>>Are we to expect a black swan event? Are Russians starting to wake up...
The triggering event will almost certainly come 'out of nowhere', like that fruit vendor setting himself on fire in Tunis triggered the 'Arab Spring'. Like the Middle East, there's certainly general unrest, unhappiness with the current situation. What isn't clear to me is whether Putin is as aware of the precarity of his situation as well as those of us who are looking in from the outside. He's surrounded by a phlanx of people whose ongoing personal success depends on not bringing him bad news, but the collapse of the USSR seems pretty central to his worldview.