What Has Risen May Fall

Could Putin actually fall?

What history teaches us about how autocrats lose power — and how Putin might hang on.

By Mar 13, 2022, 7:00am EDT

Christina Animashaun/Vocalism

As Russia's war in Ukraine looks increasingly disastrous, speculation has mounted that President Vladimir Putin's misstep could prove to be his downfall. A litany of pundits and experts take predicted that frustration with the state of war'southward costs and crushing economic sanctions could lead to the collapse of his regime.

"Vladimir Putin'southward attack on Ukraine will issue in the downfall of him and his friends," David Rothkopf alleged in the Daily Fauna. "If history is whatever guide, his overreach and his miscalculations, his weaknesses as a strategist, and the flaws in his character will undo him."

But what events could actually bring downwards Putin? And how likely might they be in the foreseeable future?

The best research on how authoritarians fall points to ii possible scenarios: a military insurrection or a pop uprising. During the Cold State of war, coups were the more mutual way for dictators to be forced out of office — think the toppling of Argentina's Juan Perón in 1955. But since the 1990s, there has been a shift in the way that authoritarians are removed. Coups have been on the pass up while popular revolts, like the Arab Leap uprisings and "colour revolutions" in the former Soviet Spousal relationship, have been on the rising.

For all the speculation almost Putin losing power, neither of these eventualities seems particularly likely in Russia — even after the disastrous initial invasion of Ukraine. This is in no small part considering Putin has washed about every bit proficient a job preparing for them every bit any dictator could.

Over the by ii decades, the Russian leader and his allies have structured nearly every cadre chemical element of the Russian land with an eye toward limiting threats to the regime. Putin has arrested or killed leading dissidents, instilled fright in the general public, and made the country'due south leadership grade dependent on his goodwill for their continued prosperity. His ability to rapidly ramp up repression during the current crisis in response to antiwar protests — using tactics ranging from mass arrests at protests to shutting downward opposition media to cut off social media platforms — is a demonstration of the regime'due south strengths.

"Putin has prepared for this eventuality for a long fourth dimension, and has taken a lot of concerted actions to make sure he's not vulnerable," says Adam Casey, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan who studies the history of coups in Russian federation and the sometime communist bloc.

Yet at the same time, scholars of authoritarianism and Russian politics are not fully fix to dominion out Putin'south autumn. Unlikely is not incommunicable; the experts I spoke with mostly believe the Ukraine invasion to have been a strategic blunder that raised the risks of both a coup and a revolution, even if their probability remains depression in accented terms.

"Before [the state of war], the adventure from either of those threats was close to zero. And now the chance in both of those respects is certainly college," says Brian Taylor, a professor at Syracuse University and writer of The Lawmaking of Putinism.

Ukrainians and their Western sympathizers cannot banking company on Putin's downfall. Just if the war proves even more disastrous for Russia'due south president than it already seems, history tells us in that location are pathways for even the well-nigh entrenched autocrats to lose their grip on power.

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Could the Ukraine war could crusade a military coup?

In a recent advent on Fob News, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) hit upon what he saw as a solution to the Ukraine war — for someone, perhaps "in the Russian military machine," to remove Vladimir Putin by assassination or a coup. "The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out," the senator argued.

He shouldn't get his hopes up. A armed services revolt confronting Putin is more possible now than it was before the invasion of Ukraine, but the odds confronting it remain long.

Naunihal Singh is one of the globe'due south leading scholars of military machine coups. His 2017 book Seizing Ability uses statistical analysis, game theory, and historical example studies to try to effigy out what causes coups and what makes them probable to succeed.

Singh finds that militaries are most likely to attempt coups in low-income countries, regimes that are neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic, and nations where coups accept recently happened. None of these atmospheric condition apply very well to modern Russia, a firmly authoritarian middle-income country that hasn't seen a coup attempt since the early on '90s.

Only at the same time, wars like Putin's can brood resentment and fear in the ranks, precisely the conditions under which we've seen coups in other countries. "There are reasons why Putin might be increasingly concerned here," Singh says, pointing to coups in Mali in 2012 and Burkina Faso earlier this year every bit precedent. Indeed, a 2017 study of civil wars institute that coups are more likely to happen during conflicts when governments confront stronger opponents — suggesting that wartime deaths and defeat really do raise the odds of military machine mutinies.

In Singh'south view, the Ukraine conflict raises the odds of a coup in Russian federation for two reasons: Information technology could weaken the armed forces leadership'due south allegiance to Putin, and it could provide an unusual opportunity to plan a move against him.

