For Putin, an outbreak of peace means certain death. Like any gangster, he has only one hope of surv

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For Putin, an outbreak of peace means certain death. Like any gangster, he has only one hope of survival, writes WILLIAM BROWDER

Daily Mail
By WILLIAM BROWDER
17 August 2025



More than a million Russians have been killed or seriously wounded on the battlefields of Ukraine. But there is one man who owes his life to the continuing slaughter.

For Vladimir Putin, an outbreak of peace means certain death – by assassination, overthrow and execution, or in an international prison cell as a war criminal.

The Russian president's only credible hope of survival in the gangster state he has himself created is to prolong the 'special military operation' in Ukraine or to win in such outrageously successful terms that he can turn his attention to other former client states, other victims.

Survival, after all, was Putin's objective in launching the invasion in 2022.

In his interminable ramblings about history, the Russian president makes great pretence that all of Ukraine – not just the eastern regions of Donbas, Donetsk and Crimea – is part of Russia's empire.

Putin claims that it is his mission to reunite former territories while denying Kyiv the chance to join the Nato alliance with the West.

From the point of view of Russian interests, these might seem to make sense as a rationale for the war.

But if rationales can change, Putin's true, cynical motives cannot.

His strategy for clinging to power – and thus to life – comes directly from Niccolo Machiavelli, the calculating philosopher who wrote the handbook for dictators.

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15008721/WILLIAM-BROWDER-Like-gangster-Vladimirs-primary-instinct-survival-Thats-wont-end-war-claim-victory.html

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Putin has transformed all aspects of his nation, industrial, economic, social (religious/education), production, etc., into entirely warfare institutions. For him to try to stop that now, and to go back to a normal peacetime society, would cause major upheavals across the entire continent. Putin needs war to distract the focus of his population away from him. People are much less likely to revolt during an active war.

As soon as there is peace and his people are able to relax and to reassess what Putin has done to Russia and to their lives, Putin and his staff/cronies are afraid that there will be a backlash which could force them out of power.

Putin has put all of his chips on war and victory. It may be too late for him to 'fold' at this point in the war.

[Smokin Joe]

That would assume the average Russian is viewing this through the same window we have.

That all those widely scattered, former convict, dead soldiers are anything but relatively isolated incidents of glorious sacrifice for the Rodina (motherland).

Our view isn't completely clear and unobstructed, but what the Russians haven't blamed on terrorists or accidents in their media will be otherwise explained away or not discussed, and the window they see the conflict through will have the story the state wants them to hear painted carefully all over it.

Putin is only threatened if the truth gets out, and the truth is strictly controlled.

[DefiantMassRINO]

Like Hamas, Putin could unilaterally delcare 'peace' if he wanted to.  But he won't.