Kevin - my concern is that I truly believe Putin is fully aware of the fact that there is now no possible scenario where he backs off and survives. Prior to this war he had systematically pillaged the Russian coffers to pad his own bank accounts. Had he left power peacefully then, a full audit would have seen him shot and dumped in a bog. Now, he has started a fruitless war that has left tens of thousands of Russians dead, and probably hundreds of thousands wounded/disabled. The economy and the military will take decades to recover. He is effectively painted into a corner now.
The 'so what' of this is the fact that desperate people can and will resort to desperate measures. For a country that was once a nuclear and conventional superpower, and seeks to regain that status, this is a dangerous time indeed.