The motive for Russian officers to launch a coup would be adequately straightforward: The costly Ukraine entrada becomes unpopular among, and fifty-fifty personally threatening to, key members of the armed forces.

Leading Russian journalists and experts have warned that Putin is surrounded by a shrinking bubble of hawkish yes-men who feed his nationalist obsessions and tell him only what he wants to hear. This very small group drew up an invasion program that assumed the Ukrainian military would put up minimal resistance, allowing Russia to rapidly seize Kyiv and install a puppet authorities.

This plan both underestimated Ukraine'southward resolve and overestimated the competence of the Russian military, leading to meaning Russian casualties and a failed early push toward the Ukrainian capital. Since and then, Russian forces take been bogged downwards in a irksome and costly conflict defined past horrific bombardments of populated areas. International sanctions have been far harsher than the Kremlin expected, sending the Russian economic system into a tailspin and specifically punishing its elite's ability to engage in commerce abroad.

According to Farida Rustamova, a Russian reporter well-sourced in the Kremlin, loftier-ranking noncombatant officials in the Russian authorities are already unhappy virtually the war and its economic consequences. One can only imagine the sentiment amongst military officers, few of whom announced to have been informed of the war plans beforehand — and many of whom are at present tasked with killing Ukrainians en masse.

Layered on summit of that is something that often can precipitate coups: personal insecurity among high-ranking generals and intelligence officers. Co-ordinate to Andrei Soldatov, a Russia practiced at the Center for European Policy Assay think tank, Putin is punishing high-ranking officials in the FSB — the successor agency to the KGB — for the state of war'due south early on failures. Soldatov'southward sources say that Putin has placed Sergei Beseda, the leader of the FSB'due south foreign intelligence branch, under house arrest (equally well as his deputy).

Reports like this are hard to verify. But they track with Singh's predictions that poor functioning in wars generally leads autocrats to find someone to blame — and that fearfulness of punishment could convince some among Russia's security elite that the best way to protect themselves is to get rid of Putin.

Rosgvardiya (Russian National Guard) servicemen detain a demonstrator during a protest in Moscow against Russia'south invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images

"I don't think Putin volition assassinate them, but they may nonetheless take to live in fear and humiliation," Singh says. "They'll be afraid for their own futures."

The conflict too provides disgruntled officials with an opening. In disciplinarian countries like Russia, generals don't e'er have many opportunities to speak with ane some other without fright of surveillance or informants. Wars alter that, at least somewhat.

At that place are at present "lots of skilful reasons for generals to be in a room with key players and even to evade surveillance by the state, since they will want to evade NATO and US surveillance," Singh explains.

That said, coups are famously difficult to pull off. And the Russian security land in particular is organized around a frustrating one.

Contrary to virtually people's expectations, successful military coups are by and large pretty bloodless; smart plotters typically don't launch if they believe there's a real gamble information technology'll come down to a gun boxing in the presidential palace. Instead, they ensure they have overwhelming back up from the military machine in the capital — or at least can convince anybody that they do — before they make their motion.

And on that front, Russia experts say Putin has done a groovy chore of what political scientists call "coup-proofing" his government. He has seeded the military with counterintelligence officers, making it hard for potential mutineers to know whom to trust. He has delegated primary responsibility for repression at home to security agencies other than the regular armed services, which both physically distances troops from Moscow and reduces an incentive to insubordinate (orders to kill one'due south own people being quite unpopular in the ranks).

He has as well intensified the insurrection coordination problem by splitting upwards the land security services into different groups led by trusted allies. In 2016, Putin created the Russian National Baby-sit — also called the Rosgvardiya — as an entity separate from the military. Under the control of thuggish Putin loyalist Viktor Zolotov, it performs internal security tasks like border security and counterterrorism in conjunction with Russia's intelligence services.

These services are split into four federal branches. 3 of these — the FSB, GRU, and SVR — have their own elite special operations forces. The fourth, the Federal Protection Services, is Russia's Secret Service equivalent with a twist: It has in the range of 20,000 officers, according to a 2013 estimate. By contrast, the Secret Service has about 4,500, in a state with a population roughly 3 times Russia'southward. This allows the Federal Protection Services to function as a kind of Praetorian Guard that can protect Putin from assassins and coups alike.

