RT by @mikenov: RT by @mikenov: 🇷🇺 KHODORKOVSKY: PUTIN MAY SEE DEFEAT IN UKRAINE AS A THREAT TO HIS OWN LIFE Mikhail Khodorkovsky argues that Vladimir Putin has locked himself into a war he believes he cannot afford to lose. In Khodorkovsky’s assessment, military defeat would not simply threaten Putin’s political survival. Putin may believe it would cost him power and, very likely, his life. That makes the danger around the Kremlin much larger than one man. Khodorkovsky says Putin is not primarily afraid of Russia’s liberal opposition. He believes the more immediate threat comes from the political and social forces Putin himself helped create during nearly five years of war: people brutali

🇷🇺 KHODORKOVSKY: PUTIN MAY SEE DEFEAT IN UKRAINE AS A THREAT TO HIS OWN LIFE

Mikhail Khodorkovsky argues that Vladimir Putin has locked himself into a war he believes he cannot afford to lose.

In Khodorkovsky’s assessment, military defeat would not simply threaten Putin’s political survival. Putin may believe it would cost him power and, very likely, his life.

That makes the danger around the Kremlin much larger than one man.

Khodorkovsky says Putin is not primarily afraid of Russia’s liberal opposition. He believes the more immediate threat comes from the political and social forces Putin himself helped create during nearly five years of war: people brutalized by violence, combined with the old St. Petersburg circle around the president that Khodorkovsky describes as gangster-like.

He also points to Muammar Gaddafi’s death, arguing that the episode had a profound psychological effect on Putin and remains an image the Russian leader repeatedly returns to.

Then comes the nuclear problem.

“The ‘red button’ is under Putin’s hand,” Khodorkovsky warns, adding that nobody truly knows what would happen if he tried to use it. The chain could lead to nuclear launch, or someone around him could refuse at the decisive moment.

For Khodorkovsky, Russia’s present predicament began long before Ukraine. The country failed to solve the problem of leaders who make themselves irremovable and rewrite constitutional rules to remain in power.

His argument is that the cost of confronting that system earlier would still have been painful, but nowhere near the danger Russia faces now.

Putin built a system in which losing a war, losing power and personal survival may all have become the same question.

— @WW3finalboss Sep 15, 2026