Putin’s Recent Power Struggles and the Threat to His Rule

Although not directly comparable, it makes us think a little of what happened in Germany in the summer of 1944 when a group of officers, led by Graf von Stauffenberg, tried to remove Hitler. You may have seen the movie “Valkyrie” with Tom Cruise in the lead role?

We do not know if there were people high up in the military who were ready to side with the Wagner group if they had continued to Moscow. But with around 30 officers now gone, it suggests that there were people who were at least not very eager to defend the current regime.

ULTRANATIONALIST: Igor Girkin, also known as Strelkov, has been sentenced to life imprisonment in a Dutch court for being behind the downing of a passenger plane over Ukraine in 2014. 298 people lost their lives. Now he is arrested by the Russian police. Photo: Pavel Golovkin / AP / NTB

The highly controversial Igor Girkin has also been arrested, accused of inciting extremism. It is the man who in Dutch law is sentenced in absentiain absentiaInnen jus means in absentia without the person concerned being present. In the absence of. to life in prison for being behind the downing of the passenger plane over Ukraine in 2014, when 298 people died.

From before, Putin has removed all his critics within the opposition. They have long since left the country or are behind bars.

Vladimir Putin has long shown that he has paranoid tendencies. For example, that he has sat at the end of a very long table in the Kremlin and talked to a person at the opposite end – probably to avoid being infected by corona.

Some will think that a coup attempt is worse than corona, and everything suggests that Putin will now be even more vigilant, looking for unfaithful servants, testing loyalty – and introducing stricter controls.

At the same time, there is of course also a danger with this. Because Putin will increasingly lose track of what is happening outside his small circle. Since the media is completely controlled and only reports and writes what Putin wants, he does not get any important information from them either. That means more control can mean less control for the president.

It is perhaps tempting to make some comparisons with Josef Stalin, the dictator whom Putin has condemned for his crimes, but whom he has at the same time praised for defeating Adolf Hitler.

It has become increasingly clear that Putin is using history to legitimize his own regime. The message from Putin is the same as from Stalin: Russia is surrounded by enemies. And the country therefore needs a strong leader.

Vladimir Putin speaks with his adviser Maksim Oreshkin in a meeting in Severomorsk in the Murmansk region on Thursday. Photo: Ramil Sitdikov / AP / NTB

Until now, Putin has been mostly concerned with imprisoning the opposition and controlling the media with an iron fist. But now we also see that he is cleaning up the military. What does he do next?

Several experts have pointed out that under Stalin, there was some control through the Communist Party’s Politburo. Now, under Putin, no one knows who influences the president. In theory, Russia is a democracy, but in practice everything is controlled by the boss in the Kremlin. And we know little about who has access to him. In practice, it is probably mostly people from the secret services, from which Putin himself has his background. And there aren’t many of them.

What is certain is that the Kremlin’s PR people have been working in high gear since the St. Hans weekend, when the Wagner Group’s 24-hour riot took place. They have done everything to hide the weaknesses of the regime and tried to show that everything is under control.

The Kremlin has probably succeeded in restoring this perception. A survey by the Levada Center (with all the weaknesses that opinion polls in Russia have) suggests that.

For decades, Putin has cultivated the persona of the archetypal Russian man: tough and ruthless, often shirtless. But this picture has cracked. In fact, it has done so from the very beginning of the war, because Putin has not achieved what he intended when his troops went full speed towards Kyiv.

Putin during his visit to a business in the village of Belokamenka in the Murmansk region last Thursday. Photo: ALEXANDER KAZAKOV / SPUTNIK / Kremlin POOL / EPA / NTB

And the image has cracked further with the Wagner group’s rebellion. A rebellion that Putin had to take very seriously, in which he accused the Wagner boss Prigozhin and his people of being “traitors” – but in which he has subsequently done nothing to punish them for what they did. Instead, there has been talk of an clarification meeting in the Kremlin. And for now we do not know what either the Wagner soldiers or Prigozhin will do in the future.

If the image of the macho man Putin crumbles, the regime may also crumble.

We must remember that a 70-year-old is considered far older in Russia than in the West – simply because the average life expectancy is so much lower. Admittedly, Putin is in much better shape than most male Russian 70-year-olds, primarily because he is so careful with alcohol. But his peers have been retired for ten years, and older Russians look back to the old men who ran the Soviet Union and didn’t do very well.

The Wagner group’s coup attempt, or whatever we shall call it, is the biggest threat to Putin’s rule in the 23 years he has been Russia’s strongman.

Putin himself has created a system where it is the strong men who are to rule. Therefore, it is bad news for the president if he is perceived as weak – whether we are talking about most people or the closest circle in the Kremlin.

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Published: 30.07.23 at 23:55

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2023-07-30 21:55:03
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