Journalists of The Economist note that the Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin has unleashed a war not only against Ukraine, but also against the Russian people as a whole and has no plans to stop.
How Putin is fighting against the Russians
The publication notes that the Russian occupation army under the control of the Kremlin dictator captured Avdiivka in the Donetsk region at the cost of the lives of 13,000 soldiers and the loss of more than 400 tanks, which shows Putin's determination to continue the criminal war.
In addition, the journalists of the publication note that the death of the Kremlin-imprisoned opposition politician Alexei Navalny also indicates Putin's offensive on the domestic political front on the eve of the presidential elections.
It is noted that the front in Ukraine and the domestic political front in Russia are currently connected.
Putin's war in Ukraine has always been aimed at strengthening his position at home by changing conditions abroad.
Putin is not afraid of NATO's military power, but of the principles he created to protect peace: democracy, freedom and the rule of law. They represented an existential threat to Putin's government, the publication says.
Inside Russia, the resistance to this threat is felt by Putin's direct attacks on his people.
How Putin provokes destabilisation in Russia
Journalists believe that these direct attacks go far beyond the fight against opponents: Putin's regime is now turning against even those who are friendly to him.
All this causes outrage. Public protests are brutally suppressed, but discontent erupts in various forms and places.... The majority of Russians never asked for war, never craved Ukrainian territory, and want their lives to return to normal. None of this means that the protest movement is growing, but the survey data show that support for the war is gradually weakening, the authors of the material emphasise.
Analysts believe that the Kremlin dictator is currently faced with an insoluble trilemma among the urgent needs for further war financing, maintaining the standard of living and curbing inflation.
Analysts note that Russia will not be able to bring its own economy out of a state of unprofitability without ending the war against Ukraine and lifting Western sanctions.
However, Putin cannot do this because his regime can now only exist in a state of war. It is safer for him to redouble his efforts, imposing great repression on his people, than to stop, which will raise the inevitable questions about the cost and reasons for the war. He is not the first ruler who found himself in such a situation. The German command came to this conclusion in the spring of 1918, adopting an all-or-nothing approach to victory and preparing for a decisive offensive, the authors of the article underline.
It is also indicated that the gap between Putin's militarism and people's desire to return to normal life will only increase, but this is unlikely to stop the dictator.
Putin sees the world differently. In his opinion, the high price of this war justifies the scale of his efforts. Putin lives among the ancient Russian princes and tsars, measures his efforts by centuries and sees in them a historical mission not only to restore the lost empire, but also to overthrow the public order that arose in the West after the Second World War and spread to the East after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He wants to defeat the very sense of individual will embodied by Navalny. And he will not stop, the article says.