The result is that the regular military, the almost powerful of Russia'due south armed factions, does not necessarily dominate Russia's internal security landscape. Any successful plot would probable require complex coordination amongst members of unlike agencies who may non know each other well or trust each other very much. In a authorities known to be shot through with potential informers, that's a powerful disincentive against a coup.

"The coordination dilemma ... is peculiarly astringent when y'all have multiple unlike intelligence agencies and means of monitoring the military finer, which the Russians practise," Casey explains. "There's just a lot of different failsafe measures that Putin has congenital over the years that are oriented toward preventing a coup."

Christina Animashaun/Vox

Dreams of a Russian uprising — but tin information technology happen?

In an interview on the New York Times's Sway podcast, former FBI special agent Clint Watts warned of casualties in the Ukraine state of war leading to some other Russian revolution.

"The mothers in Russia have always been the pushback against Putin during these conflicts. This is going to be next-level calibration," he argued. "Nosotros're worried about Kyiv falling today. I'thousand worried nigh Moscow falling between day 30 and six months from now."

A revolution confronting Putin has get likelier since the war began; in fact, it'due south probably more plausible than a coup. In the 21st century, we have seen more than popular uprisings in post-Soviet countries — like Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine itself — than we take coups. Despite that, the best evidence suggests the odds of one erupting in Russia are still fairly low.

Few scholars are more influential in this field than Harvard's Erica Chenoweth. Their finding, in work with young man political scientist Maria Stephan, that nonviolent protest is more probable to topple regimes than an armed insurgence is i of the rare political science claims to have transcended academia, condign a staple of op-eds and activist rhetoric.

When Chenoweth looks at the state of affairs in Russia today, they note that the longstanding advent of stability in Putin'due south Russia might exist deceiving.

"Russian federation has a long and storied legacy of ceremonious resistance [movements]," Chenoweth tells me. "Unpopular wars have precipitated ii of them."

Here, Chenoweth is referring to two early on-20th-century uprisings confronting the czars: the 1905 uprising that led to the creation of the Duma, Russia's legislature; and the more famous 1917 revolution that gave the states the Soviet Marriage. Both events were triggered in meaning part by Russian wartime losses (in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I, respectively). And indeed, we have seen notable dissent already during the current conflict, including demonstrations in near seventy Russian cities on March 6 lonely.

Information technology'southward conceivable that these protests grow if the war continues to go poorly, especially if information technology produces significant Russian casualties, clear evidence of mass atrocities confronting civilians, and continued deep economic pain from sanctions. But we are nevertheless very far from a mass uprising.

Chenoweth's inquiry suggests you demand to become well-nigh three.5 pct of the population involved in protests to guarantee some kind of government concession. In Russia, that translates to about 5 million people. The antiwar protests oasis't reached annihilation fifty-fifty close to that calibration, and Chenoweth is not willing to predict that it's likely for them to approach it.

"It is hard to organize sustained collective protest in Russia," they annotation. "Putin'due south regime has criminalized many forms of protests, and has close down or restricted the activities of groups, movements, and media outlets perceived to be in opposition or associated with the West."

Protesters clash with police in Independence Foursquare in Kyiv on February xx, 2014. Demonstrators were calling for the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych over corruption and an abandoned trade understanding with the Eu.

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

A mass revolution, like a coup, is something that Putin has been preparing to confront for years. By some accounts, it has been his number i fear since the Arab Spring and especially the 2013 Euromaidan insurgence in Ukraine. The repressive barriers Chenoweth points out are significant, making it unlikely — though, once again, not impossible — that the antiwar protests evolve into a move that topples Putin, even during a fourth dimension of heightened stress for the authorities.

In an authoritarian society like Russia, the authorities's willingness to arrest, torture, and kill dissidents creates a similar coordination problem as the one coup plotters feel —just on a grander calibration. Instead of needing to get a small-scale conduce of war machine and intelligence officers to risk decease, leaders need to convince thousands of ordinary citizens to practise the same.

In past revolutions, opposition-controlled media outlets and social media platforms have helped solve this difficulty. Merely during the war, Putin has shut down notable independent media outlets and cracked downwards on social media, restricting Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram admission. He has also introduced emergency measures that punish the spread of "imitation" information about the state of war past up to fifteen years in jail, leading even international media outlets like the New York Times to pull their local staff. Antiwar protesters accept been arrested en masse.

Nigh Russians go their news from government-run media, which have been serving up a steady diet of pro-war propaganda. Many of them appear to genuinely believe it: An independent stance poll found that 58 percent of Russians supported the war to at least some degree.

