9News European Correspondent Brett McLeod is predicated in London.
ANALYSIS: More and more remoted from the remainder of the world. Lower off from accessing most materials wants outdoors its borders. A future as a nation that's more and more bleak and unknowable.
In his "look what you made me do" excuses for invasion, Vladimir Putin proclaimed the indivisibility of Russia and Ukraine.
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His actions have definitely left each nations with one factor in frequent: they're each a lot worse off than every week in the past.
The warfare has created two prospects that beforehand would have been virtually unthinkable.
One is a nuclear assault. The opposite is Putin being compelled from energy.
"The difficulty with what's unthinkable is that at occasions it have to be considered," historian John Lukacs wrote.
On the nuclear assault possibility, The Institute for the Examine of Battle stated Putin's rattling of his greatest, baddest sabre was certainly designed "to alarm Western audiences with the danger of nuclear warfare".
Mission achieved.
However the second cause has been ignored.
"To sign to america and different nuclear powers that Putin was not finishing up a dramatic nuclear escalation" - emphasis mine.
Russia has 4 ranges of nuclear readiness.
The alert stage was raised from the bottom to the subsequent highest - not, as has been reported, the very best.
So whereas that is a great distance from comforting, given Russia has the biggest nuclear arsenal on the earth, there may be inside Putin's menace some extent of nuance - even when nuance and nuclear warfare do not at first appear to go hand in hand.
To the opposite unthinkable.
Putin has complete management of his authorities.
The previous politburo system that might train some affect - and even turf out leaders - was scrapped together with the Soviet Union.
However because the sanctions begin to chunk the oligarchs and the navy apparatchiks could begin to have a look at their chief with slightly extra side-eye.
Sure, many will nonetheless have the ability to keep away from complete monetary penalty by preserving their holdings in cryptocurrency.
However for some key gamers these beautiful mansions in London, the mega-yachts on the Algarve, the Renaissance masterpieces of their New York flats - for the foreseeable future they will solely be reachable by reminiscence.
It is fantastic to be allied with North Korea however would you wish to stay in your individual hermit kingdom?
"Russian dictatorship just isn't an old school ideological dictatorship," dissident and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov advised the BBC.
"It is a mafia-like construction and no one goes to remain loyal to the mafia boss if no safety is obtainable.
"Within the subsequent few weeks, we may see dramatic modifications in Russia when Putin's energy construction could crumble as a result of he shall be merely working out of money."
Extra public shows of defiance and braveness are occurring each evening on the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg.
The faces of the anti-war protestors are largely younger.
They do not watch the heavily-sanitised model of the invasion enjoying out on tv.
They're utilizing their VPNs to see the imaginative and prescient, the horrors, the remainder of us see.
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Greater than 7000 have been detained thus far.
They're impressed by the profiles in braveness we're seeing virtually day by day of unarmed Ukrainians blocking Russian tanks.
Time will inform if the numbers will develop.
Sooner or later, safety forces could also be confronted with very giant numbers of demonstrators.
They might then have the identical option to make because the East German border guards when the Berlin Wall fell: open hearth on their very own individuals, or do nothing.
Eradicating Putin from energy could be revolutionary, however Russia has a historical past with that.
The collapse of the Soviet empire after 70 years of monolithic existence occurred, to coin Hemingway, steadily - then all of a sudden.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote after the French revolution: "Patiently endured as long as it appeared past redress, a grievance comes to look insupportable as soon as the opportunity of eradicating it crosses males's minds."
'I will jab them with a pitchfork': Ukrainians react to Russia's warfare
There's a level at which the unthinkable turns into thinkable.