Butschi

Crimea without water is bad for RU. Damaged bridge together with disabled water supply is good hint to pack and leave. Once ordinary RU gone hit hard RU bases. Watch RU making gesture of goodwill again. 
It is one thing to defend Crimea full of RU. It is completely different when no RU around and Tatars present.

It is my experience that general media coverage of specialized topics often veers into cringe-worthiness. On this forum, we can probably all relate to frustration with the Reporters' Standard Definition of "Tank:" a military vehicle that is not obviously a truck, a "jeep," an aircraft or a ship... I have also often thought that the world will be a better place when reporters learn the subtle, nuanced difference in meaning between the phrases "science proves!" and "one study suggests..."
And for a hilariously egregious example, see this blog post by British paleontologist (and paleoartist) Mark Witton about how an illustration he did for a paper on evidence that a shark preyed (or scavenged) on a (presumably swimming or drowned) pterosaur got taken badly out of context...

Depends. Topics I have some expertise in feel usually varying degrees of cringe worthy to me. Don't believe a word of what they write about physics related stuff. For politics they are quite good, though. (Or I just don't have enough knowledge to see the cringe worthiness 😉)

Gentlemen, I have a really hard time keeping this post civil. Imagine me posting this in all seriousness: The Mujahideen were aided and partly financed by the CIA. Since Al Qaida has a lot of members with Mujahideen background we can safely assume they were still connected to their old masters back in September 2001. This is no less plausible than your theory but we could all imagine the ****storm (and I'd probably be on forum hiatus for a while...).
Btw: War is alwas bad. Period. Believe or not, some people back in the day just preferred being red to being dead. You can have a different opinion, weigh your freedom higher than your life (and that of your children, etc.). Others don't and that's a valid opinion, too.

These are very good points.
Just to summ up/ add some to this "tea leafs reading":
1) Lack of serious ideological background and general apathy of society toward engaging in politics make large, bloody civil war conflict unlikely. It would need someone to shut down internet completelly to force some of them to the streets, probably. Also, 1905-1920 crisis was effect of very long rot in the system, which still needed three massive and bloody wars to reshape itself anew. So yes, finally Nationalists may leave their mommies' cellars, gyms and sport clubs and do some shooting, but until now they don't seem to be a serious factor in politics. Crucially, there is no politician now who would seriously count on their support as basis of power. This can change, though, as others wrote (especially Medvedeev looks like clown, reinventing himself as new strongman version Nicholaus II)
2)Unfortunatelly, "kremlinlogy" once more proved to be dead science more similar to astrology than astronomy. As far I can tell, no two pre-war specialists can agree where real power and consensus at Kremlin sits right now, except it is Putin who is power broker (which is obvious). Various coteries, factions and "towers" may loose influence on him in a blink of an eye, or it can be revealed they never had it actually. Thus, telling Russia's future from current gossips is extremely hard.
3) Regarding Chechnya and treating Kayrov as pregnant test litmus paper of serious changes in Russian systems: fully agree that he is more loyal to Putin himself than to Russia as a state (in typical Caucasian fashion). He will be very loyal till Putin stands, but not later. On the other hand, personall power of Kayrov clan weights more on "making money fall from the sky" (re:conenctions at Kremlin), which allowed reconstruction of the country, than on military might. Despite all PR bravado, modern 30-40 years old Chechens are very far from grizzled mountain-fighters of the 90's. Kadyrov doesn't even play in the same league as his father, not even counting such legendary field commanders as Maschadov, Dudayev or Basayev (who would melt young R.Kadyriv with his sight alone...not kidding, reportedly Kadyrov has complexes regarding this long-dead guy). And many elders who remmber 90-2000's know it. In this martial society, even rogue IS fighters will be at the heart more respected than guy who is fake. So cuting off from Kremlin (=money run dry) may hurt Kadyrov more than benefit him, unless really everything in Russia somehow start to fall apart in pieces. In such total collapse, head of families may want to search for true warlord, not guy who wears Prada boots.
4) Perhaps other ethnic minority regions in Russia may be actually prone to rebell faster than Chechnya. Dagestan for example had acceleration in grass-root islamization of society, that may blow in the face of current governors some day. Places like Ingushetia or North Ossetia may also found their ways even faster than Chechnya.
 

