There is a strong sense that almost anything would be better than Putin. Putin leans heavily into a Russian tradition of confusing your enemies into making a mi

There is a strong sense that almost anything would be better than Putin. Putin leans heavily into a Russian tradition of confusing your enemies into making a mistake. That tactic necessarily means confusing your allies as well, and you're just as likely to make a mistake as your enemies are. A successor who is more brutal but more "rational" can be reckoned with. Sometimes you really can just pay a bully to knock it off. Everybody hates it, and it would leave Ukraine paying most of the price, but they can be told that they won't get any more military aid. And then everybody goes back to undercutting each other diplomatically and economically instead of conquest (until the next time). Right now all anybody knows is that a successor will be different. And since Putin appears to be capable of preserving an unacceptable status quo indefinitely, a lot of people would rather guess that the situation will improve without him. Which sucks. That's Putin's goal: to make it suck. He'll play what happens from there by ear, which sounds stupid but it "works" from his own point of view.