It may therefore be more out of hope than anything else that there are those in Russia and beyond wondering if mortality will do the job. In a system which has become so personalised and authoritarian, though, the usual mechanisms for the transfer of power do not apply. However, it reflects the way that even this most out-of-touch of leaders is aware that this debacle threatens him and his regime. Of course, at the same time he is escalating the brutality of the onslaught, hoping to negotiate from a position of strength, having taken more cities. The terms he offered Kyiv were still unrealistic and unacceptable, but having previously indicated that he wanted to take the whole country – to, as he put it, “denazify” it – now he is only seeking Crimea and the south-eastern Donbas region. Indeed, on Monday, Putin, the man who four days before had vowed to destroy “this ‘Anti-Russia’ created by the West”, signalled that he was willing to cut his losses. That a military machine in which Putin has invested so much for so long could stumble and fall as soon as it steps into neighbouring Ukraine.

For 22 years he was the one constant of Russian politics, but no wonder people are thinking much more sharply not only about a Russia after Putin, but how that may be brought about.Īfter all, who would have thought that a country so deeply embedded in the global economic system could so quickly be disconnected from so much of it? That a country with notionally more than half a trillion pounds in its foreign reserves would be debating emergency price regulation for medicines, basic foods and baby products. His brutal and ill-conceived war in Ukraine, a personal crusade he has foisted on his country, has left his army mired abroad and an economy reeling under unprecedented Western sanctions at home. Vladimir Putin is in for the fight of his life. It’s hard to envisage the Russian president stepping down, but a coup from within the corridors of the Kremlin may force the issue says Professor Mark Galeotti (UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies).

Putin's no 1 enemy