Putin a ‘tired, lonely old man’ but he will reign until he dies says Russian expert

Putin a ‘tired, lonely old man’ but he will reign until he dies says Russian expert

I mean look the inauguration was all very Splendid the Russians do do pomp quite well great golden Hall his own limousines sweeping up and such like presidential regiment on Parade Putin himself though seemed astonishingly bored by it and in some ways that for me was the real Motif I mean this is a man who has basically stolen the presidency once again who really has nothing new to offer and has been here before so it it was a s a rather tired old man going through the motions and frankly it’s hard to see where he can go from here it was all very Sumptuous and very carefully done um we saw lots of scenes of him walking along lengthy red carpets with great crowds of people standing there applauding him or taking photos and and selfies and things but again I felt that what really was struck me was you have this massive Hall a massive audience and this this very sort of figure in the middle of it I mean even when he was reviewing the the March past of the of the presidential regiment that there was a whole Regiment of men who were there for him there was a band and so forth and even there he just looked simply vaguely distic um this is not a man who seems to actually be be connecting he wasn’t connecting with his soldiers he wasn’t connecting with the public he was just simply the object of a lot of carefully choreographed her presentation terms of Putin’s own statement this is why he still has elections I mean it’s easy to think well why does he even bother having elections if he’s going to rig them as comprehensively as he did and remember you know of the 87% vote that he he claimed there are some suggestions that up to half of those May well have been fabricated votes so you know it may well be that he actually had a minority of Russians backing him but the point is he goes through this whole political theater just to try and convince other Russians that even if they’re not happy with him that the majority of people are so attempt to try to legitimize him so this is it it’s an entirely circular process he rigs an election and then he uses that election to claim that he has a popular mandate and then on the basis of that popular mandate he does whatever he wants and then he stands for election again in terms of anti-war opposition look there is a lot of lowlevel opposition we we’re still seeing Brave Russians coming out in little sort of one or two person Street protests doing everything or anything from you know writing graffiti on walls to firebombing draft boards offices so it it is still there the point is it is not at all coordinated that’s the one thing that the state is actually very good at it can’t keep everyone under control but what it can do is try and crack down as soon as you start to get people connecting and forming movements so it’s a kind of incoh haate lowlevel resistance but again this is one of the reasons why Putin is still very reluctant to launch a mobilization because that’s exactly the kind of thing that might force people to start talking together once again you know we think of Putin in this great sort of Macho Persona he built up but again that was that was quite some some years ago and it was interesting look I mean I I’ve been barred from Russia since 2022 but if I think of my last trip which was right at the end of 2021 even there while shamelessly eavesdropping on conversations in the Metro and so forth for the first time I heard people referring Putin as starik the old man or else he’s also sometimes known as grandfather you know again this is for someone who built so much of his political Persona on this kind of Macho virility it’s clear that the age factor is is important but also more importantly it just says something about his increasing inability to really connect with his own people he doesn’t travel much inside the country anymore he doesn’t really do walkabouts he doesn’t use the internet you know I mean this is a man who’s C out of Step increasingly so we tend to think oh he’s a dictator it doesn’t really matter but even dictators have to worry about the patience of their public because after all that’s often what what determines the difference between you know dying in office and being immortalized in great statues and being hung from a lamp poost and I think the interesting thing is that even Putin seems to understand this I mean for example a lot of his generals think he should order another mobilization wave take another another 1 2 3 400,000 R Russians force them into the ranks in order to launch some kind of big offensive this summer but Putin knows that that would be politically very problematic and therefore he shies away from it again despite the Macho Persona Putin is actually a very very cautious political operator so he does understand that on some level he needs to worry about what the Russian people think I mean we’re still all we can go by is obviously the statements that have been made and the statements that have been made are very much still playing that down saying that they’re getting quite enough uh volunteers and In fairness a lot of Russians are volunteering to to fight but so that kind of maintains the current Force Level rather than allowing it to be built up so it could still happen and if it does happen it’s beginning to get a bit late for that because there’s quite a lag between declaring a mobilization getting the guys in uniform giving them their refresher training and actually getting them on the field so if he’s going to do it meaningfully he needs