Kremlin that mistrusts the people on whom it depends to run its country and economy, that demands compliance with unspoken, unfixed and unclear rules. It certainly doesn’t mean Putinism is headed for some imminent fall. But it does demonstrate that even as the war machine continues to grind on, the damage being done to the Russian regime is very real.

---

quote:

---

It appears Trump is coming around to the fact that Putin and Russia do not want to live in peace.

---

quote:

---

My impression is that Trump has tired of Putin treating him like he is an easily manipulated moron. While Trump is easily manipulated, the primary rule in such a situation is to not be obvious about it. Putin has been insulting and demeaning Trump since Trump was re-elected. Trump has put up with it for waaaay too long.

---

quote:

---

The situation in the Middle East needed attention first as it presented opportunities never seen in decades with Russian influence gone and Iranian influence going around the bowl and down the hole. This tightens the sphere of influence for Russia to cause problems there.

---

quote:

---

Before he came into office, Trump was very clear that if Russia were not open to peace, he would give Ukraine more support than Biden did.

---

quote:

---

uote:
Before he came into office, Trump was very clear that if Russia were not open to peace, he would give Ukraine more support than Biden did.


Guess we will see if he was serious or if this was just another attempt at a soundbite

---

quote:

---

quote:
Before he came into office, Trump was very clear that if Russia were not open to peace, he would give Ukraine more support than Biden did.


Guess we will see if he was serious or if this was just another attempt at a soundbite

---

quote:

---

Trump is not prone to half measures. He likes to go big and bold.

---