- “Putin’s intelligence services are being purged of people who are not of Russian ethnicity, a policy completely contrary to the multi-ethnic history of these agencies. It is a risky move that, one day, could have serious consequences for the regime,” wrote two Russian journalists well connected to sources in Putin’s special services.
- In another recent article, the same authors noted that “the Kremlin’s neurosis towards dissidents in exile is extreme and has extremely serious consequences.” The FSB had just indicted the Russian Anti-War Committee, made up of prominent émigrés, for the following reasons: attempting to violently seize power and organizing a terrorist group. With a focus on the role of the Russian oligarch in exile, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, held by Putin for a decade behind bars and taken out of prison only after long international interventions. The authors also point out two mutations in the approach to the Putin regime. One is the more famous “Soviet campaign against Trotskyism which was completely different from the KGB’s crackdown on dissidents in the last years of the Soviet era. Dissidents were, in general, accused of anti-Soviet activities, never of terrorism, and were never considered serious rivals of the members of the Politbureau”. The reason is that “this year, the Kremlin has intensified its efforts to make life more difficult for Russian political exiles by abusing the mechanisms of international cooperation between law enforcement agencies.”
- In recent days, the British magazine The Economist presented a broad picture of the accelerated and spectacular dynamics among the Russian elites who gravitate around the dictator. The old elite is threatened by the rise of the new, and the rise of the new elite has already caused damage, sometimes lethal, to the previous elite. The analysis can be consulted, in Romanian, HERE. Here’s an especially revealing clue in The Economist: “In their current state of insecurity, few things irritate members of the old elite more than the spectacle of new people rising into their ranks. It is not a flood, but a thin thread, and the old clans do not disappear overnight. But the rapid rise of new types of people in Putin’s circle provides a disturbing reminder that the rules of the game are changing.”
- The Telegraph headlines this: “The myth of Putin’s strength is crumbling. The end may be closer than he thinks,” and “Panic in the Kremlin, which runs out of options just as Trump puts pressure.”
The increasingly precarious situation of the Putin regime is not the product of an overnight phenomenon. Dark clouds have been steadily accumulating throughout the almost four years of war. The debut can be identified in the failure of Russia’s quick victory in Ukraine and, as a result, the undreamed of prolonged extension of hostilities.
Day after day, for several years, billions of dollars and for a while now, more than a thousand Russian servicemen a day have died in the meat grinder in Ukraine.
And day by day, Moscow is left with fewer and fewer options to find an honorable and safe way out of this infernal cycle that grinds its economy, chops its demographics, and strengthens even the most hesitant of Europeans to take extraordinary measures, aimed at further worsening both the present and the future prospects of Putin’s regime.
With reference to the above, I have advanced the thesis of the maturity that has finally arrived at the gates of the Kremlin, in a text entitled: The comet that comes once every few decades is here. In 2025, let’s seriously consider the destabilization of Russia and the prerequisites for Putin’s collapse.
But the fundamental problem that Vladimir Putin is facing is not limited to simple economics (budget drained by an endless war) or military costs (extremely small steps, compared to human, technological and material costs that not only Russia, but also other great powers could not afford indefinitely).
Putin’s fundamental problem, the one that, superimposed on Russia’s current situation, is pointing to the fall of the Moscow regime (because this will inevitably mean stopping the war or this is the only way the war will be stopped), lies in the imperative need of the US to speed up the resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict so that the US can really focus on the thorny problems that it creates for itself and that China exploits.
Donald Trump hesitated for a long time, sometimes almost to the point of caricature, to take the Putinist bull by the horns. But time is running out against this type of approach and calls for a series of radical changes, in accordance not with the subjective reality to which Trump had related, but with the objective reality which he did not see.
The Russians have launched a forceful campaign in recent days to inhibit Trump’s change of mind. But even Trump cannot infinitely avoid complying with the circumstances on the ground and, above all, the deep geopolitical imperatives.
Almost haphazardly, the leader in the Oval Office has arrived, after less than a year in office, closer than ever being forced to accept this reality.
From this perspective, there are few tools that Putin has at his disposal today to avoid the inevitable.
After February 24, 2022, China was an essential lifeline for Russia, with Beijing’s multilateral support allowing Moscow to keep its war machine running and to cope, to some extent, the international isolation it was subjected to.
But the irony of fate is the fact that today it is precisely China, and precisely regardless of its aid to Russia, that has transformed it from a pedal for the Russians’ bicycle into the thickest stick in their spokes.
Economically, commercially, technologically, politically and militarily, Beijing has become an emergency for Washington like it had not been just a year ago.
The hasty removal of Moscow’s problem in Ukraine does not guarantee Trump the fantastic success he dreams of when he thinks of the Chinese. But it can certainly give him better cards than he currently has, and for the American leader that’s all that matters.
As China gains proportions in America’s calculations, Russia correspondingly loses the weight it had until now.
In general, when it comes to burden, there is a universal reflex: .
For Trump, Putin is no longer an interlocutor, but a burden.
Romanian, Hungarian oil refineries tied to Russia hit by blasts
