A sea change in thinking about Putin

As I have mentioned in the past couple of weeks, the Russian foreign policy establishment was shocked to its skin by the brutal and militarily successful first days of the US and Israeli attack on Iran. They saw that Putin’s ‘gently, gently’ approach to the war in Ukraine was encouraging ever more brazen provocations from Western adversaries and enemies which could lead to a similar preemptive strike on Russia. And the first very critical remarks on Putin’s conduct of the war appeared on a major state television show. Similar critical remarks were published on the website of the court philosopher of the Putin regime, Alexander Dugin.