As to the "clogging up the thread" as
@PeroK referred, here is my basic thinking, I would appreciate any feedback on it, after all besides some members disliking me , don't we all still enjoy intellectual approach to matters VS emotional?
@russ_watters see for example whether you agree with my in depth explanation of this.
Dictators don't have power just all by themselves, they need at least some support to have power. I think on average the threshold is about no less than 1/3 of the population total.
A dictator without any backing is essentially just a murderer running from the police.
History has examples of how this works. Nicolae Ceausescu is one example
https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-fall-of-nicolae-ceausescu-romanias-last-communist-leader
As the decade ground on and the harsh austerity regime led to frequent power cuts, fuel shortages and an escalation in poverty while vast sums were being ploughed into the needless destruction and remodelling of cities such as Bucharest, it was inevitable that something would eventually snap.
The spark that lit the flame occurred in the town of Timisoara. A small protest against the eviction of a dissident Hungarian pastor from his church-owned flat quickly escalated into a huge anti-government demonstration. Ceaușescu allowed the police, the armed forces and the Securitate to open fire on the crowds and many men, women and children were killed or injured.
When dissenting voices began to be heard across the country about the Timisoara massacre and who was ultimately to blame for it, Ceaușescu realized he had made an error. He held an open-air meeting in Bucharest three days after the massacre, blaming anti-Romanian troublemakers for the uprising. The crowd was having none of it, and what was meant to be a pro-Ceaușescu rally soon turned into an anti-Ceaușescu demonstration as the crowd began to boo and shout abuse at the stunned dictator. Realising he was in very real danger of being lynched, Ceaușescu ducked into a nearby government building as Bucharest exploded into riots.
Here is an interesting bit
The dictator’s previously loyal armed forces turned on him, now siding with the protesters
The same almost happened in the 1991 USSR coup, the hardline communists basically arrested Gorbachev and held him in his "dacha" while commanded the army in the streets. But the army was not that willing to go against the people in the streets because almost everyone shared similar feelings about the country and which direction it should go.
I think it's simple, once your population becomes poor and faces harsh reality and then you decide to push them some more at some point that necessary threshold of support fades and from a dictator who controls matters you become a criminal running from police, or mob or people on streets whichever.
This is why China saw what is happening to the USSR and changed their tactics welcoming western capital, because the Communist party realized that between keeping power and keeping Marxist ideology they can only chose one but can't have both at the same time.
China is only able to do what it does now (concentration camps, police state etc) because it allowed it;'s people to get a better life therefore keeping the minimal necessary support on which they can then implement aggressive policies no other democratic government could afford to implement. It's a delicate balancing act essentially , where you balance fear and terror for one part of population but also give chance and opportunity to another.
The USSR fell because there was nothing to balance, the government had run the economy to ground and people were fed up, then the government tried to crush the revolt by force and ended up being crushed themselves as simple as that.
To make matters worse USSR was made up of many individual republics with different ethnic backgrounds and there was also a strong motivation to be more independent and national.So you ask how does any of this matter to the current situation? It's simple, my reasoning is that Putin can do what he does because he has that necessary support from within, it may sound scary or you might not believe me but that is the reality. There is a non negligible portion of the Russian Federation that accepts and wants what Putin does, and that is (to borrow a phrase...) "Make Russia Great Again"
Many Russians (especially the older folks) have that same resentment the Germans had after WW1, they feel ridiculed and laughed at from the west, and expanding NATO to the point of accepting Ukraine for them is unacceptable, they perceive the west as dirty pigs and rotten capitalists.( I personally know an older Jewish man who still thinks Stalin was great, simply because he saw the Red army kill Germans and Germans in turn killed his family, you see older people don't change that easily even in the face of truth revealed to them.)
This is the base that "enables" Putin, all major politicians have a base like that , otherwise they cannot have power. Trump for example used a large part of US that did not agree with where liberalism is going, agree with it or not, that was his base, He was "enabled" by them.
Hitler wasn't a lone man with a uniform and an obscene mustache, he was enabled by large masses and popular opinion.So where does that lead us? Well you either
1) Change that threshold that "enables" Putin, aka his support drops below that necessary for him to stay in power and then he is escorted by his own security forces out of Kremlin. This might happen with time if enough Russians find that his economic and military policy is detrimental to them
2) You take him down by force, like US has done with small third world country governments/dictators , but in the case of Russia , well good luck with that...
3) You approach the situation at hand and make the best possible scenario.
My own idea would be this. A peace treaty with very few but strict points.
Point 1) Immediate ceasefire and Russian withdrawal of army from Ukrainian soil.
Point 2) Strongly monitored by international parties - referendum in each Ukrainian province to vote whether the people want to join Russia or be part of Ukraine. Those that vote by a large majority to join (60+%) well let them join, the rest is Ukraine.
Point 3) After this Russia and NATO and Ukraine signs a document that says that from now on Ukraine will be independent and sovereign and without Russian meddling and also without NATO but with the option of joining EU. If Russia violates this, then Ukraine reserves the option to ask military assistance from NATO and NATO gives them weapons and everything else needed for war officially not covertly as is done now.PS. If anyone thinks this has not happened before, Well let me enlighten you, Latvia (my country) we gave to Russia a border region years ago , why? Because the absolute majority of the people there were Russians anyway and they wanted to join Russia. This defused the situation because now we don't have parts of our country that can turn separatist and if Russia makes any advance towards us we can then simply call it what it is - an act of violence and aggression.
,let me say this one thing.
