INTREP360 FLASH SIGNAL
PUTIN FEARS A COUP: THE NEXT ROUND OF PURGES
This is an understatement. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Federal Security Service (FSB) thugs are likely very concerned about ‘another’ coup. The Kremlin does not have much to show for the 1,139,900 casualties they have sustained over the past 44 months. Russian air defenses are ineffective – Ukraine can seemingly strike targets anywhere in Russia – and the country is teetering on economic collapse.
The oligarchs and minority ethnic Russian elites residing in Moscow and St. Petersburg are feeling the effects of the war now in realtime. The natives are growing restless as open protests in Yekaterinburg, Moscow and St. Petersburg suggests. Security after all – financial and personal – is one of Maslow’s five hierarchy of needs.
As John Herbest, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and former US ambassador to Ukraine stated, “It tells us that the Kremlin is being paranoid … [and] Putin is looking for enemies to try to bolster his regime.”
It is not a good time – if it ever was – to be on team Russia. When paranoia sets in, purges are not far behind. Historically, Russia is pretty good at purges. Many Russian oligarchs, general officers, and politicians have already been relieved of their duties by the FSB via open windows, cups of tea or coffee, and 9mm hemorrhages. A few have taken place outside the borders of Russia as we noted in our interview with The Sun in October 2023.
More may soon experience the paranoia of Mad Vlad as the Kremlin attempts to rearrange the deck chairs aboard their version of the Titanic. For now, it appears the exiled Mikhail Khodorkovsky and 22 members of Russia’s Anti-War Committee have moved to the top of the FSB list of threats to the regime.
This is not the first threat to the Putin regime as a result of his ‘special military operation’ – nor will it be the last. He is closing the circle a bit. As Fox News noted, “Putin is tightening his grip on power by elevating younger loyalists amid growing instability inside the Kremlin as he ages.” This includes Anna Evgenievna Tsivilyova, Putin’s first cousin once removed, who currently heads the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, a state-run organization that supports Russian soldiers and veterans.
Two previous attempts were foiled – one by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, the other by the FSB.
In June 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group leader, led an uprising against Putin after months of feuding with top military officials over the conduct of the war.
The other occurred in December 2022. In our “Circling Valkyries over the Kremlin” article we wrote in The Hill in January 2023, Putin abruptly canceled a visit to Nizhny Tagil after General Alexei Maslov, a high-profile special representative of the Uralvagonzavod tank factory, died “unexpectedly” of a heart attack on Christmas Day.
Maslov had the means and credentials to pull off a coup d’état. He was the former commander in chief of all ground forces in Russia, and later the Russian military representative to NATO. His peer contacts in the West would have been useful in helping to negotiate an immediate end to the war in Ukraine.
Both were killed by the FSB – Prigozhin in a plane crash, Maslov a ‘heart attack.’
Business as usual for Murder Incorporated.