History in the Making: Russian Invasion

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah, those things can go both ways, but I suspect the main audience for the attacks are the Russian elites who have had to sacrifice far less in this war then many others and are pretty insulated from it.  The Russian message has always been that the Ukrainians are essentially terrorists who terrorize "Russians" in Ukraine, so it's not much of a change really:

...“The neo-Nazi Kiev junta has once again proven its terrorist nature,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday evening, suggesting the attack was deliberately timed to coincide with diplomatic discussions in Saudi Arabia and a visit by the OSCE Secretary General to Moscow.

“Without a doubt, this drone attack was planned in advance and timed to coincide with today’s US-Ukraine contacts on conflict resolution held in Saudi Arabia. It was also a message to new OSCE Secretary General Feridun Sinirlioglu,” Moscow said, accusing the “Kiev clique, which is suffering daily defeats on the battlefield,” of attempting to show its ability to negotiate “from a position of strength.”...

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

How societies respond to direct attacks is an interesting field of study, and one that is very difficult to understand. My inclination is that totalitarian societies tend to be more brittle than democratic ones when it comes to supporting their governments while under fire, with the caveat that any society facing an existential threat is likely to back its existing leaders, at least for a time. At no point in this situation has the threat to Russia been anything close to existential, and thus the populace has never felt a need to join together for collective self-defense, and instead has plenty of time to think about why food has gotten so expensive, and why wages are flat, and why their neighbors kids keep coming home in zinc boxes, and why drones occasionally blow up over their city, and why Putin hasn't done anything about it.

Still a crap shoot, but not the same as London during the Blitz or having the Germans at the gates of Moscow.