> The middle class (those living in St. Petersburg and Moscow) need to be kept happy enough as a kind of unwritten deal between Putin and those people.
That used to be the case, but not anymore. What are they going to do, exactly - protest on the streets? Since 2011, all that gets you is a beating and a fine (and now worse). Leave? That's economically infeasible for many who have already invested into property and can't easily unload it for reasonable money; people who thought the trade-off worthwhile have already largely left after 2022.
Until they're drafted. Then they flee, become unhappy. Putin ain't drafting there (yet). He is practicing classic divide & conquer like NKVD did during Great Terror and Holodomor.
Vader (father in Dutch) put it well in Cloud City, talking to Lando: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
Once they are drafted, it's too late to flee. And the person being drafted does, of course, become unhappy, but again, so what? They don't have any ways to express their displeasure that affect people in power there.
It used to be that "mothers' committees" held more sway, but those have also been mostly subdued now. Thing is, once you get to a certain point, civil protest just doesn't account for much, and people there simply aren't organized enough for meaningful violent resistance - and besides, most of them live too good a life to risk their neck engaging in such.
That used to be the case, but not anymore. What are they going to do, exactly - protest on the streets? Since 2011, all that gets you is a beating and a fine (and now worse). Leave? That's economically infeasible for many who have already invested into property and can't easily unload it for reasonable money; people who thought the trade-off worthwhile have already largely left after 2022.