Anne Applebaum

the territories along the coast.

We took over Crimea.

And it's a way of trying to sell this story of victory to the Russian people.

So someone inside the Kremlin is definitely already thinking about what if the war ended now?

What if there was a ceasefire now?

How would we explain it and yet stay in power?

So that option is definitely under consideration.

The question is whether Putin is in a position to take it.

And the question is, if he doesn't take it, how much pressure will he be under from other people who want it?

I mean, it's pretty clear that there's a part of the Russian elite that does want the war to end.

And of course, there's a part that never liked it and was unhappy from the beginning.

There's probably a part that connected to this.

services that are now so invested in the defense industry and in the buildup of the army that they want to keep going.

And what we, you know, what may be happening is some kind of, you know, game behind the scenes where those two groups are competing for power.

Your point about autocracies falling slowly and then all at once has been repeated so many times in Russian history that it's almost a cliche.

I mean, it is true that

right up until the final moment that the Soviet Union didn't exist, nobody could imagine a world in which it didn't exist.

And, you know, literally a year earlier, nobody predicted that it would be gone.

And the same, you know, the same was true of Tsarist Russia, which up until the last minute also seemed eternal and

would be there forever and nobody imagined any alternatives.