President Putin’s hold on power is weakening because of mistakes made during the invasion of Ukraine, western officials believe.
The Russian president, 70, has changed the law to allow him to remain in the Kremlin until 2036 but it is thought he could be vulnerable to a challenge around the time of elections in 2024.
“People are talking more about succession and imagining a life beyond Putin,” a western official said. “Russia is not a democratic country and there is no prospect of change in the near future. But the middle of this decade is starting to look interesting.”
In the winter of 2011-12, Putin faced the most serious challenge to his rule when mass demonstrations broke out in central Moscow. The trigger for the protests was an announcement from Putin that he would seek another two terms in office after the four years under Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev effectively played the role of a caretaker president between 2008 and 2012 because of the two-term limit in Russia’s constitution — something that Putin amended on his return to power.
Western officials deem Russia a “totalitarian state” and there is no guarantee presidential elections will go ahead in 2024. But a decision to cancel or blatantly rig them could prompt renewed questions about Putin’s record in power.
“The Russian system is very opaque, but he’s been weakened by this really catastrophic error,” an official said.
The invasion of Ukraine has taken its toll on the Russian economy, with GDP expected to contract by at least 4.5 per cent this year. There has also been an exodus of young Russians, with an estimated 400,000 leaving since Putin’s announcement of a mass mobilisation in September.
Western officials believe Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine based on “incredibly faulty information” and advisers are said to be increasingly fearful of informing him about the true state of the Russian army.
The president also spent much of the Covid-19 pandemic in isolation, conducting most of his government business remotely.
He is now thought to be better informed than at the start of the invasion, but there are still limits to what he is told.
“It’s still not completely the unvarnished truth. It’s a totalitarian, authoritarian system. It does not allow for dissent and debate,” one official said.
It comes as Russian military officials are believed to have discussed the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine after a series of battlefield setbacks for Putin’s army.
The discussions have raised concerns in western capitals, The New York Times reported, citing unnamed American officials. Although Putin did not participate, the conversations raised fears within the Biden administration that Putin was serious in his nuclear threats.
Putin and other Kremlin officials have said several times that Moscow is prepared to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, including to prevent Kyiv from recapturing Russian-occupied territory in the south and east of the country. “This is not a bluff,” Putin said in September.
John Kirby, a White House spokesman, said: “We’ve been clear from the outset that Russia’s comments about the potential use of nuclear weapons are deeply concerning, and we take them seriously.”
Although the White House declined to comment on the reported meeting of military chiefs in Moscow, Kirby said that the United States had seen no indications that Russia was making plans to use a nuclear weapon in the near future.
Russia is thought to have up to 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, which are designed to destroy an enemy’s forces on the battlefield. Although tactical weapons have lower yields than strategic warheads, which can destroy cities, they can cause significant radioactive fallout. The use of tactical warhead would break the “nuclear taboo” that has existed since the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945.
Russian rhetoric has cooled, however. Putin appeared last week to backtrack on his threats, telling a forum in Moscow that there were no plans to use nuclear weapons. “We see no need for that,” he said. “There is no point in that, neither political, nor military.”
Yesterday the Russian foreign ministry reaffirmed Moscow’s commitment to the “inadmissibility of a nuclear war”.
Putin’s apparent wish to calm fears about a nuclear conflict are rooted in his attempts to portray Russia as a leading power in an ideological war with the West, according to Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst.
“In this struggle, it is very uncomfortable for him to feel like a crazy monster rattling nuclear weapons,” she wrote on Telegram. “But this has nothing to do with his real military intentions or plans for Ukraine.
“Putin hopes that the worst-case scenario [inevitable defeat in Ukraine] will not come to pass. But if it does, then he will use nuclear weapons because he will have no other way to avoid losing.”
Yesterday Putin told his new co-ordination council, established last week to oversee the Kremlin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, that Russian weaponry should be “constantly and continuously” improved. Moscow’s efforts to maintain its war machine have been complicated, however, by western sanctions.
The US accused North Korea yesterday of covertly shipping a “significant” number of artillery shells to Russia to help Moscow replenish its depleted stocks.
Despite being reported to have boasted that the Russian army would capture Kyiv within days, Putin has watched his forces driven out of northern Ukraine and forced into humiliating retreats in the east and south.
There was another setback this week when suspected Ukrainian saboteurs blew up three Ka-52 attack helicopters on a Russian airfield in Pskov, 500 miles from the border. Two of the helicopters were said to have been destroyed, and the third badly damaged.
Scholz will urge Xi to step in
Olaf Scholz will urge President Xi to try to rein in Moscow’s war on Ukraine and threats of nuclear war when the German and Chinese leaders meet in Beijing tomorrow.
The German chancellor is also expected to tell Xi that the West will not accept a Chinese takeover of Taiwan unless it is peaceful and supported by the Taiwanese people.
Germany’s allies fear that the trip to Beijing, the first by a G7 leader since the start of the pandemic, may be interpreted as a sign of western discord. However, a senior German official said Berlin was co-ordinating closely with the US and France, neither of which had expressed opposition to the visit. They said that the purpose was to sound out China’s positions and raise “difficult” issues.
