eh? re. the local angle.

(Shrub's infallible and lugubrious 'peering-into-the-eyes' of his new Friend -- pronouncing him 'nice': appears to have been about as reliable a communications medium as was his claimed daily pipeline to God (whose alleged 'direction' all-along has proven so entirely fallible / or has it been quite some Other artifact, within that messy Shrub-jelloware -?- which has been doing all this stupid stuff..))
Like, maybe the familiar ravings of a Dry Drunk?

Yes, I noted that report with trepidation, too.
I pretend possession of no accurate Rorschach on the strange and dead-cold-eyed Mr. Putin, but when he started flying those er, 'Fail-Safe'-Era bombers again, my thought was, well -- clearly this is a thoroughly Reactionary sociopath, still hooked on Absolute == Military Power (especially of the "Raketski?" Group in charge of all those shiny, still fully-functional nuke missiles.)

Pretty rotten timing, on a planet where the odds of the Dominant Species' survival - were already diminishing with every day's new language atrocity, each one of which favors the escalation of more (of the real, palpable) dead-body atrocities. Dead body / dead mind - take your pick.

Your guesstimate of the possible actual tactics re our admirable Chess Grand Master is.. chilling, given your unarguable, direct experience of the milieu! {Ugh} And, given the combination [Putin + All That Oil] -- I am at a loss to imagine there being any punitive consequences at all, to even so transparently contrived an event. As with the journalist(s) ...

Welcome to our Race to Century XII (er 'MC') some time <Magna Carta, one supposes.
Pathetic.. that most of this unravelling has taken only. 6. years. and, via such a tiny cabal.