What does Putin do next? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which our writers and experts take a deeper look at the future for the Russian leader. • Putin is getting more desperate. It won’t end well• Furious Putin is trapped in a gilded cage. Only death will free him• Putin and Xi’s bromance could fall apart – and it’s all down to Trump• Putin has made a vast strategic error. This relationship shows us why• The worst war the Soviets ever fought is now haunting Putin• Putin has turned Russia into a ‘crack cocaine’ economy – he’s trapped• Putin is nothing without war. The contrast with his overlord Xi couldn’t be starker• Putin is in retreat across the globe. But he has one great hope left for victory

What does Putin do next? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which our writers and experts take a deeper look at the future for the Russian leader.

• Putin is getting more desperate. It won’t end well• Furious Putin is trapped in a gilded cage. Only death will free him• Putin and Xi’s bromance could fall apart – and it’s all down to Trump• Putin has made a vast strategic error. This relationship shows us why• The worst war the Soviets ever fought is now haunting Putin• Putin has turned Russia into a ‘crack cocaine’ economy – he’s trapped• Putin is nothing without war. The contrast with his overlord Xi couldn’t be starker• Putin is in retreat across the globe. But he has one great hope left for victory

Vladimir Putin has not been coy about what he wants. In his September 2022 annexation speech, he declared four Ukrainian regions Russian “for ever” — the language of irreversible possession, not territorial bargaining. None of these four regions are fully occupied. The war, in his framing, is a reckoning with the Soviet-era “mistake” of Ukrainian statehood, a project of imperial restoration that has no natural stopping point. The real question has never been whether he wants more. It is what he intends to do with what he already holds and what that reveals........

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