Western propaganda has made him unloved, and Putin himself has made himself not feared. President Trump now mocks Putin's Russia as a "paper tiger." Putin after four years of conflict hasn't won a war he should have won, as I have said so many times and as Trump now says, in one week. 

Having failed to fight for a quick victory and to enforce redlines, Putin has relied on announcements of new super weapons to substitute for the lack of response to ever-worsening provocations that Putin's never-ending war continues to produce.  Having backed down in the face of every provocation, Putin has squandered the Russian deterrent.  

The Kremlin has been unable to prevent Trump and the West from defining the solution as a cease fire.  In an effort to coerce Putin into a cease fire, Trump has now placed sanctions on Russia's oil customers, India and China.  Writing in the British Telegraph on October 26, Melissa Lawford, described as US Economics Correspondent, reports that Russia finally begins to buckle as it runs out of cards to play just as Trump turns the screws.

Lawford writes that 

"Suddenly, Putin has many reasons to be worried.

"Russia's economy is beginning to buckle. Businesses have been crippled by high interest rates, government borrowing costs have soared and economy minister Maxim Reshetnikov warned in June that the country was 'on the brink of a recession'. Warnings are mounting over a potential avalanche of bad debt that could trigger a financial crisis.

"Small pockets of protest are emerging. Earlier this month, hundreds of people gathered in St Petersburg Square to sing an outlawed song calling for Putin to be overthrown.

"Meanwhile, Ukraine has been aggressively ramping up its drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, hammering the country's petrol supplies.