Perhaps nine of Russia’s regions and republics could be ready to call independence referendums, having had enough of a Muscovite clique which seizes their natural resources, conscripts their young men, and offers them nothing in return. The generals and admirals who hold the other half of the nuclear codes could still be manoeuvring. The siloviki, the strongmen around Putin, sense his vulnerability, and are making alliances in preparation for the transition. Look closer, though, and that unity begins to look provisional. People rally to their leaders during war, and the effect of sanctions has been to strengthen Putin’s control over the economy. There are no meaningful opposition parties or critical newspapers. Putin’s approval ratings hover around 80 per cent, and his most vocal opponents are in exile or in prison. Today, the same Russian Federation appears united. None of them foresaw that the chief instrument in the dissolution of the USSR would be Boris Yeltsin’s Russian Federation. One of the reasons that Western Kremlinologists failed to predict the end of the Soviet Union was that they knew little of the necessarily secret rivalries within it.

Now, all of a sudden, the curtain has been snatched back, revealing the Wizard of Oz as a small, mediocre, frightened man.įrom the outside, dictatorships can look monolithic. But Putin’s power rests on projection, on propaganda, on the image of invincibility. This is the beginning of the end for Vladimir Putin regardless of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s decision to turn around last night.

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