[danaris]

> Don't underestimate the potential for a Russian dictator to cause suffering for his own people.

Oh, I don't, believe me! But the thing is, Putin is already doing this.

AIUI, he has been conscripting soldiers to fight in Ukraine for quite some time—to the point that he's had a hard time finding more conscripts already. I don't think there's much more he can do to force Russians onto the battlefield for him, wherever that battlefield is.

[AnimalMuppet]

But he's been careful not to conscript from the big cities, for political reasons. He could raise a lot more conscripts... but there would be political consequences that he probably wouldn't like.

So there are real constraints on what Putin is able (or at least willing) to do.

Also, AIUI (and I could well be wrong), he at least says that he's not sending the conscripts to actually fight in Ukraine. Whether that's actually true... I have no data.

[danaris]

I guess the operative warning here would be "Don't underestimate the potential for the Russian people to cause problems for Putin."