Even if the West considering removing sanctions (which they should not), Russia can't be trusted. Even with simple things like letting civilians escape conflict zones, they have lied.
No, sanctions need to be cranked up to 11 and simply crush the Russian economy. I feel sorry for their citizens, but they know how to stop this (or they will - overthrow not just Putin, but all the corrupt officials).
There is a web app where you can text a random Russian with a message. Many of the messages say the Russians are war criminals, etc. What people should really be saying there is that if they want sanctions lifted, they need to get rid of Putin and stop the war. Appeal to their interests rather than call them names.
As Robert Heinlein said: "never appeal to a person's better nature, they may not have one."
I've never trusted Putin and he hasn't demonstrated anything to be trusted for since the war began. The Russians will only keep promises if they get something out of it.
Various rumours, perhaps related
- Ukraine now has MQ9 in-country, maybe not yet operating
- Russia has moved an S400 battery into northern Crimea
- Russia now generating BTGs using T62's, i.e. cupboard is bare ! (and different shell size and 4-man crew ....)
- DNR and LPR troops protesting openly
and Orban declares state of emergency in Hungary (for those that don't get it, he is a Putin stooge*)
* The oil assets in Hungary are Russian/Warpac/Comecon assets that were stolen (er sold, at mates rates) by the oligarchs back in the 1990s, then given mates rates on cheap inputs as a way of legally stealing $billions from Russian people into oligarch pockets. This is how you buy elections, buy the press, then rewrite the laws to legitimise it all. This is the alt-R playbook that Putin is playing via all his stooges. Don't be an apologist for Putin.
The question arises what condition those T-62s are in. They have been sitting outside in the Russian winter for 50+ years. An analysis of duds and shell fragments found in Ukraine determined that a fair bit of the ammunition the Russians are using dates back to the Soviet era. It's why the dud rate is so high, the stuff would have been recycled in a western army 20 years ago.
Since the Russians are hoarders, they probably have ammunition for the T-62s, but will it work? And none of it is going to be the stuff designed to punch through modern armor. On the upside the T-62 doesn't have an auto-loader which helps with crew survival if hit, but the Russians are already running two man crews in many of their 3 man crewed tanks (forcing the commander to be both gunner and commander), how many of those T-62s will go into combat with the commander doing three jobs?
This is a sign of an army in serious trouble.
What happens if the rate of increase exceeds the incarceration capacity (both personnel and facilities)?
Putin has set up a police state in Russia. He has been much more concerned about internal strife than foreign aggression.
He has elite police units trained to put down riots. These are made up of only Putin loyalists. They look like an infinite force, but in reality they only have enough police to put down riots in one city during peacetime. They sent at least some of those police to Ukraine where they were either lost or are bogged down in combat situations.
The protests against the war so far have been scattershot and small which allows local police to deal with them. If more widespread protests break out they won't have the police to put them down and that could spin out of control.
Russia is facing the same demographic shift the US is, but culturally it's playing out differently. In the US non-whites have struggled to get equal treatment with the white population, but large strides in that direction have happened in the last 55 years. The white population is declining due to low birthrates combined with immigration of non-whites (more of the former than the latter, but those freaking out about it assume it's more of the latter).
In Russia, the white Russians have ruled over an empire of non-whites for 500 years. The southern parts of the country have a lot of people ethnically related to Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and other Muslim cultures. In the east the people are of Mongolian descent. The birthrate among white Russians is one of the lowest in the world. The birthrate among the non-white Russians is not huge, but it's bigger than the white Russians.
As a result there is a shortage of white Russian overlords to control the non-white Russians. A common pattern is any company making things or extracting wealth out in the non-white parts of the country get a white manager from Moscow. The manager is paid well enough to send his wife and children to Europe. The manager earns enough to emigrate permanently and is replaced by another white manager.
This system has been going on since the Soviet Union broke up and a similar system of white overlords existing in the USSR, though those people didn't get to emigrate when they were done. As the white population declines, fewer and fewer white managers are available and they need to dig deeper into the white population to find managers. Of course the solution would be to find competent non-whites and train them up, but the Russian leadership is too racist for that.
The war has set in motion a white flight in Russia. Many white Russians who can leave the country did leaving even fewer white managers around. Russia is also a very top down culture. People are trained to learned helplessness and will do nothing if not told to do something. As a result, their war production is probably less efficient than it was before the war.
On another note, the world is running out to grain for the poorest countries
This will probably trigger unrest in many countries. Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war happened because grain prices went up and there was a shortage that wasn't as bad as what the world is facing this year. Net exporters of grain probably won't notice the shortage much, but the developing world is going to take it in the shorts.