Well - yes - SHOULD would be good for all concerned. But he's not normal is he?
He has fiddled with the original post soviet constitution of the Russian Federation and SHOULD have been out of power since 2008. The law only allowed a President to be in power for two terms of four years. Yet here we are in 2024, a full sixteen years later. He has been in power for three times as long as the law allowed.
He has pretty much absolute power. No one is near him except those with slavish loyalty. He has amassed a vast fortune, though he is only paid a sub £100,000 salary. He has a sense of a greater Russia in his mind. He talks about it often in his long broadcasts on the totally Kremlin dominated media.
He is not going to resign, short of a total collapse of his health, which in spite of western media speculation early in the war, seems reasonable enough.
There was an interesting piece by Rosenberg of the BBC. He is an excellent correspondent. I trust what he says. The point I was especially interested in was Rosenberg's comment that Putin is driven by emotion. His attachment to the Greater Russia concept is an emotional one. The obsession with threat from NATO is an emotional one. There is no rationality in either position. NATO has no intention of attacking Russia, except as a response to Russian attack. It never was and never could have been a NATO plan. Putin surrounded by loyal yes men, has worked himself into a mad position. He has lost hundreds of thousands of Russian lives, if not dead, ruined by wounds. His GREAT army that he expected to walk right into Kiev has been shown as hopeless, sluggish and riddled with corruption and ineptitude. He is winning against his tiny opponent, but incredibly slowly, and only by throwing vast numbers of badly equipped, badly motivated men into a hideous meat grinder. Now he once again threatens nuclear strikes. He has received a 100,000 North Korean slave soldiers recently, paid for by vast transfers of Russian oil to his friend Kim in NK.
He is nowhere near ready to resign - if he did he would make himself vulnerable to his successor looking into his financial affairs and the price Russia paid because of his 'Special Military Operation'.
BBC Russia editor Steve Rosenberg assesses the Russian leader's next move.
www.bbc.co.uk