Depends. Topics I have some expertise in feel usually varying degrees of cringe worthy to me. Don't believe a word of what they write about physics related stuff. For politics they are quite good, though. (Or I just don't have enough knowledge to see the cringe worthiness 😉)

Gentlemen, I have a really hard time keeping this post civil. Imagine me posting this in all seriousness: The Mujahideen were aided and partly financed by the CIA. Since Al Qaida has a lot of members with Mujahideen background we can safely assume they were still connected to their old masters back in September 2001. This is no less plausible than your theory but we could all imagine the ****storm (and I'd probably be on forum hiatus for a while...).
Btw: War is alwas bad. Period. Believe or not, some people back in the day just preferred being red to being dead. You can have a different opinion, weigh your freedom higher than your life (and that of your children, etc.). Others don't and that's a valid opinion, too.

Regarding bridge, the following quotes from RU nats:
 
Girkin post but I believe from VK (not in Telegram where I monitor him. VK is RU network I do not want to touch for obvious reason)
 

Are you CIA or something, Steve? If not, they better hire you😀. I really enjoy and appreciate your thoughts because it moves me out of my biased view and forces me to consider alternative view. Actually, I enjoy and appreciate all your guys opinions (even though I do feel uneasy toward some of them but still I do appreciate them). 
And thinking about you mentioning pragmatist (not liberals) I believe we need to discuss it a little bit deeper.  
Possible lack of pragmatists among RU siloviks
I my personal opinion we need to be careful expecting pragmatists among siloviks. The reason being Putin cleaned a lot of them in 00s. There were a lot of pragmatists both among KGB\FSB and Military in 90s and first half of 00s. That's why coup and counter coup in august 91 was relatively bloodless (AFAIR only 3 guys died). But in 00s Putin started to replace a lot of the old silovik elite with completely different guys. 
Putin cleansing of RU siloviks during 00s
I have high ranking police contact who served in regional police in 90s and first half of 00s. He told me the following. RU police were always corrupt but in normal way, not in extreme. They did break the law, but they tried to do it in a lawful manner, respecting laws and procedures. When Putin came, he started to clean the police, removing one by one old guard, and putting new guys. These new guys stopped caring about even pretending they were doing lawful things. These guys were extreme. So, my contact saw the writing on the wall and got out voluntarily.
Counter point
But for balance I can offer counter point - there is something that surprised me during my visits to the Moscow region in the last 10 years. Police noticeably became more competent and more civilized. They looked like they genuinely care about people. They noticeably became less extreme about policing, more pragmatic.
Implications
But the most interesting thing is the possible implications of both scenarios. If you are right (split is between Pragmatists and Ultranationalists) then most likely we will face far less bloody scenario to the point of skipping Civil war all together. Due to cultural reasons, RU public gravitates toward reasonable and pragmatic siloviks. RU public desire a strong protector but pragmatic one. So, RU Nats would get much less support and most likely would lose Moscow completely. And without Moscow they would be just a bunch of marginal separatists. 
If I am right though (split among the line of Liberals-nationalist) RU Nats would get a lot of public support, as Liberals are seen as weak (and they are weak due to general avoidance of violence). They would be able to contest Moscow and hard press RU Liberals. That would be bloody struggle until RU Nats drown RU in blood or RU public will got tired of bloodshed and abandon RU Nats.   
 

Gentlemen, I have a really hard time keeping this post civil. Imagine me posting this in all seriousness: The Mujahideen were aided and partly financed by the CIA. Since Al Qaida has a lot of members with Mujahideen background we can safely assume they were still connected to their old masters back in September 2001. This is no less plausible than your theory but we could all imagine the ****storm (and I'd probably be on forum hiatus for a while...).
Btw: War is alwas bad. Period. Believe or not, some people back in the day just preferred being red to being dead. You can have a different opinion, weigh your freedom higher than your life (and that of your children, etc.). Others don't and that's a valid opinion, too.

