Aw shit here we go again
Regardless of the article, using the term “unexpected” is kind of naive at this point.
Am I missing something or did nothing in the article match the title?
I thought it was; maybe the link you got was to the front page, or something? The article was mostly about how Prigozhin’s attempted coup (or whatever it was) surprised Western leaders, and a bunch of speculation about how the West is scrambling to prepare contingemcy plans. So the one I read seemed to match.
However, I think it was a fluff article, with little substance. Prigozhin has been agitating for weeks, and I seriously doubt MI6 (or the CIA) was surprised by his actions. Or that nobody has a contingency plan for chaos in Russia. Putin’s a dictator, and when dictators die, it’s rarely a peaceful transition of power.
I know mexico is really worried…so they drink tequila and move on.
Honestly I doubt that Putin will fall from power that easily. He seems to take nots of precautions and he has lots of friends
Even if there’s no coup/revolution/he doesn’t get assassinated/etc.
He’s 70, and very possibly not in the best health. Statistically it wouldn’t be very surprising if he dropped dead of natural causes at any moment. Technically he’s already a small anomaly of a Russian male just because he has lived as long as he has since their average life expectancy is currently something like 65 (which is admittedly skewed very young by a whole lot of stuff like drinking, drug use, suicide, and being shipped off to Ukraine) And even if he beats all odds and lives another 30 years it still shouldn’t be unexpected for him to just decide to step down and retire at some point. Shit, if I had a fraction of the money and assets he has, I’d have called it quits a long time ago and disappeared from the public view.
And when he goes, no matter how he goes, there’s going to be a power vacuum that needs to be filled and a whole lot of assholes jockeying for position. I won’t pretend to know how that will go, maybe there will be all-out civil war, maybe just a handful of the right people will fall out of windows or drink polonium tea or just get disappeared, maybe there will be a major economic collapse and a rise in crime rates, maybe everything will just be hunky-dory and it really was just Putin holding everything back and Russia will enter a new age of enlightenment (it will probably not be that last one)