I do not understand why anyone would believe that assassinating Putin is a bad idea. Russia does not produce tribalistic cults of belief. It has always only ever produced monolithic monster megalomaniacs. Waiting for one to die naturally is just stupid. No one in Russia would retaliate after the dust settles. It would just create a vacuum that culminates in the next monster in two to three decades.
I actually really hope that when Putin dies (from any cause), this vacuum will lead to fight for power that furious, that several next megalomaniac candidates would also be exhausted in the process. Because the other option is that the remaining "cannibals" comfortably meet and choose the next dictator, so there won't be any window for changes
Or that we get something that has been refined in the forges of insanity of the Kremlin, and we'd end up with someone even worse.
Thats kind of a version of what I said: an installation of some new figure - bloodless, but without any participation of general public
This felt more like an act of terrorism in someways from Russia than other recent actions, particularly because Russia's armored assaults have been failing in such spectacularly disastorous fashion in the area it feels like the media content of an act of violence happening in Pokrovosk was necessary for Russia to save face in the way it wanted to.
Russia thinks it is displaying strength here, but this demonstrates desperation. Terrorism like this, in a targeted fashion to have the maximal media impact on a civilian population is what you do when you are too weak to fight a normal war. When you are afraid you will be correctly interpreted as weak, the easiest thing to do is commit violence against the defenseless and turn it into media you can boast about.
If Russia cannot take territory with armored assaults at a reasonable pace, than it cannot fight a traditional war, this terrorism is part of the same distraction that shaheds are from this fundamental truth. Russia can commit mass violence, it can spread terror, but it cannot conduct a landwar successfully against Ukraine.
Whether Pokrovosk falls now or not is a matter of human tragedy, but at a strategic level Russia has already catastrophically lost the battle there by condemning an incomprehensible number of human lives and extremely expensive military equipment to utter annihilation.... and all for what? How much have they gained? What kind of astronomical, completely unrealistic cost would it take for Russia to conquer all it wants from Ukraine this way?
It seems at this point Russia is unable to actually take and hold territory at any accelerated rate and as such now all they can do is attempt to deny territory by inducing fear and terrorism into territory Russia does not control.
This is terrorism, but do not mistake a display of terrorism for a display of strength, it is the opposite.
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