Those who know Vladimir Putin they say there is an ugly fixation with a particularly horrible scene from recent world history.
In October 2011, the bloodied figure of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was pulled from a sewer in which he hid like a rat during the last days of his country’s civil war.
Gaddafi begs for his life before he is brutal with a bayonet and then shot many times: a disgraceful descent from his former pomp.
Putin also knows that the last Russian tsar and his family were shot like dogs by Bolshevik revolutionaries in 1917.
No wonder he is obsessed with Gaddafi’s footage.
Putin has an ugly fixation on the brutal, bloody end to Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and may have reason to fear he could face such a death as his war in Ukraine brings pain and turmoil to Russia.
Yet as Putin’s monstrous invasion of Ukraine stutters, some are wondering: can the wave finally turn against the man who has ruled Russia in one form or another for 22 years?
Sounds fantastic.
Putin lives in a bubble with a high degree of security, in which visitors meet him only after a thorough examination.
His paranoia is illustrated by the comically long table at which he receives visiting French President Emmanuel Macron.
His travels between his village palace and the Kremlin are on traffic-free and sniper-patrolled roads.
A huge security apparatus is dedicated to his personal safety, including 24-hour military units and an independent spy network with full power to eavesdrop and bugs at will.
Yet for the first time in years, Russians are suddenly suffering from severe economic pain. As sanctions bite, the ruble is falling freely.
ATMs are emptying, dollars are running low, and inflation is rising.
Fearing he will end up like Gaddafi, a lunatic and cornered Putin may even pounce, believing that even the risk of a nuclear apocalypse in the world is better than suffering such a fall.
Add to that the approximately 5,000 Russians killed in the attack on Ukraine in just a few days – with countless captives and wounded – and Putin’s grip on power may soon begin to seem precarious.
So how could it eventually be taken down?
Imagine, for example, that in the coming weeks a daily sit-in demonstration begins in Moscow by Soldiers’ Mothers, a movement founded in 1989 to fight brutal treatment of recruits.
These protests soon spread to other cities.
Heavy-handed tactics lead to bloodshed, and photos of a grandmother beaten and bloodied with truncheons are spreading in Russia.
As the outrage grows, the number of protesters increases – and a police commander, the father of a teenager killed in Ukraine, opposes the orders, takes off his police helmet and joins the protesters, making a passionate request that also spreads on social media. media.
Regional leaders – governors and mayors – are also beginning to change countries. In Moscow, crowds flock to Red Square, where in the Kremlin, Putin, eager to escape Gaddafi’s fate, descends into a waiting helicopter that takes him into terrible and lonely exile, first in Belarus and perhaps later in China.
Or maybe it wasn’t the mob storming the palace gates that ended Putin’s rule. Instead, he may face a coup by insiders.
If public opinion were directed against the dictator, many of his cronies would without hesitation overthrow or kill him to save their own skins.
Military commanders enraged by Putin’s all-Ukrainian swamp – and disgusted by the brutal tactics he has ordered them to inflict on their Ukrainian fellow Slavs – could revolt.
Other army units ordered to crush this revolt may instead join it.
If that happened, Putin would be doomed.
His elite bodyguards can protect him from assassins and terrorists, but not from tanks.
Meanwhile, faceless figures in the security agencies, well aware that their country is on the verge of collapse, could use their knowledge to remove the president’s bodyguards – and arrest him.
If neither the people of Moscow nor Putin’s kleptocratic colleagues overthrow him, the centuries-old rifts could resurface.
In the eastern Russian provinces of Siberia, Khabarovsk and the Primorye Territory, people are deeply outraged by the Kremlin’s plunder of their natural resources.
Tatars and Bashkirs, ethnic peoples living in central Russia, still remember the painful moment of independence after the 1917 Russian Revolution.
They and other subordinate peoples despise Moscow’s repression of their languages and cultures; many do not consider themselves Russians at all.
ATMs are being emptied, dollars are running low, and inflation is rising as international sanctions against Russia pay off. In the photo: Russians line up to withdraw their money from ATMs
As the outrage grows, the number of protesters grows – and a police commander, the father of a teenage recruit killed in Ukraine, opposes the orders, takes off his police helmet and joins the protesters, making a passionate request that has also been circulated on social media.
Under the right conditions, this ethnic tension can escalate into savage violence.
In a full-scale civil war, anything can happen.
Yes, every opposition faces terrible obstacles. Still, the Russian military and its security services could and would remove Putin if they knew they had to. And the mass of ordinary Russians has an invincible number.
Putin knows all this.
I wish good luck to his enemies – but the end of his regime would also be a worrying prospect.
Its fall could accelerate a new civil war in Russia, which still has the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
A mad and cornered Putin may even pounce, believing that even the risk of a nuclear apocalypse on the world is better than suffering from Gaddafi’s fate.
Even if this doomsday scenario can be avoided by anyone who followed Putin, he may not be better than the devil we know so well.