It's interesting reading Russian propaganda presented to Russian citizens. In the face of humiliating military defeats at the hands of the Ukrainian military, the war's cheerleaders in Russian blogs, Twitter, and even state-run media have had to admit that the Russian military has suffered an embarrassing defeat. Here's one of the takes I found particularly interesting:

“I urge everyone not to panic in the face of a defeat we’ve suffered in the Kharkiv region, and we have to acknowledge it. No one can stop this war, because it was historically necessary... Neither Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], nor Zelensky and not the West can end this war. This war can end only with the defeat of one of the sides. For us, this defeat may prove fatal. We should understand that it might lead to the disintegration of the country.”
- Karen Shakhnazarov

Honestly, I suspect Shakhnazarov and those of his ilk believes this war is actually tied to the survival of the Russian Federation. The last three wars that went badly for Russia ended with the catastrophic fall of the existing regime (World War I led to the Bolshevik Revolution and the fall of the Tzar) and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan followed the fall of the Soviet Union. Due in large part to Putin's popularity, the United Russia party in the Russian Federation has enjoyed a long period of dominance that has unfortunately choked dissent to the point where it can too rarely be heard seriously.

I suspect conservatives in Russia often ask the question in their private, totally hypothetical chats with one another, "If not Putin, then who?" Sadly, there aren't many good answers. Although I personally like him, Dimitry Medvedev (former President and current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council under Putin) is viewed as simply a puppet, so it wouldn't be him. Ramzan Kadyrov (Prime Minister of Chechnya) is a madman. He's funny in that really dangerous, dark kind of way. He literally threatened a child on Instagram last year. Plus, if popular opinion turns really hard, the United Russia party is going to pay the price, so anyone tied to Putin politically isn't going to be a viable option. Unfortunately, that leaves no good viable options.

Without a good alternative, the Russian propagandists know that political opinion must stay in favor of the war in order to prevent a massive regime change. So, in the face of a devastating and humiliating defeat, they need to defend the war and attack those responsible for its failed execution.

Think about it like the boosters for a football team that's doing absolutely awful and shows no signs of turning things around (I may be a bit salty about the Notre Dame losing to Marshall last weekend.

The boosters can say, "Our school never should have played football! Let's become fans of the swimming team instead!"

Or, those boosters can say, "The school's football coach is incompetent, let's fire him mid-season and promote one of the assistant coaches!"

Truthfully, there is no "good" option for either the football team or the supporters of the Russian regime. Although the war was the fault of Putin and the United Russia party, the failure of the war falls on the shoulders of the military leaders in the Russian Federation. Decades of bribery, graft, corruption, drug use, alcoholism, failures of discipline, and a general lack of professionalism have weakened the Russian military so that it's a more technologically advanced version of the Afghan military that soiled their pants and dropped their guns the moment the Taliban arrived as the US was leaving (I still don't know how Ismail Khan survived... he eventually fled to Iran). Getting rid of Putin won't solve the problems with the Russian military the same way getting rid of a head football coach and replacing him with an assistant coach never turns a team around. A major rebuilding is in order at the end of the season, but in Russia, that rebuilding has always been chaotic and conservatives hate chaos.

From the perspective of a Russian citizen, Putin's regime has been remarkably stable since he first took power. I think that's an enormous part of the allure he has. Chaos in Russia has never been good for the Russian people, so stability is valued above even some civil liberties. However, an embarrassing military defeat forces Russians to re-evaluate their safety. If Ukraine could stop the full might of the Russian military, how in the world can Russia defend itself against an attack from NATO?

Here's what most Russians don't know... or at least don't want to admit. Without a nuclear deterrent, Russia can't defend itself from NATO. In fact, since the 1970s, even the Soviet Union would not have been able to stop NATO without nuclear weapons.

The Soviet and later Russian military has never been able to compete head to head with the United States military. The real deterrent stopping a NATO invasion of Russia is that nobody (in their right mind aside from General Patton in WWII) actually wants or has ever wanted to invade Russia.

Even if Russia destroyed all of their nuclear weapons today, NATO would not invade Russia.

NATO is only an existential threat to Russia in the sense that Russia is unable to attack a NATO member without being humiliated even worse than in Ukraine. NATO is a defensive alliance originally formed to stop the spread of Soviet communism through Europe.

One critique I have of NATO members is that too few of our politicians see the potential of cooperating with a thriving, less antagonistic Russia. I recall when the United States led the coalition to invade Iraq in 2003, Russia opposed the invasion largely because they had contracts with the Saddam regime and held debts that would go unpaid. The coalition should have worked out an agreement with the Russian Federation that the new Iraqi military would be armed with Russian weapons and utilized Russian companies in rebuilding the oil and power infrastructure in Iraq. They could have done it at a fraction of the cost of US contractors and it would have opened a new era of international cooperation between the US and Russia. Instead, in our haste, we missed the opportunity, going deeper into debt and beginning the gradual destruction of US-Russian relations.

Sadly, the more antagonistic Russia becomes, the less the country will be able to thrive. The Russian Federation will never have an economy that truly reforms life for the better of all its citizens as long as they're partners with economically depressed countries like Iran, Syria, and North Korea. China is a good partner, but they're going to suck what little wealth their is in Russia out of the country in exchange for cheap plastic goods.

To thrive, to really thrive, Russia needs trusting partners with developed and robust economies. Putin has failed to build those relationships. I just hope the next Russian leader sees the follies in this current path and begins rebuilding trust for the good of the Russian people.