Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 2

This is an interesting take. Makes me think of a family that goes through a divorce due to some unacknowledged truths coming to light. Has the family been destroyed or strengthened?

Probably depends quite a lot on how people were behaving within the marriage and how they behave afterwards. Even if one (or all of them) are broken people with issues, it's not clear that being dysfunctionally together living a lie is better/stronger than being dysfunctionally apart.

(edit: I realize they're just hoping for Putin to fail, which I agree with, but still it caught my eye, especially as Putin "failing" is probably good for Russia.)

I think that in order to regain it's balance, the Kremlin will have the MoD take the blame.

As for Putin himself, this shows him coming a bit out of his isolation. He used to be aggressive in interacting with the public, but has reportedly become isolated and stale over the past decade. He has also from the beginning leaned more dovish than the norm for the Kremlin. So when he is replaced, as must happen eventually, it will be by someone certainly more energetic and probably more hawkish.

If you are curious about Putin as a person, Mark Galeotti's We Need to Talk about Putin (2019) is a brief, cautious political biography. He has a video up with the same title, that doesn't quite cover the same material. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooUIS9c4zIw)