According to the researcher, the current leadership of Russia will not last long in power due to the actions of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin's regime is less than a year away, says Nikolai Petrov, a visiting researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations. This forecast is written by Verkkouutiset.fi (Finland).
“The current system of governance in Russia will not last long. The governance system is incapable of renewal, it has to contend with economic problems, a decaying infrastructure and a fighting elite,” Petrov warns in his April essay “Putin's Fall”.
According to Petrov, the system began to build its legitimacy in 2014 through military victories after massive anti-government demonstrations and falling support.
“Putin has concentrated all power in the hands of the president and curbed dissidents. The government now needs to win military victories or face a decline in support.”
“Excessive concentration of power makes the system unbalanced and inefficient. Due to the negative impact of the sanctions and the fact that the money is running out, the Russian elite is becoming even more impatient. As a consequence, the risk of conflict increases in areas like the Caucasus.”
According to Petrov, the current government will not be able to stay in power for a long time because of Putin's actions in Ukraine. Before the annexation of Crimea to Russia, Putin received legitimacy after the elections. Now he has to ensure his safety by military means.
“Now Putin is more a tsar than a head of state. Putin needs more and more military victories to stay in power.”
“This situation, however, will not last long. Economic resources are shrinking all the time, the impatient elite do not want to live long in a military camp. At the same time, the political and governmental system is being destroyed.”
Petrov has three options for the development of the situation in the future. First, there will be a change of power in Russia, and, as a result, Putin and his administration will disappear. Second, Putin will continue to lead the country, thanks to regime change and an agreement with Western countries, or by profiting from the rise in oil prices. Third: Putin will be removed and replaced by someone who can make a difference.
“The Putin regime is less than a year away. The threat to him lies in the excessive concentration of power, the ever-shrinking time for decision-making and the growing costs of mobilizing military forces, ”the quote is at the end of the publication.
Let me remind you that the American intelligence company Stratfor warned at the end of February that a split was brewing in the Kremlin, and Putin.
This spring, I witnessed a conversation between a Ukrainian officer and a Western diplomat. The officer made a request: the West should help remove Putin from the presidency. The diplomat agreed: Western countries will try to do it, writes Der Spiegel columnist Benjamin Bidder. “Most likely, the diplomat answered that way because he didn’t want to offend the Ukrainian.”
However, the journalist notes, the question has already arisen: "Should the West hope for the end of the Putin era? Could it hasten it through pressure and sanctions?"
“Destroying the Russian economy is not that difficult,” says Bidder. “The Kremlin itself has done all the preparatory work: since 2008, about 470 billion euros have flowed out of the country, the currency fund is melting, high oil prices can no longer stimulate the economy, the purchasing power of Russians is shrinking , there is no new engine of economic growth." In light of these economic problems, the situation "could be quite dangerous for Putin," the article says. There are also political issues. Putin responded to mass demonstrations in 2011 with tougher censorship and lawsuits against opposition figures. Peace has now reigned, but abuses still exist.
“Yes, Putin is more popular than ever,” Bidder admits. “However, the system he created seems less and less acceptable. Officials of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party are still considered “crooks and thieves.” Nobody takes tame “opposition” leaders like Zhirinovsky seriously. Regional elections recently showed: the Kremlin won, but few people went to vote: for example, in Moscow, three out of four eligible voters stayed at home.
“It doesn’t take much fantasizing to imagine the political end of Putin,” continues Bidder. “Removing him from the presidency through elections, as was the case with his friend Gerhard Schroeder, will not work. Therefore, two options are possible: either the current ruling Kremlin elite will put their successor, or the Russians, who one day no longer want to tolerate corruption and stagnation, will turn against Putin and his entourage.
“And then what? It is quite possible that someone will come to power who will think and act even more radically than Putin. The president created the prerequisites for this with his failed policy: entourage of the current president, and there Putin significantly strengthened the position of the hardliners and ousted the liberals," the article says. The scenario for revolution in Russia is also bleak, writes Bidder: “Power can be taken over by either the right or the left. The lines between the two camps in Russia are blurred, as group names such as National Bolsheviks show.
