“Russia Has Two Paths Left”

Today, Important Stories published an intelligence report from a European country, which was provided to the newsroom by a government official from that country who requested anonymity. The document describes the situation in the Kremlin, the growing tensions among security officials due to setbacks in the war with Ukraine, as well as Putin’s increased fear of a possible coup or assassination attempt, which has led to an unprecedented tightening of security measures and an expansion of the Federal Protective Service’s powers. In my view, this is one of the most important pieces of news about Russia in recent times. Here is why.

It appears that we are witnessing the transition of the Russian regime into a fundamentally different state. The deadlock in the war in Ukraine, painful Ukrainian drone strikes on oil infrastructure, economic and social problems — all of these factors combined, as Important Stories has previously written, were bound sooner or later to lead to a struggle among Russia’s “siloviki” clans for the throne of a weakening dictator.

Putin, who himself built this system of power, understands well what awaits him — hence the growing paranoia, the unprecedented isolation from the public and from his own inner circle, and the attempt to create a new oprichnina in the form of the Federal Protective Service, endowed with unlimited coercive powers.

This means that in the short-term historical perspective, Russia has two paths left:

• The Iranian path. Putin will succeed in consolidating loyal security services around himself — primarily the FSO and the National Guard — which will form a Russian analogue of Iran’s IRGC. Through unprecedented repression, which will affect broader segments of the population and those who were previously considered untouchable, the dictator will retain power by force. This scenario would also imply further isolation of the country from the internet and the outside world: the oprichnina will not tolerate any critics.

• The Time of Troubles. Historians do not like analogies, but history does not stop reproducing them. The first oprichnina emerged as an attempt by Ivan the Terrible to maintain control over the elites and strengthen autocratic rule in conditions of a prolonged and destructive war and internal crisis. The terror of the oprichnina, economic exhaustion, and devastation led to the Time of Troubles and a civil war. 

Which of these scenarios is more likely in Russia is not so important. What matters is that each of them is highly likely.