Has Vladimir Putin finally overreached? The Russian president is confronting several simultaneous crises. Over the weekend, Ukrainian activists blew up high-voltage transmission towers and cut off electricity supplies to Russian-held Crimea. In St. Petersburg, his home city, on Tuesday a column of 600 heavy trucks was crawling toward the city government building to protest tolls on Russian roads (a son of a close Putin friend has a financial interest in the system). And on the Turkey-Syria border, the Turkish air force downed a Russian bomber.
After annexing Crimea and fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine, stamping out domestic opposition, deploying his military to Syria, Putin hasn't responded to the latest outrages.
In Crimea, the lights largely have been out for almost three days, and Gov. Sergei Aksyonov has called on the population to "prepare for the worst" — that is, a blackout that could last until the end of December. In St. Petersburg, the police gave up on stopping the trucks and local officials agreed to meet with the drivers; and Putin's response to the downing of the Su-24 has been muted and pained rather than aggressive.
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