Putin's war on the peoples of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine

That reminder is realistic. When it falls the Belarus regime will fall more heavily as despised collaborators. But it will take longer to overthrow them than if they were not backed by a Tsarist garrison.

Putin's speech is also a direct threat to the Russian people. Claims that they face genocide and nuclear attack from Ukrainian Nazis are not intended to convince anybody. Western media keeps repeating how ludicrous such claims are. But there seems to be some assumption that they would look less ludicrous to Russians. I haven't seen any discussion of the implications of them looking ludicrous to Russians too.

To me these claims are similar to the sort of claims made by the Assad regime when it unleashed its thugs to suppress the Syrian people with nerve gas, Russian support and Western acquiescence. The point is that if you resist you will be crushed, not argued with. There is some support for invading Ukraine among the more stupid and reactionary sections of the Russian people. But not much, even among Putin's fellow oligarchs. Putin has not even attempted to mobilize popular support and does not have reserves available to mobilize for a long occupation. If the present level of repression was maintained in Russia an anti-war movement would quickly gain majority support and become a serious threat to the regime. The message is that opposition will be far more ruthlessly crushed than previously. The regime knows it will continue to become less and less popular and is declaring that it will continue to rule by naked fascist force, as in China.

I haven't studied what's actually happening in Ukraine (or its neighbours) and am relying on quick impressions gained from reading the Australian (ie US) mass media plus the "other side" as linked above. A more nuanced version of the other side is provided from a Russian foreign policy think tank in an interview:

How are Putin's actions going down in Russia itself? What do Russians think about this?

It's not a full-scale invasion as yet. This is something like the Syrian campaign. And till now we see only air strikes, targeted air strikes – something like surgical strikes in the Indian sense. Till now, Putin does not need the people's support.

In the result of these strikes, there is no news about Ukrainian and Russian casualties. The limits of this operation will be known only by and by, and the level of the resistance from the Ukrainian forces. When you carry out air strikes, you don't need any great public support – the US didn't need public support in their campaign against Iraq, for example. Modi did not need public support, did not take Parliament's support for surgical strikes. So until the [time the] scale is limited, the problem of public support is not an issue, not a question for Putin.

Where do you see it all heading? Will it stop at these strikes, do you see this escalating?

Because of the US and European sanctions against Russia since last year, they were very soft. The Russian economy did not face any problems because of these actions. If it is full-scale sanctions, problems with Swift, problems over our banks, it will be one thing. If these are softer sanctions, meant to find a resolution to the problem, it's absolutely different. Now, the Russian economy is quite strong, we have very low national debt, we have our own system, we don't have any great loans from the western market. What will happen further, I can't say now.

…But I don't think he wants to incorporate Ukraine in Russia because for us, in fact, it needs a political solution. The Ukrainian issue has to be decided by compromise, not by incorporation.

My impression is that interview is worth studying carefully as an indication of how the Russian foreign policy establishment views the war. I don't think it's just covering up an intention to maintain a long-term occupation of Ukraine. Rather it reflects a realistic assessment that there is no support for a long-term occupation and wishful thinking that the West will somehow actively rescue Putin by arranging a "compromise".

My take above is that it is a war on the Slav peoples rather than just a war on Ukraine.

I haven't seen that suggested elsewhere so I am throwing it out there.

I may be quite wrong but it makes more sense to me than the ludicrous fantasies about it being some sort of contest between the West led by the USA (with Joe Biden as "leader of the free world"!) and Russia.

Even Greg Sheridan can see the obvious:

So far, in response to his aggression against Ukraine, the West has hit Vladimir Putin with a swarm of denunciations and a sanctions response that resembles being beaten with a wet lettuce. This bodes very ill for Ukraine.

The West has made it utterly clear that it won't fight for Ukraine and won't do much to help Ukraine fight. So Putin's fight isn't with the West. Certainly his fight is with the Ukraine, but I am saying it is also, and even more importantly a declaration of war by the Tsar of all the Russias against the peoples of all the Russias.