Yes it’s been there, but since Stalin met his untimely demise at his dacha with the four closest Politburo guys around him, coincidence //sarc, it has never been in one man’s hand. And that man is insane and perhaps more insane after 2 years of isolation because of ccp vid. He cannot back down. So the question is does the West back down? Because I don’t see a Beria or Malenkov among Putin’s coterie.
Aside from all the opinions flying every which way, I think the Beria and Malenkov sorts have infested the "same Obama foreign policy team—Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice, and others—[is] now back in the White House and State Department working in senior posts for a president who personally ran Obama's Ukraine policy."
After all, someone wrote "an Obama presidency will inflict the greatest disaster on this nation that it has ever seen. Four years of the haloed one will see a rebirth of the USSR here in the USA."
Prescient, indeed.
On a parallel notion, if you haven't seen "The Death of Stalin" from 2017, it is highly recommended. Best regards.