To us watching from the outside, it's clear that the performances from official Russian spokespeople are rapidly becoming more terse and strictly scripted, and the people talking often come across as uneasy. The Russian propaganda machine has been lying to people for ages, but the lies seem to be getting too big and too ugly for comfort for the propaganda workers. They did not sign up to hide war crimes against Ukrainian civilians, many of which are Russian-speaking and used to have strong pro-Russian opinions.
Russia is starting to look eerily like North Korea: a country cut off from the international arena, living in its own bubble of badly crafted lies, with a population that is being kept in the dark and punished for even trying to learn the truth, much less spread it to others.
The difference between Russia and North Korea is that the Russian population is generally well educated, and has seen enough of the world around them to know that what is now happening is a throwback to the totalitarian rule of the Soviet era. When asked, not everyone in Russia is opposed to returning to the Soviet days, but they will soon find out that their rosy view of that dark time in history is a false one, a product of selective memory and propaganda.
It is far from over yet, but Vladimir Putin is finished.