"Therefore, the hypothetical overthrow of Putin would not save either Russia or Europe," Bidder said. The democratic forces would hardly have had a chance to nominate a successor, especially since the Kremlin has been systematically ousting them over the past few years: the Democrats have not been in the State Duma since 2003. The opposition's most talented man, Alexei Navalny, has been under house arrest for months, and the only MP who voted against the annexation of Crimea has left the country.
Recently, the German newspaper Die Welt wrote that Vladimir Putin is "on the road to hell", but only those who do not understand that the world's largest nuclear power can make life hell for its neighbors without Putin can rejoice in this, the author of the article points out.
What follows from this? It turns out that the West is left with a choice only between bad alternatives. NATO should discuss modernization, including the need to prepare for what will happen "after Putin." But the West also needs to talk to Moscow and offer compromises - not because Putin deserved it, but because Russia's isolation would create even more problems, Bidder concludes.
Igor Yakovenko: Putin's regime is actually dead, but there is no one in Russia to bury him
As we approach October 17, fear is more and more evident in the words and deeds of the inhabitants of the Kremlin and other government offices. It may seem strange that adults can believe in all sorts of numerology and other devilry. But if your head of administration invents a magical nooscope that controls the future, and an aunt who devoutly believes in telegony is in charge of human rights, you will certainly be afraid of the evil eye, the number thirteen, and you will be afraid of the centennial anniversary of the largest coup in Russian history like a monkfish angel.
When Putin was introduced to these two pretty mollusks at a meeting of the Russian Geographical Society and explained that one of them was eating the other, the Russian president immediately announced that he himself was the sea angel, because he "has to watch all the time so that no one eats us" . This reprise by Putin was, no doubt, as much homemade as Putin's sudden discovery of antique amphorae during his first scuba dive. More importantly, this rehearsed line breaks through a real sense of constant danger. Any meeting of the Russian authorities on any issue, the most remote from security problems, will certainly break through with fear of the collapse of the regime.
Putin's regime will not fall after the elections, that's for sure, but the number of those who disagree will increase, I think significantly, then for six years the authorities will do more and more garbage, which will eventually lead to the fall of the regime, plus geopolitics and the actions of other countries towards Russia can also be extremely severe , my forecast is the next 10-12 years, but Putin, unfortunately, will serve a new term, I am almost sure of this. And peaceful or not peaceful, it depends on the number of people on both sides at a critical moment and on the behavior of both sides (as someone already said here).
And why is everyone so fond of saying that Putin has the support of much more than 50% of the population? This is a pure lie, even if you just look at the last elections, imagine an approximate layer of falsifications, for example, in Chechnya, Dagestan, outside the Russian Federation (Abkhazia, Ossetia and others) and some others, where there are hundreds of thousands of falsified votes in each region, or even millions.
Turnout in 2012 65%. “Voted”, this is in general, 63% for Putin, imagining that only 10 percent of them are falsified (in fact, much more, it seems to me), then he already has support, even from those who came, barely reaches 50% (I’m not talking about the brought state employees and those who went to vote for Putin for 500 rubles, this is still a huge layer who otherwise would hardly have gone to the polls at all), based on this, we can conclude that all these 86 %, 70% is a blatant lie of the propaganda media and other interested parties, just look at the numbers, even at the official ones (2012 elections), with which you can at least somehow check.
So there are no 100k (where does it come from, not only those who go to rallies do not support the regime) against 140 million (this is from one of the answers here). There are about a million (this is a relatively active core of protest) against about the same number of bureaucrats and others like that, and the rest will gradually go over to the side of the opposition, because the government is wildly degrading and turning into complete insanity, this is clearly visible. 146 lyams, a third are children, of these 100 remaining, one-third do not give a damn or they, on the contrary, are for protest and ignore the elections because of this, another third do not vote for Putin, as a result, Putin’s support remains very small (about a third of the population at most, plus children are gradually 18, and the new generation is much more oppositional), and the faster the government grows dull, and the opposition develops, the faster the regime will fall, it seems to me that this will happen within the next two presidential terms.
