What if the “end” of Putin comes? The Kremlin’s Game of Thrones Revealed – The Main “Players”

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Putin’s war on Ukraine is turning against him Politico comments – How internal camps, tactics are shaping up

For the first time in two decades, the opponents of the Russian president Vladimir Putin believe he is more likely to step down in the near future, though they disagree on how that will be done, who might replace him and when, the website Politico reports. Much depends on the course of a war that turns against him and undermines the air of invincibility that Putin once exuded.

In recent weeks, infighting in the Kremlin has come to light, with power-holders publicly criticizing each other and Moscow’s high military command as weakened Russian forces are forced to retreat after humiliating defeats in Ukraine. and a hasty unpopular conscription backfires.

Senior executives now seem to they struggle to benefit by the changing political landscape. Kremlin watchers say the “flashes of public dissent” by members of Russia’s elite — including Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and intelligence “boss” Yevgeny Prigozhin — are unprecedented.

Mikhail Kasyanov, Putin’s prime minister from 2000 to 2004, predicts that Putin may suddenly lose power. “In three or four months, I believe there will be a critical change,” Kasyanov, who is now living in exile, told Sky News on September 30.

Other opponents of Putin are less specific about the timing but, with accusations and criticism of Russia’s military commanders mounting, feel the war marks a turning point, hoping for the beginning of the end for the “new tsar of Russia.” .

“Can he avoid it? I don’t know,” the exiled Russian and prominent Putin critic told Politico Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Thanks to Ukraine’s resistance, Russia’s mistakes and misguided tactics on the battlefield, people in the Kremlin and other big political players seem to be thinking about “life after Putin,” he added.

Khodorkovsky believes this explains why some people in the Kremlin seek the limelight – notably Kadyrov and Prigozhin, once close allies of the Russian leader. They have unleashed spikes against Russia’s military commanders, men they despise as “peacetime generals.”

As leaders of a “war party” call for more brutal action in Ukraine. Both men are careful to appear loyal, but Khodorkovsky suspects they are playing a double game. “Prigozhin is today under Putin’s control,” Khodorkovsky said. “But he is also preparing for life after Putin. And he’s building a relationship with Kadyrov,” he adds.

Prigozhin has changed the way it works. In late September, he acknowledged for the first time that he founded the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary group accused of committing gross human rights abuses in Africa, Syria and Ukraine on behalf of the Kremlin. This is a surprising admission, given that he has sued the media in the past for naming him as Wagner’s “boss.”

He now presents himself as someone to be reckoned with as a military commander, and in the face of Ukraine’s counter-offensives around Kharkiv and Kherson he applauds Kadyrov for his demands on social media for “more drastic measures”, including martial law . in Russia’s border areas and “use of low-yield nuclear weapons.”

Prigozhin has also supported Kadyrov’s call for the hapless commanders to be punished, stripped of their rank and medals and sent to the front. “Beautiful Ramzan, keep it up,” Prigozhin said in a social media post. “These thugs should be taken to the front barefoot with machine guns,” he added.

The important thing is that they both escaped the direct censure of Putin. That may serve the Kremlin’s interests — blaming the military and diverting anger away from Putin, Russian exiles and Western analysts say. And Putin has not held back from criticizing the defense ministry – last week pointing to the mismanagement of its mobilization mandate and the recruitment of students.

Remarkably, the Kremlin did not reprimand either Prigozhin or Kadyrov, who last week gleefully announced that he had been promoted to the rank of major general. After Kadyrov’s request for escalation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blandly noted to reporters in Moscow that “regional leaders have the right to express their opinion.”

There is some suspicion that it is useful for Putin for Kadyrov and Prigozhin to call for increasingly extreme actions to worry Western leaders about the deeper meaning: “Be careful what you get for — a Russia without Putin could mean a Russia of Kadyrov and Prigozhin.” Leonid Volkov, chief of staff to Alexei Navalny, the jailed opposition leader, describes Prigozhin as “the most dangerous criminal in Putin’s environment”.

However, anyone attacking the upper echelons is “skating on thin ice”. Last month, Peskov warned that “critical views are currently within the framework of the law… the line is thin, very thin.”

The Meduza news website recently reported that rising stars Alexei Dyumin, the governor of Tula, and Dmitry Mironov, the former head of the Yaroslavl region and an aide to Putin, are quietly backing Kadyrov and Prigozhin.

The war “set in motion a public succession race”, noted Russian journalist Andrei Perchev. “In recent years, political maneuvering in Russia has been kept in the shadows, but in this new era, high-pitched proclamations and emphatic political gestures are once again the norm,” he wrote in a recent analysis for the Carnegie Endowment.

Former President and former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, once eager to portray himself as a Western-leaning modernizer, has been issuing warmongering threats denouncing NATO. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has also brought himself more into the limelight. So does First Deputy Chief of Staff Sergei Kiriyenko, a onetime prime minister who usually shuns the limelight, now strolling around the Donbass wearing khakis.

Other important “players” remain silent, and are absent from the public limelight. Sthey include FSB (formerly KGB) intelligence director Alexander Bortnikov and Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard and one of the most powerful security officials. The National Guard consists of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, including special police units and rapid reaction forces. Zolotov and Putin worked together in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, but Zolotov is also known to be close to Kadyrov. Why they stayed out of the limelight is not clear. Some analysts wonder if they are “just being vigilant”.

Earlier this year, Ukrainian intelligence claimed the FSB chief may have been part of a coup plotting group.

However, some analysts are skeptical that Putin’s power is disappearing. “I believe there is an element of wishful thinking’ comments Emily Ferris, Russia analyst at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute. “It would be wise. But I don’t really know the extent to which they are able to make plans,” as Putin “always encourages competition” – a divide-and-rule strategy.

However, there are signs of an internal power struggle going on, with two main alliances to be formed: a “war party” led by Kadyrov and Prigozhin, and a rival faction made up of the security services, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff, Khodorkovsky says. Last week, Alexei Slobodeniuk, Prigozhin’s aide and propagandist, was arrested by a special unit of the National Guard according to Russian reports.

If Putin’s war continues to go badly for Russia, Khodorkovsky is watching two possible scenarios. In the first, rival factions work together, pressuring Putin to step down so the system he created can outlive him, with the promise of immunity and the preservation of his wealth. In that case, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, a hard-line former director of the Federal Tax Service, would replace Putin. “But then there would be a fight over who controls him,” comments Khodorkovsky.

Another scenario is that there will be a conflict between them “war party” and his adversaries in the security and defense services, who, however, are much more fragmented and demoralized.

Can Putin overcome the consequences of his own war? Khodorkovsky remains unsure, but adds: “I’ve always thought of Putin as very pragmatic. I don’t think of him that way anymore. He relies more and more on his feelings.”

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