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• I’m an Eastern European – I know what Putin plans for my country• Putin has made a vast strategic error. This relationship shows us why• Putin’s fortress Russia has one weakness: The enemy within

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• I’m an Eastern European – I know what Putin plans for my country• Putin has made a vast strategic error. This relationship shows us why• Putin’s fortress Russia has one weakness: The enemy within

Before the Chechen war of 1994, Russia’s defence minister reportedly boasted that he could take Grozny, the capital, “in two hours with a single airborne regiment.” The Kremlin was looking forward to “a small victorious war” – instead, Chechen rebels forced the Russian Army into a humiliating withdrawal after two years of bitter fighting.

Russia’s president today, Vladimir Putin, also hoped for a small victorious war when he ordered the invasion of Ukraine exactly four years ago today. The Kremlin apparently expected the whole thing to be over in two weeks, but Russian conscripts are still being wounded or dying every week, not in their hundreds but in their thousands.

Western........

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