They're chewing through muscle now. The Russian people had already been suffering a decline in standard of living for much of the past decade. That was brutal e

They're chewing through muscle now. The Russian people had already been suffering a decline in standard of living for much of the past decade. That was brutal enough. It's going to get drastically worse. They've lost all human rights, now they're going to lose the veneer of relative prosperity that they temporarily had (which led them to tolerate Putin a lot more than they otherwise would have). I pointed out it would happen on a delay, because it'll take time to grind them down. The combination (deprived of all human rights and loss of perceived prosperity and forward progress) is explosive to a country as chaotic, unstable, as Russia. The indications that Russia's fabric is being pulled at are numerous. The decade long decline in standard of living, which is now going to plunge. Protests that were going on prior to recent Ukraine war, as in the east. Their military being fake, an entirely corrupt fraud (the image of which is critical to holding big Russia together). Their leadership being wildly incompetent, including Putin. The image of Putin was as a competent autocrat; there were always indications that that wasn't the case (it's an exceptionally rare outcome to begin with), and now we know Putin is a standard issue incompetent autocrat. The big oil gains that Russia benefited from, due to Bush's wars and the dollar decline, papered over Putin's incompetence and gave him at least an extra runway of a decade to conceal all of that incompetence. Russia's military being a fraud is a significant example of them being ripped apart because their system requires the constant burning of resources to prop it up, to hold it together. It requires the image of a very powerful, competent military to hold it all together. Holding big Russia together is extremely expensive and can't go on indefinitely, it inherently must collapse as the fuel runs out. It's always a question of at what stage of collapse they're in (and my opinion is they're going through muscle now, and will hit bone sooner than later). One of the sources of fuel is the Russian people, the system eats them (so to speak): big Russia chews up their standard of living, burns up their potential in the name of holding the whole together. The Russian people sacrifice their potential so big Russia can exist. Big Russia can't even maintain an effective, functional military: so yes, they're being ripped apart, it just wasn't so obvious because the projection of power derived from their military hid a lot of that visual.