Again, I will not take the bait and aggravate Steve by rekindling this discussion. I have a PhD in physics, so when I tell you to challenge your preconceptions and actually check facts, it isn't for any ideological reasons but because I feel qualified to say what is nonsense in that regard and what isn't. 'nough said, let's move on.

Gentlemen, I have a really hard time keeping this post civil. Imagine me posting this in all seriousness: The Mujahideen were aided and partly financed by the CIA. Since Al Qaida has a lot of members with Mujahideen background we can safely assume they were still connected to their old masters back in September 2001. This is no less plausible than your theory but we could all imagine the ****storm (and I'd probably be on forum hiatus for a while...).
Btw: War is alwas bad. Period. Believe or not, some people back in the day just preferred being red to being dead. You can have a different opinion, weigh your freedom higher than your life (and that of your children, etc.). Others don't and that's a valid opinion, too.

Gentlemen, I have a really hard time keeping this post civil. Imagine me posting this in all seriousness: The Mujahideen were aided and partly financed by the CIA. Since Al Qaida has a lot of members with Mujahideen background we can safely assume they were still connected to their old masters back in September 2001. This is no less plausible than your theory but we could all imagine the ****storm (and I'd probably be on forum hiatus for a while...).
Btw: War is alwas bad. Period. Believe or not, some people back in the day just preferred being red to being dead. You can have a different opinion, weigh your freedom higher than your life (and that of your children, etc.). Others don't and that's a valid opinion, too.

Gentlemen, I have a really hard time keeping this post civil. Imagine me posting this in all seriousness: The Mujahideen were aided and partly financed by the CIA. Since Al Qaida has a lot of members with Mujahideen background we can safely assume they were still connected to their old masters back in September 2001. This is no less plausible than your theory but we could all imagine the ****storm (and I'd probably be on forum hiatus for a while...).
Btw: War is alwas bad. Period. Believe or not, some people back in the day just preferred being red to being dead. You can have a different opinion, weigh your freedom higher than your life (and that of your children, etc.). Others don't and that's a valid opinion, too.

Gentlemen, I have a really hard time keeping this post civil. Imagine me posting this in all seriousness: The Mujahideen were aided and partly financed by the CIA. Since Al Qaida has a lot of members with Mujahideen background we can safely assume they were still connected to their old masters back in September 2001. This is no less plausible than your theory but we could all imagine the ****storm (and I'd probably be on forum hiatus for a while...).
Btw: War is alwas bad. Period. Believe or not, some people back in the day just preferred being red to being dead. You can have a different opinion, weigh your freedom higher than your life (and that of your children, etc.). Others don't and that's a valid opinion, too.

Gentlemen, I have a really hard time keeping this post civil. Imagine me posting this in all seriousness: The Mujahideen were aided and partly financed by the CIA. Since Al Qaida has a lot of members with Mujahideen background we can safely assume they were still connected to their old masters back in September 2001. This is no less plausible than your theory but we could all imagine the ****storm (and I'd probably be on forum hiatus for a while...).
Btw: War is alwas bad. Period. Believe or not, some people back in the day just preferred being red to being dead. You can have a different opinion, weigh your freedom higher than your life (and that of your children, etc.). Others don't and that's a valid opinion, too.

Again, I will not take the bait and aggravate Steve by rekindling this discussion. I have a PhD in physics, so when I tell you to challenge your preconceptions and actually check facts, it isn't for any ideological reasons but because I feel qualified to say what is nonsense in that regard and what isn't. 'nough said, let's move on.

Again, I will not take the bait and aggravate Steve by rekindling this discussion. I have a PhD in physics, so when I tell you to challenge your preconceptions and actually check facts, it isn't for any ideological reasons but because I feel qualified to say what is nonsense in that regard and what isn't. 'nough said, let's move on.