to do it soon but again it’s a classic Putin thing that he diers and so he might end up calling a mobilization wave when by that point August Autumn rather is already looming and it’s a bit late what we have seen after all over the years is this regime become increasingly intolerant pretty much totalitarian no one inside Russia at least is going to be able to emerge that way but in some ways look it’s not that leaders necessarily make the protest the protests often make the leaders one of the things that clearly the government is worried about is particularly as if the war goes on sanctions continue the economy begins to overheat you may well get real economic problems emerging and I think what they’re worried about is a kind of spontaneous economically driven protest some kind of you know strikes new Wildcat trade unions emerging and then someone will emerge from that and the point is because they are we don’t know who you know it could be a a communist it could be an ultra nationalist it could be all kinds of different figures and the Kremlin will have no real sort of traction with his people so although you know the nal’s wife and then the movement that supported him is now still operating outside the country and they’re going to continue to try and have some kind of traction o o over Russians I think basically what we can imagine is the next generation of protest leader is someone at the moment we have no idea idea of their existence and they will emerge as we’ve seen elsewhere in other kind of similar protest movements in authoritarian regimes when the time needs them if everything stays as it is in other words if Putin remains in adequate health I don’t think the country is the economy is going to implode or anything like that the war is obviously going to be the kind of key determining Factor but the fact of the matter is if within a couple of years neither Russia has forced Ukraine into making concessions or Ukraine has likewise been able to launch some kind of major counter offensive to push the Russians out the war is probably going to just begin to sort of freeze naturally you there’s a limit to how many casualties both sides can take and so really I think the situation is kind of quite depressingly stable but the big difference is that I think Putin the regime’s capacity to cope with the unexpected is much much less than it was before I mean in the past Putin depended on his personal Authority his capacity to throw money at problems and his control of the security forces all three of those are now increasingly under question so you might say so long as nothing unexpected happens then basically I think the next six years will just continue as is but the point is we know in politics that stuff happens there will be the crisis whether it’s Putin going getting well dying or getting ill whether it’s in terms of some sort of reversal on the battlefield or some kind of economic shock something like that and that’s when I think all bet will be off so anyway in some ways although it’s impossible to predict exactly what it’s the crises that are going to really determine what happens to the next 6 years and this is it I don’t think Putin can step down now I have a suspicion that before he invaded in 2022 he was actually toying with the idea because he did seem increasingly tired and frankly bored with much of the job and I think he felt remember he believed that this is going to be a two week walkover walk in there ziny will flee Kev he can impose a new public government and then pull his troops out and the ukrainians would just shrug and accept it of course it was total misreading of what the situation was but you know I think from his point of view this was going to be the kind of crowning Triumph of his presidency and would precisely make him so successful so famous so popular that he could actually afford to stand down because this is the point in a system where there’s no real rule of law everything your fortune your family your future depends on who ever takes on takes over after you so I think you know there was that sense that he felt it would have made him bulletproof let’s say now though absolutely not I think the temptation to use Putin as a scapegoat for any successor would be just too great um and even if it’s not Putin is not a man who trusts easily and therefore you know even if in fact whoever he picks as a successor would actually be perfectly loyal to him could Putin actually believe that today’s Promises of loyalty would still apply next year and the year after I suspect not so no I I think basically Putin is now stuck there and although there are worse places to be stuck than the vastly rich dictator of a huge country uh nonetheless I think that he can’t really stand out it’s the same position as let’s say most most Mafia bosses you know you you basically are there for life

President Vladimir Putin was sworn in for a new six-year term on Tuesday (May 7) at a Kremlin ceremony that was boycotted by the United States and a number of other Western countries due to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Putin, in power as president or prime minister since 1999, begins his new mandate more than two years after he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, where Russian forces have regained the initiative after a series of reversals and are seeking to advance further in the east.

At 71, Putin dominates the domestic political landscape. On the international stage, he is locked in a confrontation with Western countries he accuses of using Ukraine as a vehicle to try to defeat and dismember Russia.

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