Has The End Come For Putin? - Adebayo Adeniran (Medium)

Has The End Come For Putin?

Is the losing Tsar really fighting for his political and physical life?

Adebayo Adeniran

Medium, November 21, 2022

Vladmir Putin via Wikimedia Commons.

It was the presence of Zelenskyy at Kherson.

The Churchillian Ukrainian leader who had defied the odds and fought to the very death, went to the only region that Vladimir Putin had captured to signify his victory and Putin’s loss.

No sooner had the evacuation of Kherson taken place than the recriminations against Putin had begun.

His brain trust —Alexander Dugin—whose daughter was tragically killed a few months ago in a car bomb was first out of the woods in suggesting that the losing Tsar be assassinated.

For Dugin to come out to make an extraordinary statement on the fate of his principal does speak volumes.

But mind you, he isn’t the only one with this perspective among those who were staunch supporters of Putin. The view from sources close to the Kremlin is that the end is nigh for a man who has been roundly defeated.

While it is pertinent to point out that Crimea, which is a crown jewel, remains in the hands of the aggressor and no peace talks will take place until Ukraine’s terms by way of complete withdrawal of troops are met.

And for as long as Crimea remains in Russian hands, Putin will be working overtime to spin the war as something of a victory.

However, it must be stated that this will be a difficult sell in the coming days, weeks and months.

But back to the subject of this article: Is the end nigh for Putin? Is he at risk of being removed or being assassinated?

The answer is a resounding yes.

History tells us that losing Tsars do not survive; Putin’s position before the war was completely unassailable; the oligarchs had been brought to heel, opposition groups effectively muzzled and enemies had been taken out.

And in times past, he had stopped short of invading his neighbours, preferring to foist his backed candidates on the voting public. But you will remember that this move unraveled, when the Ukrainian people took the streets in what was called the “orange revolution” in the early to mid 2000s.

But that was then and this is now.

The myth of the impenetrable Putin has been irrevocably shattered leaving our man more vulnerable than ever.

Make no mistakes about it, oligarchs like Len Blavatnik, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and their ilk have been waiting for this moment for a very long time and plans are already afoot to take out one of the most remarkable individuals to emerge in world politics in the last forty years.

It is no longer a case of if it will ever happen but when will it happen.

When the war began, there were those who believed that Putin had already won. This view in their heads was countenanced by the huge energy reserves that Russia was sitting on.

What they failed to realize was the degree to which the invasion of an European country in the twenty-first century would galvanize the West and its allies.

What America has done under Joe Biden quite successfully is to fight a proxy war with huge long term benefits for the United States and very little for Russia and China, as it happens.

Xi Jingping, who was initially supportive of Vladimir Putin has backtracked somewhat. The head of the CCP has been working overtime to consolidate his position while dealing with the Taiwan situation too.

Russia’s economy has taken an almighty hit from the plethora of sanctions and it is set to suffer a very deep recession and Putin’s calculations have backfired spectacularly.

When the Tsar made the decision to invade Ukraine, he believed that victory was within his grasp; He certainly hadn’t contemplated the Ukrainians putting up a fight and nor did he think that losing was possible.

Far too many strategic errors were made in the early days of the war and these costly mistakes have left him fighting for his life.

Extraordinary, isn’t it?

Thanks very much for reading.