At 69 (he will be 70 on October 7), twenty-two after being first elected President of Russia, Vladimir Putin is living through the most delicate moment of his long reign in the Kremlin. Seven months after invading Ukraine, his troops control the same area as they did on February 28, four days after the special operation began. Kharkiv was retaken by Kyiv’s forces, which launched a counteroffensive in Donbass in early September, retaking miles of land. The Muscovites are on the run; a few hours ago they lost Lyman, a key logistical hub in the Donbass.
But Putin doesn’t seem to care. When Lyman returned to Ukrainian hands, he was busy talking about the annexation of the Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions (which the Russian military does not fully control) following last week’s sham referendums. Signs of trouble were different, however: the admission of Chinese concern after the summit with Xi Jinping in Samarkand in mid-September; the communiqué issued yesterday by the leaders of the army, which admitted the withdrawal to prevent our soldiers from being captured; Above all, protests erupted in many places after the announcement of partial mobilization, which will call around 300,000 citizens to arms, and the resulting flight to the borders to avoid being sent to the front.
The question arises: will Putin resist? Or will someone else be behind the Kremlin desk in the not too distant future? The Politico site attempted an answer, identifying twelve possible successors and ranking them based on their likelihood of taking the Tsar’s place and their danger from a nuclear perspective.
October 2, 2022 | 14:30
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