Hopefully Putin! I don't think anyone else in Russia really thinks the war Ukraine can possibly be successful... I have a buddy a little ways up in our armed forces and he told me years ago, Russia only has an eggshell combat force, could be tough initially for a couple days, but after that, they are done. He or no one else in NATO expected Russia to be quite so bad in their initial attack on Ukraine, but after the 1st week, he said Russia is pretty much spent. They couldn't attack Finland right now and have a chance, let alone bother the US in any conventional way... Given how easy it was to sink their Black Sea flag ship, my buddy suspects their whole military is actually very poorly equipped, trained, and led. Russia will be lucky if China doesn't annex back the rest of Manchuria while all Russia's troops are in the west.