If we think why they chose it purely rationally, I suppose he and his team foresaw him be arrested, but expected the people to rebel. Earlier murder attempt by

If we think why they chose it purely rationally, I suppose he and his team foresaw him be arrested, but expected the people to rebel. Earlier murder attempt by the state, plus an arrest afterwards -- were still arguably unprecedented (Nemtsov 2015 murder being a bit different), plus his all-in investigation on Putin's palace, could theoretically end people's patience, and that protests would have been even broader than in Belarus in 2020. Plus, his team were all die-hards, no skeptics. That was all-in move, and it turned out wrong. I also went to those protests, it was -23°C, and there were more SWAT police than us. I got a harsh reminder as well of the sad truths sociologist Yuri Levada had described in his work "Simple Soviet man".