Note that on September 18th Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council and father of Dmitrii Patrushev, whom some sources name as possible Putin's successor, flew to Fujian to speak with Yang Jiechi. Two days later, the referendums across the Southern and Eastern Ukraine were announced, and the next day after that Russian army reserve was called to mobilization. What could possibly go wrong, eh?

It looks increasingly likely that Putin received some kind of gag order (he looked gloomy and demoralized in Samarkand on a meeting with Xi and other SOC leaders; Xi even declined a dinner invitation under the pretext of COVID quarantine measures) with the demand of rolling Ukrainian invasion down inside, as quickly as possible, to demonstrate a formal result in the logic of existence, no matter how shaky. Xi clearly wants him to stop moving the goalposts.

However, it may boil things up, not down. October 1st isn’t too late.