Goldkin @Goldkin@awoo.space

@chr Someone needs to add Fecto Elfilis to https://twitter.com/VivinkArt/status/1408940137287876609 as one of the mega evolutions.

(Also, excellent art 💜)

@keliff I love this

@Felthry (Which is, by the way, why it is so essential for folks like him to not obtain power, or if they do, for systems to be in place so they are not in power for very long.)

@Felthry I mean. For him, life is good. He's enriched himself and his inner circle extremely and doesn't give a care for the average Russian whatsoever. What does he care if he kills thousands or tens of thousands to further enrich himself, until they are literally beating his door down and leading him away from the palace?

@Felthry (With pardon for errors and typos on my end there because mobile.)

Suffice it, this is a brew for him not looking for an off-ramp because he's committed, not receiving information on the facts on the ground, and seems to be ignoring the history of how this has played out for his predecessors because of ideas that exist in his own mind. Unclear what happens next, but that shapes itself around his fall if it fractures too far.

@Felthry Sociopath's gonna sociopath, especially given he's surrounded himself with yes men. Speculation on why he's now more erratic now, after decades of measured action, ranges from him boxing himself in due to covid to simply operating on poor information and pivoting to what has worked before.

Irony is, this is part of what lead to the fall of the Soviet state he so desperately wants to rebuild in the first place.

@Felthry What there is to be done given that is a completely separate can of worms, and all I'll say after that is this is why aid to Ukr is pretty important right now.

@Felthry So that has now happened, and we can see the impact. His attempts to then transform Ukraine into a puppet state again (under Yanukovych or a similar leadership) have fallen through, so he's now resorting to what he did with Assad in Syria: bombing runs to level Ukraine instead, then install his own people by force or by proxy after the infrastructure is razed to the ground.

That is approximately the shape of it, as I understand it.

@Felthry In effect, he gave himself too much confidence by having success in narrowly scoped wins in Georgia and Crimea (etc), financial corruption in the West, and a seeming sincere belief that his Soviet coercive model of rule is superior, and that support in Ukraine was Western influence, not sincerely held identity and a desire to not live under Russian occupation.

All a recipe for... a poorly reasoned, terrible war on Ukraine.

@Felthry This suspicion of the Western model as poisonous and in chronic decline is part of what influenced Putin to instead choose Soviet-style colonial expansion instead of globalized democratic rule. And it seems to be part of why he made such a mistake here in thinking his forces would be hailed as heroes and that Ukraine and the West would simply capitulate and roll over, after his experiences with using Trump and Congress as puppets.