Even autocrats have to rule largely with the consent (or at least the acquiescence) of the governed. Unless he goes full Kim Jong Un, the long-term economic dam

Even autocrats have to rule largely with the consent (or at least the acquiescence) of the governed. Unless he goes full Kim Jong Un, the long-term economic damage will do to him what it did to the Soviet Union. He's miscalculated. I'm struggling to see an end-game in which he can save face and not come out diminished in the long term. To me this all smells of something born out of his will, and not something that's had the kind of in-system planning and support that these things tend to require. I suspect (hope) the long knives are being quietly sharpened in the darker corridors of the Kremlin.