There is a crisis in the Kremlin: "Putin screwed it up"

Hurrah patriotism reigned in Moscow for a long time. Now there is not only a little displeasure among the population, but also among the elite: in the Kremlin, there is great dissatisfaction with the president – succession plans are being discussed for the first time.

Vladimir Putin has been waging his bloody war in Ukraine for three months. Three months in which his popularity ratings climbed higher than they had in years and in which official Russia fell into a hurray patriotism that was intended to drown out even the slightest displeasure in the population.

But now something has shifted in Moscow’s center of power. Like the always well-informed investigative portal Jellyfish reports, disillusionment has spread among the elites around Putin: “There is almost nobody left who is satisfied with Putin,” the portal quotes Kremlin insiders as saying. The tenor: “The president screwed it up.”

Nobody wants to go to war

The reasons for this change of mind? Putin has apparently antagonized both of the elite groups around him: the militarists, who want tougher action in Ukraine, and the business elite, who want a negotiated end to the war.

“Business and many in government are unhappy that the President started the war without considering the extent of the sanctions,” a source said. Above all, the fact that Europe is considering a gas embargo is a concern for many in the Kremlin environment.

The hawks, on the other hand – that is, the warmongers – don’t believe that the West will implement its threats anyway. They are therefore complaining that Putin is not acting more forcefully and brutally in Ukraine, and are calling for general mobilization and a renewed attack on Kyiv.

Secret service circles, Putin’s actual center of power, also have doubts about his ability to lead: They now consider the whole procedure in Ukraine to be a “mistake”. The “special operation” runs counter to the interests of the state so massively that spies from the USA are even suspected as whisperers in the Kremlin, writes the investigative medium History.

However, it is not surprising that Putin does not fulfill either of the wishes of his elites. It was feared that a quick peace agreement without large territorial gains could be interpreted as giving in; that would depress his popularity. On the other hand, the citizens would not support a mobilization. The Kremlin commissioned special surveys for this purpose, and they showed that even those Russians who support the war itself are not prepared to go to the front – or even to let their relatives go.

This resentment is also reflected in the arson attacks on army draft offices, which have recently increased; and resistance is also growing within the army itself. Just recently, 115 national guardsmen lost their jobs because they didn’t want to go to Ukraine – these are Putin’s bodyguards, who were also sent to the war.

“Future after Putin”

Of course, dissatisfaction is not to be equated with a willingness to putsch – observers rate the chance that the Russians will rise up against their head of state as very small because of the massive reprisals and the long-standing political apathy. And a palace revolution is also almost impossible – also because the elite groups are very hostile to each other.

But for the first time there is a debate about a “future after Putin,” Kremlin insiders tell Meduza. “It is agreed – or wished – that he will no longer be at the head of the state in the foreseeable future,” it says. Names have already been rumored. For example, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who has recently been pushing for a quick end to the war – Moscow, as the largest business location, is suffering the most from the sanctions. Also on the list: Sergey Kiriyenko, prime minister under Boris Yeltsin and now deputy head of the presidential administration, who has been much more prominent since the outbreak of war than before. This also applies to Putin’s interim successor, Dmitry Medvedev. He recently tried to bring himself back into the game with martial sayings like the call for the reintroduction of the death penalty, but hardly anyone has such poor popularity ratings as he does.

However, even his biggest critics consider it unlikely that one of these men could soon succeed Putin. That would only be conceivable if he were to resign from office for health reasons. As one source puts it: “People grumble, but they keep working anyway – and keep preparing the country for war.”

By Editor

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