Barring any such deus ex machina, it is hard to see him standing down voluntarily. He periodically toyed with handing the presidency to a successor, perhaps retaining some “father of the nation” role. However, in a system where politics trumps law, that means putting yourself at another’s mercy, and Putin is not a man who trusts easily at the best of times. Besides, he is clearly obsessed with his place in history – he could only step down on a high, and it is hard to see any triumphs in his future.
In theory, Putin could be removed through the constitution. Article 93 allows for impeachment on the basis of serious crimes. Yet that requires not only a two-thirds vote in both chambers of parliament, but also the consent of the Constitutional and Supreme Courts. All have been packed with loyalists, and even if these opportunists thought that they were being led to destruction, it is almost impossible to see any kind of conspiracy being organised without it coming to the Kremlin’s attention.
After all, not only is the much-feared Federal Security Service (FSB) tasked with watching the elite, but so too is the more secretive Federal Protection Service (FSO). Better known for the colourfully-uniformed Kremlin guards and Putin’s black-suited and earpiece-wearing personal security detail, every morning the FSO submits to the president a dossier on what is going on within the elite, based on agents, informants and phone taps. It must make for interesting reading, these days.
The most extreme option some in the West are openly discussing is the prospect of outright assassination. This is highly unlikely, not least because the security precautions around “the Body”, as Putin is known by his security detail, are massive, complex and comprehensive to the point of paranoia. He rarely travels much these days anyway, except between his palaces and the Kremlin, and then in the presidential aircraft or an armoured Aurus Kortezh limo escorted by a huge motorcade with motorcycle outriders, vans full of heavily-armed FSO officers, an ambulance and an electronic warfare vehicle to jam any bomb detonators along the route and divert drones. Like a medieval monarch, he retains a food taster, and even the air in his palaces is constantly monitored for pathogens and poisons.
Tsar Nicholas II was infamously murdered by the Bolsheviks, but only after they had seized him and his family. The last Russian ruler who fell to an assassin was Tsar Alexander II, over 140 years ago and the FSO has no intention of letting any re-runs happen on their watch.
Where precision is impossible, what about brute force? It is a mark of the times that rumours – seemingly wholly fanciful – have been circulating that defence minister Sergei Shoigu is under suspicion of planning a coup. Certainly the only institutions which would seem able to oust Putin in a coup would be either the security agencies or, more plausibly, the army.
