Boris Bondarev, former Russian diplomat: Vladimir Putin is an ordinary dictator

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Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat, who resigned from the Russian diplomatic mission in Geneva in May 2022, commented on the potential outcomes of the war and what Vladimir Putin is currently doing. Bondarev believes that Putin is a dictator whose end will come "Putin can be replaced.

He's not a superhero. He doesn't have any superpowers. He's just an ordinary dictator," Bondarev said. "If we look at history, we see that such dictators have been deposed from time to time. So, if they lost a war and could not meet the needs of their supporters, they usually left." Bondarev also commented on the reaction of the people if Russia loses this war.

"They might think that they don't need Putin anymore. I think the situation will change once they say goodbye to their delusions and find themselves in a new reality where Putin can offer nothing, only fear and some kind of thereat of repression against his own people," he added.

Bondarev believes that Putin will try in every way to present all this as a victory. "Maybe if he has a couple of new villages then he can say it's a victory, he defeated the Ukrainians, he protected the nation, and also blame the Ukrainians and the West for not being willing to negotiate peace under these conditions.

I think if Putin is allowed to do this, he can to say he won and will try to sell it to his audience as a victory," adds Bondarev.

Vlad Mykhnenko and his view

Vlad Mykhnenko, an expert on the post-communist transformation of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, gave several potential outcomes of the war, especially if Russia loses.

"Much, if not all, depends on the method of defeat," Mykhnenko said. "Similar to the collapse of the Russian military in 1916-1917, the current slow, draining war continues for a long time, with mobilized Russian soldiers, poorly equipped and armed, spending months and months in muddy, cold trenches under increasingly precise Ukrainian artillery attacks and deserting en masse, which could lead to the collapse of the front," said Mykhnenko.