All of this is so fascinating. Putin's war effort, now in its 5th year, may be collapsing. Soldiers are refusing to die for what they know is absolutely nothing, and the Putin regime is resorting to KGB-style information operations on its own population. Of course it's been doing that for the whole time, but now it's starting to fall apart. The economy is collapsing. Ukranian drones and cruise missiles are roaming freely from the Baltic Sea to the deep interior and even knocking out Russian tankers in the Mediterranean. Ukraine, though limited 4 to 1 in potential manpower, I believe, is compensating with vast numbers of its civilian population building drone parts, etc, with 3D printers at home (TY, Rheinmetall for pointing this out!)

Ukraine has the military industrial capacity of the EU, the UK, and the US (sort of) to back it up. Putin, in his great wisdom, has Iran, which I hear is having problems, and North Korea, which has the fat guy and his daughter and warehouses full of dud artillery shells they'd rather sell somebody anyway.

The wild card, as always, is China. The moment Xi decides it's not in his interest then the whole thing collapses.

Who takes over when Putin falls? That's the dangerous part. Russia has been here before, twice in the 20th century. They don't have a good track record. That part truly scares me.