What fantasies of a coup in Russia ignore | Rajan Menon

Let's assume for a moment that Putin does fall. What happens next? Here are three scenarios

Vladimir Putin's full-blown invasion of Ukraine aimed at toppling the Kyiv government - based on the preposterous claim that it's run by neo-Nazis" - has produced Europe's worst war in a generation, and it has taken a terrible toll on civilians. The Russian armed forces have hit hospitals, apartment buildings, a shopping center and a theater that was serving as a shelter. The immense suffering has been made worse by sieges, above all the one around Mariupol, large parts of which have also been reduced to rubble.

The war has also forced millions from their homes. The UN high commissioner for refugees reports that more than 3.7 million Ukrainians have fled their homeland and that another 6.7 million have been internally displaced. The two figures together - children account for nearly half the total - comprise 20% of Ukraine's population.

Rajan Menon is the director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities, senior research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, and Anne and Bernard Spitzer emeritus at Powell School, City College of New York