Professor John Mearsheimer just made a private visited to Moscow and St. Petersburg in the early September. In this video he talked about his impressions talking to locals that the Russians felt Putin is not waging the war with sufficient vigor. If Putin were to be replaced, the new person will be at least as hawkish as him, if not more hawkish. Even if Putin were replace a year or two ago, the person who replace him will not more interested in accommodating the West. There is no evidence the widespread belief in the West that Putin’s replacement would have been something of a pussycat was correct. If anything, if anything, Putin’s replacement would have been a hardliner.
As to the politics situation inside Russia, profession Mearsheimer said, “Very clear from talking to Russians, listening to what they have to say about their country, they are very nationalistic. Lots people talked about Russian civilization in a proud way. They will distinguish Russia from the West. I good number of Russians I talked to do not like the West because they do not like liberal values. And the values they privilege focus more on things like religion, Christianity, particularly the family, what one would call traditional values. There’s a lot of emphasis on traditional values among the people I spoke to….. when I talked about the subject of Russian nationalism, they sounded a lot like JD Vance. Russian have basically turned Ukraine into a landlocked country. ……. Russia are bending on ending the war, and the way to end the war is to escalate.” The conflict leave the Russians no choice. …. The drone had help Ukraine to hold on the war for the last two to three years. But Russian believe that they can wrecking Ukraine in terms of its economic and military infrastructure. Russians believe cutting off Ukraine from its Black Sea ports, destroying its energy infrastructure, destroying all sorts of military infrastructure in rear areas to include things like bridges, railroad lines, locomotives, gas stations, and so forth and so on will do so much damage to the Ukrainian economy and to the support system behind the Ukraine frontline forces . ” Professor Mearsheimer also said he does not feel any deep hatred inside of Russia towards the Ukrainians. Many Russians have relatives who lived in Ukraine. Here are huge numbers of Russian have Ukraine heritage, and vice versa. Lots of Russians view Ukraines as brothers and sisters.