President Putin has announced a partial mobilization in Russia

Oh it matters. More poorly trained and equipped cannon fodder means more dead and more prisoners. The influx of caskets into previously less impacted areas in Russia might start to impact the general population more - that's how the USSR had to pull out of Afghanistan.

In Iran, in Turkey, in the USA, in Hungary, in France, in South Africa, in Russia, in the UK there are people who all they want is a decent life for the work they do and there are people who want to make America Great again, show Greeks that Turks are the boss or show Turks that Greeks are the superior culture that one day will rise and take back Istanbul, show EU that they are the man, revive the French greatness, preserve British ways against EU, screw the liberals, make the Vegans cry, keep the women in line, stop Netflix making the youth gay, preserve the Islam in a specific way, preserve christian values etc.

It's almost as if there are class wars everywhere but those in power fight their local class wars through external fights. That's why it almost feels like Brexiteers, MAGA, le Pen, Putin, the guy in Brazil or Philippines are all coordinated.

It's bizarre and I don't see anything special about Russia TBH. It's just that they seem to be ahead of the west in the direction the world is headed.

You know people who disapprove Putin and try to run away from Russia but unfortunately Putin continues to enjoy very high approval ratings[0].

[0] https://twitter.com/grkdirik/status/1572242924460556288/phot...

Shooting down Russian airplanes over Ukrainian territory when they are literally bombing Ukraine is not "an act of war against Russia". That's a bit of a far stretch don't you think?

If NATO bombs Belarus and Russian airplanes defend, you can hardly call that "Russian war against NATO".

The past 10-20 years have been a tragedy for the relationship between Russia and Europe, and a failure from Putin to take advantage of the goodwill that existed after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Many European countries actually wanted a close relationship with Russia, as they (naively) thought that it was moving in a democratic direction. Lots of companies started offices in Russia and countries like Germany trusted Russia enough to supply them with gas. They will probably not do that again unless they have alternative suppliers.

There were of course some negative rhetorics from old school politicians, and Europe were still close allies with US. But the general hope was that Russia was moving closer to Europe and that in time they could perhaps even join the EU to create a new political and economical power.

Unfortunately Putin decided to go in the opposite direction and trying to rebuild the old empire. Oligarks made it difficult to do business and the political rhetorics made "the west" into an enemy.

The only way I see Russia coming out of this stronger, is if the pressure from the people is high enough to let a real democratic election vote in a new leadership that can reduce corruption. This could start repairing foreign relations which would improve the economic situation. Maybe we could get back to the optimism we had 15-20 years ago.

This is probably not likely to happen in the short term.

The only "upside" of this war is that due to the dependency on gas from Russia, Europe will accelerate the process of switching to greener energy. Windmills, solar power and maybe even nuclear power plants. This may be remembered in history as the turning point in the reduction of global warning, that came with a high human cost.

I can see a plausible end that avoids ridicule on either side:

- West will maintain that Putin meant to destroy Ukraine. So, limiting him to the new status-quo for Luhansk and Donetsk (whatever that would be) is a success.

- Putin will claim that the target of the "military operation" was to make Luhansk and Donetsk safe for the Russian-speaking population there. The new status-quo provides for that. So the operation was a success.