Here's How Putin Will Be Taken Down

The sole question concerning Putin's demise is not "if," but "when" — and who will slap on the cuffs, or put a bullet in his head.

In July 1917, Anton Deniken, chief of staff to a senior Russian general, reported to headquarters:

The offensive thus resulted disastrously, yet never before had I had the good fortune to fight with greater numerical superiority in bayonets and materials. Never had success seemed more assured. On thirteen miles of front I had 184 batteries, against 29 enemy batteries ; 900 guns against 300; the batteries that were to go into the attack were 138 against 17.  All this was reduced to annihilation. May the blood of these heroes be upon the heads of those who caused their untimely death, willingly or unwillingly! Powerful measures must be taken, if the army is to be rescued from its ruins.

I’ll wager that some Russian Army chief of staff is reporting essentially the same message today from Ukraine; only in this case his boss, a major general, likely has been knocked off by wily Ukrainian fighters.

The February and October 1917 revolutions that led to the overthrow and demise of Tsar Nicholas II came after Russia had lost some 2 million troops under largely incompetent command amid a faltering economy and deep war weariness. Three-hundred years of Romanov rule came crashing down on one midnight in March of that year. And, of course, the tsar and his family were assassinated by the Bolsheviks the following year.

The parallels of that time with today are striking in some ways, not so in others. In any case, certain verities of Russian history repeat themselves. Vladimir Putin would be wise to pay close attention. His own rule is on the line. And if he is taken down, his own siloviki (i.e., the security elites) will do it, spurred by a collapsing economy and public disgust. The catalyst, as in 1917, may come from the armed forces.

Historian Alexander Rabinowitch attributes the 1917 revolution, in large part, to “gross mismanagement of the war effort, continuing military defeats, domestic economic dislocation, and outrageous scandals surrounding the monarchy.” The Russian economy, blocked from Europe’s markets by the war, came under great strain, accompanied by soaring inflation, leading to vicious cycles of public protests and severe government repression, including massacres of civilians.

The rot at Russia’s core bled out into the undersupplied and poorly led armed forces, deeply demoralized by major defeats on the battlefield. Mutinies broke out, starting with the Petrograd garrison. Officers, many incompetent, risked losing their lives to their own disgruntled troops as much as to the enemy. The feckless tsar’s having had taken direct command of the armed forces only made things worse. Many of his own previously dependable Cossacks, whom he used against protesters, went over to the Bolsheviks.

British historian Edward Acton writes that “Nicholas undermined the loyalty of even those closest to the throne [and] opened an unbridgeable breach between himself and the public opinion.” Nicholas had lost the support of the elites as well as the Russian people, setting the stage for his overthrow.

Revise the dates, change out the characters, make a few other tweaks, and the above scenario broadly lays out Vladimir Putin’s own inevitable demise. The main variable is not if, but when. Call it prophecy, or prognostication, wild guess or personal delusion, but here’s my take on how Putin will be taken down.

The first question is How. Over the last three decades popular uprisings have taken sway over military coups as the means of overturning regimes. Think “Arab Spring” and “Color Revolutions.” In fact, in this century, there have been more popular uprisings in former Soviet republics, e.g., Kazakhstan, Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine, than coups. Putin will most likely be ousted in a palace coup encouraged by popular protests rather than the former exclusively.

The next question is Who and Why. Key here is the role of Russia’s elites. For contemporary revolutions to succeed, elites generally need to participate. In the Russian context, these are the mega-rich oligarchs and, more importantly, the all-powerful siloviki. “Elites will jump ship or attempt to liquidate the captain if they feel they need to. With Russia’s looming economic collapse and international isolation, the oligarchs and cronies will continue to lose billions of dollars,” writes Russia scholar, Alexander J. Motyl. “When prosperity and survival appear less certain, power and money are weak bonds of fealty,” he adds. Finally, “Controlling the forces of coercion works when things are going well for the autocrat. When things are not — when a disastrous war is sapping the lifeblood of the military — their loyalty is far from assured.”

Adds Harvard’s Erica Chenowith, “What makes such movements succeed is the ability to create, facilitate, or precipitate shifts in the loyalty of the pillars of support, including military and security elites, state media, oligarchs, and Putin’s inner circle of political associates.”

The pointed spear of a Russian move against Putin is, again, the siloviki, the spies, security toughs, military men. And not only because they have the guns.

Former CIA senior clandestine officer Steve Hall offers invaluable insights into the siloviki. He served as the Chief of Central Eurasia Division, overseeing intelligence operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union and the former Warsaw Pact and is fluent in Russian. In a recent commentary in the Washington Post, he writes:

The siloviki pose a much more serious danger for Putin. If the security elite perceives the system is rotting, they will do what’s necessary to protect their interests. They have weapons and the personnel to threaten Putin.

