Years in the making, Putin's bluff is finally called. He vastly underestimated the sanctions and overestimated the resilience of his "Fortress economy". In par

Years in the making, Putin's bluff is finally called. He vastly underestimated the sanctions and overestimated the resilience of his "Fortress economy". In particular, he did not expect the "toothless" EU to apply the most extreme of financial sanctions. And whilst NATO does not step in in any military way, they actually do, as many countries are shipping weapons to Ukraine. Normally, you could consider that none of this is enough to withstand the military force of Russia, but Russia is about to fall apart...fast. The currency will tank, there's already footage of a bank run. Several hundreds of billions of $ are frozen. Big scale business transactions blocked. Air travel blocked. The import of critical (technical) components blocked. The ordinary Russian person, whom you'll usually never hear, was already very distrustful of government. Tomorrow they'll wake up in a dysfunctional "pariah" country to the likes of North Korea. Not only will the economy sink, they will also be culturally isolated. People laugh when Russia is banned from the meme-like "Eurovision song festival", but this does matter. They're also banned from sports, tournament hosting is cancelled, it all adds up into your nationality turning into a source of shame. And for what? All of this suffering could have been sold and justified to the public by an actual threat, like Germany invading Russia. But no such thing is even remotely the case. The threat only exists in the warped mind of a KGB officer longing back to days...that were terrible to ordinary people. Imagine being a Russian soldier. Asked to give your life to invade a country of people that look like you, talk like you, and never did anything to you or your country. For a shit pay and for no glory, rather for shame. Morale must be great. Putin also just betrayed his very own insiders. Imagine being one of those oligarchs right now. A few days ago, all was just fine. Filthy rich and no limits in what you could do. Now they're put in a golden prison. The future is very insecure. Your assets at risk, your movement restricted, rather than a success story you're now a persona non grata, and your very own people may be sharpening guillotines. Whatever the outcome, Putin accelerated it. He's beyond saving his own face now, so somebody will have to step in. His inner circle or the Russian people themselves. As for the nuke threat, it shows desperation. It's the only leverage left. You already lost when you use this as a threat. You never threaten with nukes, that's now how nukes work. It shows you shouldn't have them in the first place. Anyway, they won't be used. It's bluff. The Russian administration are masters of deceit, denial and manipulation, it's all in the game. Every word is carefully chosen "put in a ready state" so that it can both be interpreted as a threat and fully denied afterwards. That's how Russia plays its games and now it's about to win some very stupid prizes. Long overdue I'd say.