I get the "terror strikes" component to put pressure on the Ukrainian government - problem is, when has "terror" or "shock and awe" ever really worked as strategy?
Human beings are a funny bunch, we exist in imaginary social constructs - nations, provinces, duchies, towns, neighborhoods etc.  We invented these structures to sustain order when our populations expanded well beyond what we were originally designed for - but here is something I have suspected for a long time: we are still wired for our real social structures.  Those few dozen people we are directly linked to by blood or dependency.  
These are little social bubbles - hell in the pandemic we could map them - that comprise the real ocean of humanity.  We actually care about them.  These are the people we go to war for, we also go to work well after we want to for them.  We get dragged to church on Sunday by them and we dress like them, talk them and eat like them.  We buy the same stuff, dress the same way and consume the same information, thru the similar lenses.  We are still really tribal after all this time.
Now the energy in those bubbles is incredibly powerful - like running into a burning building, powerful.  However, it is also incredibly local.  We hunker down in our particular tree and tend to keep our heads down, even when the tree next to us gets chopped down.  It takes a lot to get us all going in the same direction.  We invent all sorts of mechanisms to create and generate power from these little bubbles - the Chinese did a massive and brutal social engineering exercise in the 60's to try and re-build those bubbles in such a way as to give the state all the power...it did not work because people. 
So what? Shock and awe, terror strikes and what not, have an effect but it is 1) very hard to line up in the direction you may want it to go, in fact it might create massive counter pressure (see The Blitz 1940) and 2) getting that effect to translate broadly across and entire macro-social system can be very hard, even impossible under some circumstances. 
Humans are highly unpredictable - I think we talked about 3rd order chaotic systems - and as such lobbing really expensive and limited missiles at them to get them to do anything in concert as a primary strategy...well it is not optimal.  Sociologist have no idea how "Springs, revolutions or movements" really happen.  We can see them easily in hindsight but predicting them ahead of time is nearly impossible right now.  So what magically triggers things like The Crusades or Hippies is really difficult - a sum of pressures and human turbulence that is highly unpredictable, and people have spent empires trying to crack that Riddle of Flesh.  
If Russian power brokers sat down and figured "we will simply hit them with missiles and they will all give up" then they are 1) complete amateurs, and 2) dangerous amateurs who do not really understand the dynamics of application of military power against human-based social structures - s'ok, they are not alone in this. 
My point is that they should have been looking at military impact if they wanted to win a war, and it is likely too late to "get smart" now if they could.   Directly impacting micro-social Will is a game for subversive warfare, not missiles and Russia clearly mis-read what war it was in, and now has to come to terms with how to lose it.

Again, I will not take the bait and aggravate Steve by rekindling this discussion. I have a PhD in physics, so when I tell you to challenge your preconceptions and actually check facts, it isn't for any ideological reasons but because I feel qualified to say what is nonsense in that regard and what isn't. 'nough said, let's move on.

Letting the AfD become strongest party in the last election is not a career booster. You have to understand that AfD is to CDU rougly what Die Linke is to SPD. Without going into too much detail: Die Linke was co-founded by renegade SPD members which took with the a not unsignificant part of voters. But because the other founding faction was PDS, i.e. the follow-up party to SED, the ruling party of the GDR, this was always a lever the CDU could use to prevent a left wing alliance - every election campaign involved a stern warning the SPD would form a coalition with the ex-SED which meant that at the very least, the SPD always had to early on distance itself from a potential ally.
The situation between AfD is similar in that under Angela Merkel the CDU was not hardcore conservative enough for many. When the AfD was founded, many disappointed CDU voters went over to the AfD. But because they quickly allied with Nazis and others less than savory elements, allying with the AfD was a no-go for the CDU and so became a possible attack vector for SPD. In short, losing your state to your nemesis is not a good recommendation if you have ambitions to lead your party.
Re: Putin appeasers, IMHO you misread CDU and SPD a little here. Apart from Schröder and friends, I think it was never about Putin but about business. At the risk of greatly oversimplifying things: For the CDU, it is all about German economy. If the guy helps Germany Inc. (big business) he is their friend. SPD was always proud about their Ostpolitik (so, good diplomatic relations with Eastern European countries including Russia) but it is also: If it helps the job situation, the guy is their friend. Not unlike most other Western countries, we happily traded with dictators and autocrats as long as it was profitable.