Putin’s regime will 'end suddenly' - Why Russian victory is now impossible

Regimes often collapse very, very suddenly.He has a limited sphere of manoeuvre, really, for the future.Massive losses for minimal gain will come home to roost at a certain time.Major General Chip Chapman, former senior British advisor to US Central Command.

Let's just start with the key question.How long do you think Vladimir Putin has in power?

That's a great question of which no one really knows the answer.So what you would do or we would do is look at the conditions which might mean that he might fall.But the more interesting question in lots of ways is what would come after Putin were to fall.Now, of course, at the moment, the Russian theory of victory is still that they see themselves on the offensive, and therefore there's nothing to worry about.But Why do wars stop?They stop for three reasons, either because of decisive military victory, that is just not on the agenda at the moment.

Secondly, because of the improbability of victory.And that's the situation we're in at the moment.Indeed, this week, we had General Solushny of the former CNC of the Ukrainian Armed Forces tell us, for example, that because of the transparency of the battlefield today, the ability to do operational level Maneuver is so constrained that we are seeing glacial moves, which mean nothing at the operational level.And therefore the deep battle that which is going in Ukraine against the Russian oil refineries and Russia against the energy infrastructure of Ukraine is the way that you might come to the third way why wars end, which is because of unacceptable costs, either because of the losses on the battlefield, economic costs or something like that.A tight grip is not the same as a stable grip.So therefore, there's three things or three elements, which may mean that Putin could go.

But to actually put a time frame on that is..difficult.The first one is elite defection, and this is essentially what we've seen with the outburst from Romeslo over the last few days, where he said, for example, that not only is this a corrupt regime, it's an illegitimate regime, it's failing in Ukraine, and it's literally falling apart because of economic deterioration.I think you have to put who he is into consideration, though, because Rameslow was a lawyer, a blogger, a propagandist, a Kremlin loyalist, but nevertheless not one of what we would call the Sylviki.And that is the Sylviki, the FSB, the SVR, the GRU, all the security services, along with the military, which actually make up those who would be the kingmakers should Putin fall.And therefore, you would then ask yourself that should Putin fall, What would that lead to?

Would it lead to a peace settlement in Ukraine, or would it lead to increased war output from Russia?And that is the problem.So, for example, if you go back to Prigogine in 2023, he wanted the Kremlin to fight the war back better, and that Russia needed to be prepared to live like North Korea for five years.And it was because of that, that he was being starved of resources around the Makhmud area, that he led the so -called coup on Moscow.So you could have this elite defection around him.But the people who are likely to replace him from the Sylviki, those security and intelligence services folk who make up about 80 % of the regime around Putin, are not sort of your democratic, liberal, that you might want for the day after regime so therefore you would then

ask what sort of regime would emerge from Russia.And the two theories are that firstly, it would be normal, go back to democracy and a valid member of the international community.Well, secondly, that you would still have more of the same because you would have a group of people who would still have this imperial, Russkiy Mir, Russia first mindset, no different than Putin.And therefore, in that sense, it's not we have a Putin problem.it's we have a Russia problem.

Remuslow claims there is a colossal battle for power between the FSB and the Kremlin bureaucrats.Can you just explain that dynamic a bit more?

Well, when the regime has been under threat in Russia, there's always been a revolution at some stage.And it's where that revolution comes from.And mainly it has been from that the elites in this sort of Now, in terms of who they are in Russia, the top guys, the people that we normally look up are someone like Bornikov, the FSB director.He's a candidate to replace Putin, or Shoigai, who was the defense minister, now sits into the sort of security cabinet, or Petrushchev.What I'm saying with these people is, in a sense, you would have Putin redux in the same way, for example, that Putin, in my estimation, is just Andropov redux.Remember that Putin was a KGB man in the same way as Andropov was a KGB man, and we might have had a Russia problem earlier if Andropov had lived longer.

So really, we're looking at a mafia state at the moment, and the machine will outlast Putin.Constitutionally, if Putin were to fall, then there's a guy called Mishustin who would replace him.But you're looking at people who are the same age.Now, the Class Vizian trinity, which we often talk about, you know, if you can't campaign successfully.one, two or three things happen which mean that Putin could be on the ropes.As I said, I don't know the time frame.

The first thing is this elite defection from some of those people that I've mentioned.The second one is a sort of population uprising.We don't see that because of the increasing authoritarianism in Russia at the moment, but things like internet restrictions and the fact that in some of the non -russian republics the burden of the war is is felt more more acutely than is in, for example, Moscow and St. Petersburg, might mean that in the worst case, you would have an uncontrolled overthrow of the Putin regime.And if you go back to when we had the Skripal incident, for example, in the UK, at that time, the main refrain in Russia, and this was obviously before the overt invasion of Ukraine, was no future, and that all the indicators in Russia were downwards, you know, GDP growth was down, there was no inward investment, the population is declining is falling.And therefore, in the worst case, you would have a civil war, and the cessation of non Russia, Russian Federation republics, that would also be worrying from a Western perspective, because it's the equivalent of Bosnia with nukes.And that is something that you probably wouldn't want in Russia.

So there are these tensions within the elite, the tensions in the population have not come to fruition at the moment.And the third part of that Trinity or the stool, the three legs of the stool is the army.We've got to always remember that the revolution that occurred in 1917, partly was powered by theTreaty of Brest -Litovsk and 1 million Russian soldiers just marching off the battlefield and giving that campaign on that on the Eastern Front to the Germans in World War One.

