Any kind of sense of defeat, a clear humiliating defeat for putin would be extremely destabilizing. i think that s why we saw him in this speech. it was my sense he was trying to tamp down expectations. he wasn t calling on russians to make great sacrifices like they did in world war ii. it was very kind of muted and in that sense, i think that the expectation shaping was key. you know what we can glean from that as well, he may not have the political space inside russia to do more. there may not be enough band width quite frankly for vladimir putin to pull more assets into the fight, to draft russians, to tell the oligarchs to continue to hold tight. he may be really running out of rope. we don t know exactly. c kremlinology is opaque. if he s running out of road.