I’m afraid you underestimate my ignorance of geography around the Baltics. And I’m ashamed to admit that all that comes to mind when I read “Königsberg” is the Swedish hypercar manufacturer with a vaguely similar name.
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That would be Koenigsegg
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Time to not just freeze, but seize Russian assets.
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Good. Let the agressor pay in rubles…by the tonne.
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“He . . . he was standing right by the window, enjoying the view of protestors being rounded up, and must have leaned out a little too far.”
“Yes, a shame. Thank you for trying to save him.”
“Yes, a shame. Now, let us see if we can get our London townhouses back.”
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There are a few op-eds this morning from so-called Russia experts describing Putin as maybe losing his mind, one described Ukraine as “perhaps his Waterloo.”
I don’t know.
We may find out years from now that some of his plans and intelligence reports were faulty, like maybe he he had a mole in Kyiv who turned out to be feeding him false data.
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Not sure either. We’ll know a little more after today’s “peace talks”. The Russian negotiators are going to be Putin’s ventriloquist’s dummies, so if they make crazy demands with the expectation they’ll actually be fulfilled we’ll know he’s deranged too.
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Contra Niall Ferguson’s wording in the linked article: Putin hasn’t gambled his life on this invasion, in the literal sense. If he fails / is ousted / etc., it’s not inevitable that he ends up dead. He’s gambled his position of power.
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Is it too much to ask for both?
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I agree but in Russia the probability is high that loss of power for him will equal loss of life. It’s kind of a zero-sum game for Russian autocrats.
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Whoa, DooL DiMera flashbacks from my teen years!
Putin has gambled his life on this invasion . He will certainly not hesitate to sacrifice the lives of thousands if not millions of people if he believes it is the only way to preserve his own .
That’s really the key issue here. If Putin loses this I don’t see how he will remain in power, and if he is not in power, all his billions of dollars and whatever will buy him nothing. He must know that. This is really a scary situation.
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No sense in breaking with tradition, since it goes back at least 5 centuries.
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The table is an act - he sat across a normal table and shook hands when he met fellow fascistic demagogue Bolsanaro last week:
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Bolsonaro was probably happy to give his DNA to Putin’s cronies for Covid testing, and passed. Macron, wisely, was not prepared to donate his DNA to the Putin Medical Research Association.
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i mean if he were a real man 
he’d be out there on the front lines himself. in reality he’s hiding away from the action, powerless while the economy crashes around him, scared to even get near his own generals. it’s not a great look
( and yeah, it’s that contrast between his self image and reality that makes the situation so dangerous )
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Just what we need, vats of cloned Western leader under Putin’s thrall. Maybe the real Donald Trump was less OTT insane and the cloned Donald that’s passed for Trump since he was killed and replaced is a clumsy imitation.
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