"What these polls reflect is how many people really tune in to land media, which tells them what to think and what to say," Russian journalist Alexey Kovalyov tells my colleague Sean Illing.

The dauntless protesters in Russian cities evidence that the government grip on the data surroundings isn't airtight. But for this dissent to evolve into something bigger, Russian activists will demand to figure out a broader way to get around censorship, government agitprop, and repression. That's non easy to do, and requires skilled activists. Chenoweth's research, and the literature on civil resistance more than broadly, finds that the tactical choices of opposition activists have a tremendous impact on whether the protesters ultimately succeed in their aims.

Organizers need to "give people a range of tactics they can participate in, because non everyone is going to want to protest given the circumstances. Just people may be willing to boycott or do other things that announced to have lower risk but nevertheless take a significant bear on, " says Hardy Merriman, a senior advisor to the International Eye on Nonviolent Conflict.

You can already run across some tactical inventiveness at work. Alexis Lerner, a scholar of dissent in Russian federation at the United states of america Naval Academy, tells me that Russians are using unconventional methods like graffiti and TikTok videos to get effectually the state'due south censorship and coercive apparatus. She besides notes that an unusual amount of criticism of the regime has come up from high-profile Russians, ranging from oligarchs to social media stars.

Only at the same fourth dimension, you can also see the result of the past decades of repression at work. During his time in power, Putin has systematically worked to marginalize and repress anyone he identifies as a potential threat. At the highest level, this means attacking and imprisoning prominent dissenters like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexei Navalny.

Opposition supporters nourish an unauthorized anti-Putin rally chosen by opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Saint petersburg, Russia, on May 5, 2018, ii days ahead of Vladimir Putin'south inauguration for a fourth Kremlin term.

Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images

But the repression as well extends down the social nutrient chain, from journalists to activists on downwardly to ordinary Russians who may accept dabbled too much in politics. The result is that anti-Putin forces are extremely depleted, with many Putin opponents operating in exile fifty-fifty before the Ukraine disharmonize began.

Moreover, revolutions don't mostly succeed without elite action. The prototypical success of a revolutionary protestation motion is not the storming of the Bastille simply the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. In that case, Mubarak's security forces refused to repress the protesters and pressured him to resign as they continued.

"Symbolic protest is usually non enough to bring near change," Chenoweth explains. "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."

Given the Russian president'southward level of control over his security establishment, it will take a truly massive protest movement to wedge them apart.

What are the odds of regime change in Russia?

Information technology can be difficult to talk virtually low-probability events like the collapse of the Putin regime. Suggesting that it's possible can come beyond as suggesting it'southward likely; suggesting it's unlikely can come up across as suggesting it'due south impossible.

But it's of import to see a grayness surface area here: accepting that Putin's end is more probable than information technology was on February 23, the day before Russia launched its offensive, merely all the same significantly less likely than his regime continuing to muddle through. The war has put new pressure level on the regime, at both the elite and the mass public level, only the fact remains that Putin'due south Russia is an extremely effective autocracy with strong guardrails against coups and revolutions.

Then how should we think about the odds? Is it closer to 20 percent — or 1 per centum?

This kind of question is impossible to answer with anything like precision. The data environment is so murky, due to both Russian censorship and the fog of war, that information technology's difficult to discern basic facts similar the actual number of Russian state of war expressionless. We don't actually have a proficient sense of how key members of the Russian security institution are feeling most the war or whether the people trying to organize mass protests are talented enough to get around ambitious repression.

And the about-futurity furnishings of cardinal policies are similarly unclear. Take international sanctions. We know that these measures take had a devastating upshot on the Russian economic system. What we don't know is who the Russian public will arraign for their immiseration: Putin for launching the war — or America and its allies for imposing the sanctions? Can reality pierce through Putin'south control of the information surround? The answers to these questions will make a huge divergence.

Putin built his legitimacy around the idea of restoring Russian federation's stability, prosperity, and global standing. By threatening all 3, the war in Ukraine is shaping up to be the greatest test of his regime to date.

Correction, March xiii, 9:55 am: An earlier version of this piece mistakenly included the toppling of Iran's Mohammed Mossadegh on a listing of a dictatorships brought down by a coup rather than Cold State of war coups in full general. He was a democratically elected prime government minister who governed from 1951 to 1953, before he was ousted by a coup, with support from United states and British intelligence.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/22961563/putin-russia-ukraine-coup-revolution-invasion

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