An uncertain future hangs over Putin
A regime of Soviet origin that has been in power for more than 25 years is telling us about its rigid and hermetic nature. Vladimir Putin's quarter-century in the Kremlin is one of the longest authoritarian periods in Russian history, and it already surpasses Stalin's. That is why the bleak climate surrounding the Red Army parade –it is still called that– on May 9th in Red Square also spoke volumes: the images say a lot. And, beyond that, messages and comments about a Putin distanced from his usual residences, confined to the Kremlin and surrounded by security devices for fear of an attack. This had not happened since, almost three years ago, Wagner mercenaries, with Yevgeny Prigozhin at the forefront, staged an impromptu march towards Moscow. A logistical and political blunder that sought to impose conditions on Putin regarding the war in Ukraine.
Be wary, then, of the expression “serious possibilities of a coup d’état in Russia”, which Western intelligence services reportedly detected and which the Financial Times and CNN disseminated on May 4th. It would be different from Wagner's attempt in 2023. Meanwhile, with the May 9th logistics underway, Putin, perhaps betrayed by his subconscious, mixed the word success with the traditional victory in one of his statements. The Russian president knows that there will be no “victory” in Ukraine, and that he will have to settle for presenting his failure to Russian society as a “success”. A Russian society that is beginning to discard calculations and assumptions and is turning to figures and percentages from various think tanks –official and some independent–, which indicate that never before has so much trust been withdrawn from Putin.
In the presidential elections of March 2024, the leader surpassed 87% of the votes –the highest achieved– and two years earlier, in 2022, the prestigious Levada Center detected that 74% of Russians supported the attack on Ukraine. Percentages that question whether democracy has enough of a base to take root in Russia.
Discontent due to the economic crisis
The rejection of Putinism by a large part of society –Putin himself, officially, might reach 70%, but his party, United Russia, would not exceed 30%– would not be due to the president's dictatorial nature but to having plunged Russia into a deep economic crisis, affecting the population's quality of life. A crisis caused, to a large extent, by corruption and the terrible management of the war.
The first to detect the symptoms of failure has been the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST), which less than a month ago warned that Russia was heading for a financial crisis, with two probable scenarios: stagnation or shock. MUST technicians warn that Moscow is hiding the figures on the extent of inflation and deficit to mask the war's impact. And they do not rule out the imminence of a banking crisis.
Thus, many of the variables that combine in a coup d'état have begun to swirl around Putin. The name of a possible instigator has even emerged: it would be, of all things, Sergei Shoigu, the Minister of Defense and the man who in 1999, as Minister of Emergency Situations, gave Putin the push to climb to power as prime minister. In Russia, coups and conspiracies happen when the leader, no matter how revered they have been, cannot or does not know how to face the crisis they themselves have caused. However, in Putin's case, it should not be forgotten that he is a resourceful man. His police background always keeps him aware of everything and everyone. Perhaps it is this KGB dimension that has led him to rehabilitate the figure of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka. It would be like invoking the Holy Spirit.