What I’m wondering when reading such theories is: does money matter all that much to these people? Like when you’re 80+ years old and a billionaire I don’t see what the end game there is, unless it’s just an uncle Scrooge attitude but I still find it a bit hard to believe. I think that in order to become a billionaire you need to be seriously driven by something more than 0s - maybe power, influence or attention.

Well the war seems to have boosted Putin’s approval rates in Russia, but then they’re not the ones whose people and infrastructure keeps being bombarded every single day for the last 3 years. So if they’re getting a similar treatment let’s hope the Russian “public” starts pushing their gov for reasonable negotiations, because Ukraine made it clear that they will not accept the “deal” they’re being proposed. On another note, whatever happened to the “Ukraine will be crippled by losing US intelligence” narrative? If they were retreating they wouldn’t launch attacks towards Moscow.