Thank you for your detailed reply.
Whether or not Putin wants a Soviet empire or an Imperial empire I think we can agree that he wants an empire ruled by Russia. This is truly the main point here.
Thus my consideration that Russia as we know it must be destroyed.
Whether or not Putin wants a Soviet empire or an Imperial empire I think we can agree that he wants an empire ruled by Russia. This is truly the main point here.
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Not the main point and I do not agree.
NUANCE
Putin wants the RESTORATION of original Russia under Peter the Great, but not by conquest or he would have done that by now, 33 years post-revolution. He wants REPATRIATION without force.
It is a restoration to the _time_ of Empire, but while a strong man in a security state (America is an example of security state without a strong man), Putin is not about restoration of a monarchy. It is, instead, a seemingly visceral drive to return Russia to a time devoid of the excesses, degradation and division of our modern world.
Putin is a romantic.
There is no percentage in destroying Russia or Putin. The real enemy has arranged this particular division as they often do: with a war. Russia was goaded. Ukraine was the pointy stick. NATO and their global corporate, oligarchical, billionaire backers are the perpetrators worthy of burning down.