You mentioned a mafia state.earlier, when we think of mob bosses, they're normally paranoid, paranoid people.And reports suggest Putin has banned his inner circle from using smartphones, and traveling on public transports.Has he has Putin become a prisoner of his own security service?

Well, he has, and every leader in Russia is a prisoner of the security services because of the way it functions with this sort of sylviki around them.So he has a limited... sphere of maneuver really for the future, both in social tensions and in these political tensions.Another social tension, for example, is that if he were to want to prosecute the war to a successful conclusion, one of the ways he could do that is by mass mobilization.One of the things that they looked at in September 22, But that again would come at a social cost which the Russian people are not necessarily willing to accept.That is why we have at the moment an elimination efficiency from the Ukrainians where they look like they are killing more contract soldiers than are being recruited.That puts the Russians in deficit, which is also potentially putting Russia in this spiral where you might get an intervention from the elites and this defection that I'm talking about.

How could a potential internal uprising, what would that look like?

Putin actually fled and under and went to the under the sort of ages of the of the state to the north.And it was the intervention from that state which saved his life.So if he has rumblings that if there are rumblings of some sort of coup against him, he will likely flee to what he he believes to be a safe state, Belarus, Belarussia, or some exile somewhere else.One thing, as I said, that is that regimes often collapse very, very suddenly, if they're under pressure, knowing that timing is very difficult to do.But One of the reasons I think you've mentioned about potentially smartphones and communication systems not being used by the inner circle elite is you need to actually coordinate things and coordination needs communications.Cutting off communications makes that difficult.

So unless you have some overt assassination, the most lethal means of doing this, it's pretty difficult to do.And there is a sort of body around Putin from not the security services, but his equivalent of the Secret Service in America, which is there to provide that defense against assassination.Although, of course, assassination is a is a mark of Russian society.And it's one of the reasons, for example, you had another revolution with the Duma in 1861, when Alexander II was assassinated.

Just back on to Ilya Remeslov.Why was he released by Putin?Is that Putin trying to look a bit more liberal and tolerant?

I don't think so, but I don't think it's that relevant.Just being released doesn't mean you're not under surveillance and doesn't mean that you're not.put things out in the overt sphere.What would be interesting is if he has a pattern of activity, which is critical of Putin, and that is allowed to build a momentum.If that is the case, then you can say that there are other people around him who may be protecting him.And that would be one of the things to look for in a potential trigger.

back into Ukraine now.So they appear to be looking at the end game, the next steps, and that's manifesting itself in the way they're pushing for a special tribunal to try Putin, to take Putin to court for the crime of aggression.Is calling this a 21st century Nuremberg a realistic legal goal or just a PR stunt?

Well, it depends on the outcome of the war.So if Russia were defeated, and Putin were overthrown, then that could be in the mix of things that happened.If Russia is not defeated and there's some sort of peace settlement or peace treaty, then it won't happen.Now, of course, at the moment, Putin is indicted by the International Criminal Court and has been since March 2023.Firstly, for the deportation of children from Ukraine, and secondly, for the sort of genocide as it was called at the time around Erpin and Bucha.If technically, Putin were to travel to any country where a member has signed up to the IJC and is a signatory to that, then of course Putin could be arrested.

But he's already traveled to one of those countries where he technically should have been arrested, which was Mongolia, and they didn't arrest him.So it's from a moral and legalistic viewpoint,it is the right thing to do.From the way that realpolitik works in the modern world, it probably is not going to happen unless Russia is defeated and Putin is overthrown.

One of the remarkable things about the war in Ukraine is Putin's or Russia's military strategy of the meat waves.So this 20th century military mindset.Do you think perhaps the Kremlin system is conducive to that?Is it locked in that path?And is that just accelerating Putin's demise?

I think it could be accelerating his demise purely because the information he's getting doesn't seem to be very accurate.There seems to be a mismatch between what he's told in terms of the territory gained and the losses taken.Now, the exaggeration seems to be of a scale of, you know, either one, two, three hundred percent.rather than what the reality is on the ground.Now, as I said, one of the things which has been mentioned recently is because of the transparent battlefield and the precision strikes, the ability to mass major forces is very circumscribed and the very small units which the Russians are using at the moment, a sort of reversion to infiltration tactics, is not going to be operationally significant.So, if he is given reports which are wrong, that could further his demise, because at some stage, something in the system has to break.

And then you come back again to this class, we see in Trinity, of one of those things that could break is the army.Because if there is no coherent strategy, and all wars are fought for political reasons, but we don't know what the strategy is.is likely to be.It certainly won't be what Putin desired it to be, which is regain territory and lost spheres of influence, of which the minimum he needs to get any form of theory of victory to be credible and to sell is to capture the whole of the Donbas.So, for example, if he can last long enough to capture the whole of Donetsk, then it could be that he can sell that as a game and try and negotiate from there on the negotiating table.That would be a theory of victory which may get him out.

At the moment, it doesn't look like there's any prospect of that, gaining Donetsk this year, the operational objectives of Russia in 2026 don't look like they're going to be achieved.And therefore, it just looks more like still an attritional war, where the massive losses for minimal gain will come home to roost at a certain time.