Everything falls into place if you allow yourself a conspirological hypothesis: that the the late-stage Putin regime is deliberately dismantling / or radically reformatting / the Russian Federation (or, even more boldly, most of the post-Soviet space). But the accompanying and necessary condition of such dismantling is a prolonged erosion, not a sudden and sharp collapse of governance and economy.
A long-term demolition.
If you accept this, many things suddenly become understandable (at least partially): the reasons for the war, its character, all those seemingly insane measures banning every information channel and resource, the text of the 2020 constitutional amendments, the drive to save the economy (short-term) while simultaneously drowning it (long-term), pushing Ukraine toward the EU and NATO, bringing NATO borders closer, killing the most lucrative market for Russian resources – Europe, and so on and so forth.
This thought came to me because for the past 24 hours, Z-channels (pro-war Russian Telegram channels) and even some State Duma degenerates have been howling about Telegram being throttled. Which, obviously, creates significant problems for Russians at the front and is essentially sabotage against everyone living in trenches and dugouts.
But, alas, such is the inexorable logic of liquidation / dismantling / reformatting of the RF: minimum success, maximum defeat, minimum rationality, maximum expenditure of resources, including Russians themselves.
The prolonged liquidation of Project Russia is also indirectly indicated by Putin’s pogrom against Russian culture (in the broadest sense).
Writers, artists, stand-up comedians, scientists – exiled forever.
Destruction or displacement of competitive projects like Yandex and VKontakte, and now it has even reached the semi-FSB Telegram.
What amounts to terror against the remaining scientists, who risk long prison sentences for a careless contact.
Imposing blood contracts on entertainers and public figures, turning emigration into a trap.
Smearing all of Russian culture – from icons to Tchaikovsky to Brodsky – in their bloody shit.
And so on and so forth.
The scale is comparable only to the Bolsheviks. But they were building their own original ideologized culture and aesthetics. These ones are building nothing. Only dismantling.