Come on, you shield the successor of the organized criminal group, a bandit, a thief and a drunkard. Putin is the six Sobchak that they forgot how he filled the suitcases behind him, stuffed with the money of the common fund of the St. Petersburg gang. Forgot who was the leader of EdRa before Medvedev? So he only changed places, but not principles - they have the same goals and objectives - the robbery of the Soviet heritage and the population, the lustration of the people, in order to once and for all discourage thoughts of democracy. Or have they not figured out for 30 years who was given the "credit of trust"? That's right - to the Goat-provocateur, sheep are stupid. And who are you after more than a quarter of a century following those who rob you, humiliate you, and lead you to poverty, turning you into a powerless cattle, with a pronounced consumption reflex. Have you thought about what you will consume - after all, industry and agriculture have been destroyed by these goats and, who are still feeding you sheep, with imported serrogate, in collusion with the West and the USA. If this conspiracy, and in fact there was no betrayal of your interests, neither the West nor the United States would feed you - so you are selling the sovereignty of your own country. And everything seems to you ... what does it seem to you? That you are walking through the sun-drenched valley of abundance towards your bright future, behind this GOAT... Well, well...
They even gave you loans, you can't see your ears, on the road that leads you to nowhere.
In connection with the nomination of Vladimir Putin for the presidency, the liberal public is again singing something about the “crisis in Russia”, about “political stagnation”, and about the fact that the crisis is about to happen, and our country will finally collapse into the abyss.
These, however, are regular rituals, regardless of the pre-election cycle, and such statements happen both in Western “progressive” media and in our domestic liberal ones. Regarding the next round of hysteria, in some telegram channels they began to make a selection of stories from the past years that Russia "is in for an imminent collapse."
It is clear that such predictions have been coming with enviable constancy almost from the very beginning of Putin's presidency.
For example, the late Valeria Ilyinichna Novodvorskaya back in 2000 stated that "Putin will not serve until the end of his first term." Well, our non-systemic oppositionists have been pouring out statements that “Putin will leave in a couple of months” every six months, if not more often, also since the beginning of the 2000s.
But the next peak of the "collapse of Russia" happened in 2014-2015 in connection with the Ukrainian events.
For example, in the channel "Vecherniy politruk" there appeared a selection, far from complete, of statements about the imminent collapse of Russia.
This catastrophe was predicted for us by Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and Die Welt, and from the domestic media, for example, Gazeta.ru and HSE experts, there is a very funny list.
The chronological framework of these predictions is also noteworthy. According to them, we have either been gone for a year, or this year we must collapse. The population must impoverish completely and irrevocably the food will end and the regime must be overthrown.
The authors of Politruk also recall the old meme about the fact that “Putin drove himself into a trap” and recommend giving the president a mousetrap, which he never fell into: “There is a famous meme about how, since 2003, the press has been writing about that Putin has driven himself into a mousetrap.
Therefore, an original (and bold) gift to Putin for the New Year or as a congratulation on his nomination for the presidency would be a golden mousetrap encrusted with diamonds (look, dear President, for how many years they have been trying to catch you in a mousetrap, and you still hoo ... and Now you are also planning for the next term)
And here is a short selection of "prophecies" of 2015 / such foresights were enough for every month of the years that Putin was in power.
But seriously speaking, the selection of these spells is extremely interesting from the side, so to speak, of the one to whom these “spells” are heard. They are not addressed only to Putin or the Russian elites, they are addressed to the whole country in general and the entire Russian people
Here, from the point of view of psychology, it is clear that all these materials are not some kind of “analytical forecasts”, but a burning desire disguised as them (and badly disguised) that we all “collapse”, “fail”, “die” somewhere. with hunger." Full composition.
This is a word about those wonderful naive people who think that the West does not like Putin and the current government, but they feel sympathy for ordinary people. Nothing of the kind, we are in full force to blame before the "civilized community" "for what they want to eat."
And in this regard, our liberal Westerners take a similar position, in no way identifying themselves not only with the state (although often at state expense), but also with the country and the people. The question is the truth is that for the West these "Westerners" are the same Russians, useful only in the current situation.
However, this is quite logical and clearly demonstrates that they perfectly understand that Putin is the president of the Russian majority, and therefore they are talking about the imminent destruction of all of Russia. All this notorious “majority”, and just in case, “minority”.
And looking at all these “warm wishes” of our Western partners, you understand that the issue of maintaining Putin’s notorious stability and the current system of checks and balances is not some abstract task “to be”, but a matter of national security, the survival of the country as a whole, in the most direct sense of this word.
Because many people abroad and, unfortunately, in our country, do not want our country to remain on the map and in history. And this desire has not been hidden in recent years.
