Rumours of Putins imminent demise are greatly exaggerated.
One of the fixtures of Western coverage of the war in Ukraine is predictions of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s demise. The theory goes that the war in Ukraine has been taxing economically and in terms of innocent lives which is bound to make any leader unpopular; couple that with the Russian state’s insistence that it is only a ‘special military operation’ despite needing hundreds of thousands of conscripts and it is obvious that the Putin regime has a popularity and legitimacy problem. It’s a simple and elegant idea with the added spice of seeing a bad guy get punished for his crimes. Unfortunately, reality is more complex.
I made the case in a previous post that there is likely no appetite in the Russian elite for taking over Putin’s job as long as the war is on. Any new president would face almost the exact same problems as Putin currently does with the added wrinkle of having to take over someone else’s mess. I call this the ‘May Stalemate’, named after former British prime minister Theresa May who nobody seemed to want as PM but no one wanted to inherit the tricky issue of implementing Brexit. Resulting in a situation where an unpopular leader faces no challenges until a current mess is resolved, at which point the leader is quickly ousted. Putin is clever enough to know that he is in a May Stalemate and I think he therefore knows that he has little to fear from fellow Russian elites as long as the war is ongoing.
But changes in political leadership aren’t always elite-driven affaires, as Russians no doubt are aware given their revolutionary past. Enough discontent can force changes to even the most repressive regimes so one might think Putin could be forced out by the largely anti-war Russian middle class. Here again, I think rumours of Putin’s imminent demise are greatly exaggerated. Russia did see massive anti-war protests in the early weeks of the conflict so there is certainly a subset of the Russian population who are brave and passionate enough to risk life and limb to protest the war. However, Russia has also seen a massive exodus of middle class citizens disgusted by the bloodthirsty campaign against Ukraine. Protests don’t organise themselves and it appears as though many of those who would have been instrumental in a hypothetical anti-Putin protest movement have self-organised into a group which has abdicated its political power by leaving the country.
Finally, there is the working class and rural folks who arguably has the most to lose from the war. Again, I seriously doubt that they would be able to threaten the stability of the Putin regime. The reason? They are the ones being sent off to die in Ukraine.
I hope Putin falls. I hope he faces justice for his crimes. I hope his war fails. But I’m a realist and it wouldn’t do to confuse what he want to happen with what we think will happen. Putin being ousted and the war ending would be cathartic, but it’s highly unlikely.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
Cover photo by Ian Lavrinovich from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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