The siloviki, watching the slow-motion dissolution of the kleptocratic autocracy that has kept them in power for the past three decades, have the ability to end Putin’s regime. They may decide to act.

These men, he adds, “not only possess hard power, but they know how to use it and are inclined to do so.” They are accustomed to acting in extreme secrecy and “small highly compartmented groups.”

Journalists and a variety of experts cite ad nauseam the “failsafe” anti-coup measures Putin has put in place over the years: his 20,000-man praetorian guard — the Federal Protection Service (FSO), the alphabet soup of Bond-villain spy agencies — GRU, FSB, SVR — and his own newly custom-built 340,000-strong internal security police, the Rosgvardia. With all this security in place, they say, there’s little chance of an anti-Putin plot to even germinate much less be launched.

My response is: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Somoza, Ceausescu, Mubarak, Honecker, Gaddafi. The list goes on of long-ruling strongmen who had “failsafed” their regime’s security with layers upon layers of thug-laden agencies, bodyguards (remember Gaddafi’s comely blonde Ukrainian bodyguard?) and other neolithic, brass-knuckle entities. Thing is, when the coffers run dry and your people (including the elites) get pissed off enough, your carefully confected mass of protection turns into a mountain of butter, melting under your ass. This can go as much for mighty Putin as for some tin-pot dictator.

As another senior CIA veteran, Douglas London, told the Wall Street Journal, “Putin will use intimidation, violence, repression and bribery to combat counterintelligence risk and will reward blind loyalty from the incompetent and opportunistic sycophants who lord over his system. But these measures will only create incentives for the brave to act — and it takes only a few to make an extraordinary difference.”

The final question is What. What likely will spark the act, or acts, which will bring Tsar Vladimir to his knees?

Anatoly Chubais, special representative for the environment, abruptly resigned last week over Ukraine and left the country. Resignations of other less senior officials have been reported. Should this turn into a wave of departures, it would constitute a red flag for the Kremlin, an overt sign of widespread discontent inside the government. And a move by Putin to crack down on mass protests would only accelerate high-level resignations.

The key catalyst leading to Putin’s end would emanate, as with Nicholas, from the military, whose casualties in World War I were astronomical. In the first month of Putin’s misadventure in Ukraine, Russia has suffered up to 15,000 KIA and some 20,000 wounded, according to NATO. This equals Soviet losses during ten years of Moscow’s lost cause in Afghanistan in the ‘80s. (As Afghanistan senior country officer at the State Department, I kept a tally of the body count on my office wall.) Ukrainian authorities claim their forces have killed seven Russian generals and even more sub-commanders in a kind of Phoenix Program targeting Russian brass.

Russian ground forces reportedly suffer from lack of supplies, poor equipment, bad leadership, inadequate food rations, primitive coms, low morale and high casualties. One brigade commander, a colonel, reportedly was run over with a tank by his own troops after losing 50 percent of his men. Another colonel reportedly committed suicide over the decrepit condition of his unit’s armored equipment. The Ukrainians claim to have more tanks than pre-invasion as a result of Russian troops simply abandoning them.

Were he alive today, Colonel Anton Deniken would find the situation very familiar to that which he reported on over a century ago.

A proliferation of mutinies and desertions would spell grave trouble for Moscow and Putin’s fate. Such actions would cascade up the line, as in 1917, and goad the elites to finally act to remove Putin from power, especially after the inevitable purges and witch hunts that follow a major leader-induced catastrophe.

“The likely agents have to be the military, or less likely, the security services,” Thomas Maertens, a former senior State Department Russia expert and White House official in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, told me. “Thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed, and we are now up seven generals KIA. The military is the group that is suffering and thus the ones most likely to take action.”

Alexander Motyl asserts the pieces are in place for Putin’s removal:

The combination of popular protest, elite machinations, state failure, declining legitimacy, a grinding war, and international isolation inevitably will have only one outcome: Putin’s ouster. Some analysts suggest that he risks assassination. Others argue that, since Putin is ensconced in a bunker, decapitating him need not entail physical violence. It can be achieved by severing the “thin thread” that binds him to Russia’s executive institutions. Putin can be neutralized simply by being completely isolated.

Who will slap on the cuffs, or put a bullet in his head? Ancient Greek philosopher Xenophon gives us a hint: “It is never possible for the tyrant to trust that he is loved…Plots against tyrants spring from none more than from those who pretend to love them most.”

The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.