Putin Grabbed the Tiger’s Tail — Now He Needs Trump to Save Him

Trump’s circle is doing its part.

At a Senate hearing last week, General Christopher G. Cavoli — head of U.S. European Command — delivered a stark diagnosis: Vladimir Putin has trapped Russia in a military-civilian doom loop.

“The Russian government has had to turbocharge their defense sector,” he said. “They’ve created very strong inflationary pressures… the central bank has the overnight rate — the prime rate — over 21% right now. That is choking off the viability of the civil economy…

Russia is now running a wartime economy with an outsized defense sector that dominates national output… Unwinding this imbalance will be incredibly difficult.”

Translation: the war machine is cannibalizing the rest of the economy. Civilian industry is being crushed under the weight of nonstop weapons production. Interest rates are sky-high. Inflation is out of control. And there’s no obvious off-ramp.

Putin hasn’t just built a war economy — he’s built one that can’t survive peace.

The Imbalance Putin Can’t Fix

Yep.

Putin has already given up trying.