Meanwhile. . . in Russia, Putin plots to control the strings and his cabinet resigns.

And that's phenomenal.

Poor Russia.  It has no history of democracy and both of its efforts over a century have failed.  The first one, in 1917, collapsed when Socialists of the hard left proved to be more loyal to their wacky theories than to Russia.  In that brief republic, moderate Socialist pulled down most of the votes, but the hard lime loonytunes drove it under and the country into a bloody civil war from which bloody Communism emerged.

In the second attempt, a democratic government and constitution emerged, but like the Reichstag of the 1910s, the duma of 2020 has only enough power as to not be capable of being completely ignored by the nation's autocratic ruler, who is now working for parliamentary changes that would allow him to effectively rule once he leaves his current office.

The cabinet resigning is a sign of a type of power struggle.  If democrats succeed, in a few years, and Putin has that long to plot against democracy, democratic rule might return to the nation.

But I wouldn't be optimistic.

Putin, we might add is one of those figures who is bizarrely convinced of his own self importance.  Like Franco in Spain or DeGaulle in France, he apparently can't imagine a Russia without himself at the head.  Added to that, Russia's role in the world is outsized and based on the fact that it retains a Cold War nuclear arsenal and a collective global recollection of the role of the collapsed USSR.  And perhaps most significantly, it sells massive amounts of natural gas to a Europe which prides itself on being "green" but bases that green position on Russia's petroleum marketing.  But for those things, Russia would be vast, and important, but not the bete rouge that it has been under Putin.

Well, here's hoping that Russia gives real democracy a third try and it sticks this time.