DW: Vladimir Putin turns 70 today – Looking for a successor?

Round birthday for Putin, a landmark date that would seal a political triumph on the battlefield. For some time now the Russian president has wanted to destroy Ukraine, which is trying to become a member of the EU and NATO, with a violent war of aggression. He started the war, but perhaps he did not think that on his 70th birthday he would be so stressed. Because he receives successive defeats. Above all, however, he is a witness, after 22 years in power, of the collapse of a country that he himself initially made to stand on its feet again after the chaotic decade of the 90s. After more than seven months of bloodshed and thousands of dead and in two sides, the former head of the KGB, known for his coldness of emotions, will not let the events completely spoil his birthday. The celebrant who has been compared to a tsar, due to his appearances in magnificent palaces but also his almost unlimited power, has a weakness for good food. It recently annexed four Ukrainian territories in violation of international law and caused an international outcry. However, Russia does not fully control these areas. But he chose to annex them to finally present a result after months of war. “Otherwise the war would have lost its meaning,” says political scientist Abbas Galiamov. But this is not a victory, and not even the Kremlin sees it that way.

Destabilizing factor

Galiamov, who himself worked in the Kremlin, is reluctant to describe Putin as “crazy” but says he has “lost control”. The former intelligence chief, who once had a career in the dreaded Soviet KGB, is no longer in control, as he has been for a long time in his political life. He is dragged by the nose by the events in Ukraine. He has lost his reputation as a “sacred figure”, as a guarantor of stability. He has even threatened nuclear weapons. The country is also experiencing a massive recession due to pressure from Western sanctions in the wake of the war in Ukraine. Thousands of businesses have left the country, thousands of Russians are out of work. Galiamov speaks of an unprecedented deindustrialization of the country. “He’s turning Russia into a third world country,” he says of Putin. “The elite are depressed because the so-called quick victory is taking too long. With the defeats of the army came the chaos of partial conscription. Today Putin is the biggest destabilizer. The Russian elite is losing its footing after 22 years of clinging to Putin “. Galiamov equally argues that his potential is enormous and due to the devotion of the security apparatus to his person. With a mixture of harshness towards the West and flamboyant human moments, Putin has always known how to win people over.

Even as a teenager he was passionate about martial arts and to this day he is shown as a judoka and ice hockey player, fishing or horse riding. At the same time, he is repeatedly presented as an animal lover, as a savior of endangered species, including the Amur tiger. But he always kept his private life a tightly sealed secret. After almost 30 years of marriage, Putin announced his separation from his wife Lyudmila in 2013. From the marriage he had two daughters, Ekaterina who was born in Dresden in 1986 and Maria, a year older. Putin is also a grandfather, but officially single – until today. His flight with cranes in the sky remains unforgettable. Because he suffered back problems for a long time after landing, many wondered what it would be like if Putin were no longer in the position he is. Since then, there have been rumors of illness and disability, mostly from Western intelligence agencies. But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov regularly assures that Putin is healthy.

Putin born on October 7, 1952 in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and studied law. He is the third child of a working-class family. His father was crippled by war wounds, his mother survived the Nazi blockade of Leningrad, lost two sons and was over 40 when she gave birth to her third and last son, Vladimir. After returning from Dresden in 1990, where he served the KGB, he worked as an adviser to the mayor of his hometown of St. Petersburg. Many of those who worked with him in the city’s administration at the time now hold high positions. Alexei Miller is the head of Gazprom. Dmitry Medvedev became president and prime minister and is vice president of the Security Council. Igor Sehin heads Russia’s largest oil company, Rosneft, where former chancellor and Putin friend Gerhard Schroeder was once chairman of the supervisory board. From his time in the KGB in Dresden, he gave influential positions to people who were close friends, such as the head of the industrial and armaments company Rostec, Sergei Khemezov.

Friends and favored ones in power

The list of those he favored, including many oligarchs, is long. All this is presented in the film “A Palace for Putin” of his opponent Alexei Navalny, who is imprisoned in a camp for criminal prisoners. Navalny sees Putin as the country’s most corrupt politician and accuses him of creating a mafia-style system. “Typically he represented the interests of the state, but in reality he was just helping the bandits,” Navalny says in the film. Navalny barely survived an assassination attempt with the chemical warfare agent novichok in 2020. His opponents accuse Putin of many crimes. In his own day, Russia waged wars against Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and Ukraine. Many critics of the Kremlin, including former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, and journalists such as Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova, were shot dead. For years, Putin has faced accusations that he destroyed what was left of civil liberties and an independent media. It has violently broken up protests and those who think otherwise are brutally persecuted. When his predecessor Boris Yeltsin announced his resignation on New Year’s Eve 2000, Putin promised a democratic Russia.

In 2020, Putin also amended the country’s Constitution allowing him to remain in power until 2036, if a candidate comes down and wins. To this day, the ideology of aggressive anti-Americanism acquired in the Soviet Union has captured a large part of the Russian population. Putin, who was secretly baptized as a Russian Orthodox Christian during the Communist era, has remained loyal to harsh criticism of the West to this day. At the same time, however, he was forced to lose his fight against NATO’s eastward expansion. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden are almost members of NATO. Meanwhile, the Russian president sees himself at war with the West. At first there was some hope that relations between Russia and the West would prosper under Putin. In September 2001 he was the first Russian president to address the German Parliament in German. Trade relations intensified. Above all, however, Germany became even more closely dependent on Russian gas than before. Today all that is history.

Political scientist Galiamov argues that Putin is now primarily betting on escalating the energy crisis in Europe to cause a rift in Western solidarity with Ukraine. If Europe does not “freeze” by March, then things will be bad for him, a year before the 2024 presidential election. Given the drop in approval ratings, Galiamov does not see that Putin can secure another victory without manipulating the result. If he does, of course, it can lead to a revolution. Galiamov sees only one peaceful way out, the preparation of a successor who trusts him. Who could it be? Sergei Sobyanin, mayor of Moscow, for example. More and more people are realizing that Putin’s time is up and that he is clearly responsible for the military’s defeats. “If he hadn’t invaded Ukraine, nobody would have realized that the Russian army is just a paper tiger.”

DW – Irini Anastasopoulou

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