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Notes -
And Putin's invasion of Ukraine was also a strategic mistake.
I think that this is not obvious, at least not yet. If there's a Taiwan blowup ending in nukes, and Putin stays out of it, he takes Ukraine. Yes, he could have done that with less casualties by waiting longer, but on the other hand a lot of those casualties work in his personal favour due to selectively conscripting the least-loyal elements of the Russian populace (and also to some degree the Ukraine mess has made a Taiwan blowup more likely).
why do you think that? Right now, Moscow and St Petersburg are way less conscripted and they are also less loayal to Putin
Prisoners, fringe regions of Russia of dubious ethnic (as opposed to ideological) loyalty. I can't say for sure about the latter, but I've heard of protests in Bashkortostan regarding the conscription.
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