'Putin Has Effectively Crossed the Rubicon': Putin Critic Bill Browder on Backlash in Russia

[Warpy]

10. I know, and the Kremlin knew they were at the breaking point then

which is why they pulled out before that war bankrupted the country and depleted the work force any more.

Russia is a huge country, the comment I've heard most often is that getting from one place to another requires at least 12 hours by train, and usually more than that. The population is low, only 145 million before Putin started his war. It's most likely dropped by a couple of million since then, mostly educated young people. They are not going to recover from this until and unless they make Russia a place young people want to live in, and their conscription is going in the opposite direction. People might be really patriotic, but they don't want to die in a war over nothing but some old man's crazy dogma.