Key Points – Deposing Russian President Vladimir Putin is exceptionally difficult due to the vast Federal Protective Service (FSO), a 50,000+ strong security apparatus controlling every aspect of his environment.
-However, authoritarian regimes often appear solid until they suddenly become brittle. After three years of war in Ukraine, Russia faces immense casualties, economic strain, and relies on a gerontocratic leadership of aging loyalists.
-Putin’s own paranoia is evident in his extreme security measures, including receiving three separate intelligence briefings daily, with the FSO’s report on elite activities receiving his most attention.
-This, alongside historical precedents, suggests a sudden regime collapse remains possible despite Putin’s iron grip. That could, to turn a phrase, make the walls close in on Russian president.
Putin Could Fall from Power?
Someone deposing Vladimir Putin. Just speaking the words opens up the mind to a sense of hope that the world we live in could become brighter in one moment.
It is also undoubtedly the dream of almost every Ukrainian at this point.
There are also untold thousands of Russians who have had to flee their homeland or have had relatives murdered by the Kremlin’s security apparatus, or are languishing in a labor camp somewhere in the cold, frozen north near Magadan, who share those sentiments.
The obvious difficulty is that none of those in the ranks of the downtrodden have much of chance of affecting regime change in Russia for thousands of reasons – 50,000 to be exact.
That is the number of troops who are assigned to the Russian Federal Protective Service or FSO.
In addition to the 50,000 uniformed security forces there are several thousand plainclothes officers. The organization pulls in every major function that surrounds the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to include the Presidential Security Service that are his bodyguards. FSO also controls the “Cheget” or the Russian “football” that contains the codes authorizing the use of nuclear weapons.
This entity is all-encompassing. Every cook, driver, janitor, messenger, chambermaid, you name it who is within a mile of Putin is vetted by this service. It makes Hitler’s Waffen-SS look like a force comprised of mall cops by comparison.
So, with that said, is there any chance of Putin be deposed in a coup or revolution of some sorts?
Putin: When The Cracks Appear…
One day more than a decade ago I was walking through the centre of Beijing with an American colleague discussing the issue that has terrified the Chinese Communist leadership since the day it happened.
Specifically, the overnight collapse of the Soviet Union – an event they have taken great pains to prevent from ever happening in their own nation.
“The lesson that everyone needs to take away from that implosion of the USSR,” he explained, “is that all of these radical authoritarian regimes rarely show signs of deterioration. They always look like they are rock-solid until one day they suddenly are not.”
Today’s Russia is no exception to the rule.
“Dictatorships like Putin’s have a very rigid, iron grip on their population,” explains the great historian of Russia Stephen Kotkin,” but the more these dictatorships turn the dial on their oppression paradoxically the more brittle they become.”
This the position that the Putin regime finds itself in after three years of war that finds possibly over a million Russians now dead, wounded or missing (numbers on this, of course, do vary).
Oil prices which are the chief source of the regime’s funding, are falling, the state is instituting radical spending cuts to compensate for this massive drop in state revenue, troops are being sent into the field against Ukrainian positions on motorcycles or in civilian vehicles because there are no more armored vehicles left to send to the front.
But Russia under Putin is like the edifice of some giant Wall Street Banking house, explained Kotkin.
You have to look for where the cracks might appear as any indication of the state collapsing, but you may not ever see them.
Security Mechanisms
The security around Putin is unlike anything ever seen in a modern Russian state – exceeding in scope even the paranoia and protective measures that existed under Josef Stalin.
Admittedly, there are infinitely more sophisticated ways to kill people in Russia now that did not exist in Stalin’s day and have been used by Putin’s security services, which means that the former KGB Lt. Col. has more to worry about than did the WWII dictator and “man of steel.”
These methods of killing include exotic nuclear compounds like that used to eradicate exiled KGB dissident Aleksandr Litvinenko in London, the Novichok military grade nerve agent that almost killed the Russia military intelligence officer Sergei Skrypal and his daughter in their exile in Salisbury in the UK – and which was also used against Putin critic Aleksei Navalny.
Then there is the odd individual assassinated in some foreign capital with a simple firearm shot or two to the head, or the person who “knows too much” about what is happening inside of Putin’s regime, who mysteriously falls out of a 7th-storey window in Moscow.
Putin, not wishing to be the victim of any of these and countless other mechanisms for making people disappear that he has used over the years, has taken his paranoia to an entirely new level. Just how he begins every day at the office is illustrative of how much he fears those around him.
Briefing Books
In the old Soviet days, the Communist Party General Secretary received a daily, “eyes only” briefing book that was the functional equivalent of the US president’s Daily Intelligence Brief. Under Putin that process has changed.
Putin receives not one – but three – briefing books every morning.
The first one is from the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which is the old KGB First Directorate headquartered outside of Moscow in Yasenevo. That book tells him the state of the world and any foreign intelligence operations.
The second is from the Federal Security Service (FSB), which is the old KGB central headquarters building in central Moscow at Lubyanka Square. The FSB informs Putin of internal security problems and the activities of the FSB as they have expanded out beyond their original territory of inside-Russia only. Dissident organizations planning demonstrations that need to be broken up before they get started, the next NGO that needs to be shut down. It’s all in this book.
But it is the third briefing book that he allocates the most attention to. This is from the FSO, and this tells him what he most wants to know. What members of the elite circles are meeting where and what are they discussing. What are the microphones planted in the bedroom of mistress of one of these elite individuals picking up. What business deals are being transacted that could have a potential negative effect on the political situation.
These are not the actions of a man who is secure in the knowledge that his position is unassailable and that he can never be deposed.
How Russia Fell In the Past…
Three times in previous history, in 1905, in 1917, and in 1991, Russian states collapsed due to unaffordable, runaway military spending.
In the first two instances, the unsustainable spending was accompanied by wars with horrendous numbers of casualties, collapse of services back home, and a general sentiment that the state was rotten, corrupt, and incompetent to the core.
The leader in 1905 and 1917, Tsar Nicholas II, ended up paying for his mistakes with his own life.
Putin’s actions and how he continues to increase his security environment show that he fears the same kind of end to his rule.
The reality is that we will not know that it is happening until it suddenly materializes before our very eyes and with almost no advance notice.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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