alt Hacker News> If 99% of the Russian economy gets destroyed, he'd redirect the remaining 1% to fully fund the war.
This is impossible, even in a dictatorship.
> If 99% of the Russian economy gets destroyed, he'd redirect the remaining 1% to fully fund the war.
This is impossible, even in a dictatorship.
I do wonder about the internal mental calculus of a Putin-like dictator, essentially, "how far can I push this before I end up like Ceaușescu or Mussolini?". Not anywhere near as far as an actual 99%, I think.
The starvation years of the DPRK in the mid 1990s directly after the collapse of the Soviet Union might be the closest that such a state has come to the situation getting so dire that the people could have theoretically risen up, no matter the consequences, but for a myriad of reasons the North Koreans were unable to.