Ukrainian intelligence has reportedly released information that a group of figures in Russia’s business and political elite is forming, ready to eliminate Putin by poisoning him and faking sudden illness or an accident
Questions about the possibility of a coup ousting Vladimir Putin are not new, and the course of the war, which many analysts say is not going according to Moscow’s plans, could only exacerbate them.
Well, according to the Kiev media so not an impartial source: and it’s good to report it immediately there would be a change of pace in Moscow.
According to various media reports, the Ukrainian intelligence service has indications that a group of influential figures is forming among the Russian business and political elite ready to get rid of Vladimir Putin.
According to the same sources, the group would have a choice of different methods to carry out the coup: poisoning, sudden illness, or accident.
The time horizon would be tight: the aim would be to depose the president as quickly as possible in order to restore economic relations with the West.
A section of the elite has already elected the director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FBS) Oleksandr Bortnikov as Putin’s successor.
In recent days, several highranking officers of the FSB had been placed under house arrest and, as Marco Imarisio notes here, since the first days of the war, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, the hawk whispering in the President’s ear, and Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov.
Despite everything, as Paolo Valentino wrote, Putin still seems to be in full control of all the levers of power and seems to have a hard core in public opinion that supports his decisions, also thanks to the strength and penetration of his propaganda. “He has total power says an Italian manager who was in Russia for many years and while the situation is pushing some of the oligarchs to voice dissatisfaction, these voices currently have no political or military side.”
And yet, as Valentino always wrote, no one denies the creaks, the tremors, signs that something is moving: the thousands of arrests made by the security forces in a few days during spontaneous demonstrations; the pacifist attitude of some oligarchs like Fridman and Deripaska, of sports and show business personalities. Not to mention episodes like the live TV protest by Marina Ovsyannikova, the journalist who appeared on the evening news a few days ago to protest the war.
“I believe that Putin will also fall, but not now, it takes time,” said Valentino Valeriy Solovei, a political scientist and historian who previously headed the Department of Institutional Affairs at the famed MGIMO, Moscow University’s Institute of International Relations, due to fired for his independent views. According to the scholar, the situation will worsen, the war in Ukraine will affect our conscience and our standard of living, and will have serious social and economic consequences, which could lead to a political crisis. Solovei considers the dissatisfaction of the dissidents, oligarchs and entrepreneurs to be an important and decisive factor: at the moment they are not ready to speak out, but if the drift continues, they could join, they have ties to some political groups and can unite enormous pressure on Putin. But that won’t happen before autumn, the strong regime and the tightening of the screws of repression have already shown that it will not tolerate contradiction.
March 20, 2022 (change March 20, 2022 | 17:05)
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