there s another group of people who sees the cited already are his enemies. people who are once fairly important to intelligence or propaganda circles. who are now reportedly in prison or under house arrest. but beyond that, you can see maybe the most important thing, that he doesn t actually have any friends. there s nobody really close to him. everyone is letting him take the hit here. one way to think about this for itself, is that, it s all on putin. nobody else is stepping up to take responsibility. and so, in that way, there s really nobody standing beside him. everybody is not far away from him, not just physically but he s going to take the blame for this thing. when it doesn t turn out the way that it s supposed to. talk about this upcoming anniversary, may 9th, what s may 9th means both in russia, russian history and what it s going to mean for this war. that s a wonderful question because it s really hard to overestimate how much the symbolism of dates matters in
and it s been the ukrainians, because they ve resisted, who ve given nato and the west and other allies time to unite and to take serious measures. that of course means that everything looks different from the point of view of moscow. and indeed, the strange thing here is how, in a certain way putin is the last to know. he is in this classic tyrannical position where he s taken this big gamble on the basis of an ideology, which is simply wrong. and it s going to be harder for people to talk to him about what s actually going on. so you mentioned the people, you know, in some kind of middle circle round him who doubt this is going well. that s one group. there s another group of people who sees the cited already are his enemies. people who are once fairly important to intelligence or propaganda circles. who are now reportedly in prison or under house arrest. but beyond that, you can see