Russia's grid-strike campaign pushes Ukraine toward pre-winter blackouts and new evacuations while Moscow purges its own defense contractors; in the Middle East, a stable oil market and Trump's 'low-keying' signal restraint despite Houthi strikes, and Israel keeps stiff-arming the US Gaza plan. On the economic-tech front, China's export machine surges (widening Germany's deficit) even as Apple's flirtation with Chinese CXMT memory stays stuck at 'testing.'

Putin's profile (BVI 5, slow deliberate purge cycles) fits a wartime scapegoating pattern, and the recent arrest of top executives from a Russian drone firm plus reporting on growing FSB influence over the bureaucracy establish an active mechanism. The base rate for authoritarian war economies answering underperformance with anti-corruption purges is high, and the 120-day window is generous, requiring only two events. Skeptic passed at 0.65 (risk 81), noting this proposal is better-evidenced than its peers because it cites an existing case. The political analyst has no track-record weight yet, so I lean on the base rate and the long horizon rather than the analyst's precision. I set 0.68 — modestly above the Skeptic given the wide window and low event threshold, while acknowledging geopolitics is a weak sector for me.