Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) meets with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un in Vladivostok, Russia April 25, 2019. Courtesy of Wikipedia, from the website of the President of the Russian Federation and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Historian Chris Snow, at Medium, on the Ukraine invasion as a humiliating symptom, and accelerant, of the imploding Russian Empire.  Excerpt:

Summary and Conclusion

For an outside observer, the Russian visit to North Korea is a disgrace and humiliation. The elite, Putin, and his supporters are proud of this visit. You cannot shame the shameless, you cannot humiliate those without humility. You cannot dishonor those who have no honor. The Russian population will keep on believing the big lie. The Russians have invested too much in these big lies. The sunk cost fallacy prevents the Russians from understanding that Putin is a liar and a fraud.

What else do the Russians have left but a fascist and elevated pride in their own nation?

The poverty, sacrifice, suffering, and misery must have a reason. The reason for which they live and die is the Russian empire. This empire has been crumbling under their feet for over 30 years. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine is like a fire accelerant. The Russian security architecture is unraveling.

“The communists were already bound to their leader by faith and fear. I took a special kind of mind to truly believe that the worse things appeared, the better they actually were. They had the psychic capacity to adjust one’s own perceptions to the changing expressions of Stalin’s will.” Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands, page 65

Every country has the government it deserves. Joseph de Maistre

Eventually, the regions will sense the weakness of the metropolis. The year 1917 is echoing through time. This echo is growing louder like a menacing crescendo. The war has callled all 4 riders: war, famine, plague, and death to Russia’s doorstep. Dictatorships look stable until they don’t. This visit to North Korea is not a sign of stability, quite the opposite. The next collapse of the Russian empire is a matter of time. The writing is already on the wall.

Slava Ukraine!