Death or a Palace Coup: An Expert Assesses Scenarios for Putin’s Exit from Power

Political scientist Ruslan Bortnik said that if Putin were to die without having chosen a successor, his place would be taken by Mishustin, who is more of a technocrat than a radical and would be able to end the war, Politeka reports.

He said this on his blog.

“If Putin dies, the situation will change, but not fundamentally. But if he dies as a result of, for example, a Ukrainian missile strike, then it will change for the worse for us. That is, a wave of revanchism will rise even more in Russian society. We understand that everything depends on how Putin leaves. There is hope that a new Prigozhin will emerge and a palace coup will happen, or that even if Putin simply leaves physically—he is already an elderly man—he will not be able to carry out the ‘Successor’ operation, and the clash of Kremlin factions will weaken Moscow or bring more moderate figures to power,” Ruslan Bortnik explains.

As the expert notes, the acting president of Russia by position is the prime minister, Mishustin, who, incidentally, has never said anything radical and has always kept silent. In fact, he emphasizes, Mishustin is a technocrat who has so far preserved his political “virginity,” and therefore would be an excellent candidate for normalizing relations with the West after the war; even during the war, his appointment would be beneficial for us.

“They will say that that’s it—we need to stop. We have a new president of Russia; he will focus on economic well-being. That’s it, we stop, enough. I never promised to reach Lisbon. I never promised that. That was Putin’s promise, and he’s no longer here; he didn’t succeed,” Ruslan Bortnik stresses.

Yes, the expert notes, this is only an expectation, and any expectation is a self-destructive illusion. Nevertheless, he emphasizes, the strategic balance between the sides has not changed enough for someone to make concessions, so waiting looks like the best and safest strategy: stretching out time and preserving the trend.

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