When the demonic despot Joseph Stalin suffered a severe stroke in March 1953 at the estate near Moscow, four of his closest associates hurried to the scene.
None of them, all the candidates to replace the dictator as leader of the Soviet Union, wanted to see Stalin live. But everyone was afraid of what might happen if he died.
In the end, the head of the Okhrana, Lavrenty Beria, spoke up: “Why are you in such a panic? Don’t you see, Comrade Stalin is fast asleep. Don’t disturb him!
The doctor was not called for hours. Stalin continued to sink and died a few days later.
With a similar miasma of indecision now engulfing Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, for the first time since he came to power in 2000, his regime looks under serious threat.
Director of the Russian National Defense Control Center Mikhail Mizintsev (left), Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (right) and President Vladimir Putin inspect an exhibition of military equipment before an expanded meeting of the Board of the Russian Defense Ministry at the National Defense Control Center in Moscow
The war in Ukraine has turned into a disaster and everyone is looking for someone to blame. Anyone can be declared a warmonger or a traitor, or even both.
Naturally, the seething atmosphere of distrust is whipped up by the secret services both in Ukraine and in the West.
Counterintelligence campaigns target, in particular, the FSB, the successor to the KGB, which is the cornerstone of Putin’s government.
Senior FSB officers are ruthless, highly competent opportunists. They support the war not out of patriotic mania, nor because they share Putin’s bare-chested personality cult.
Anatoly Bolyukh, Deputy Head of the 5th FSB Service, Head of the Operational Information Department
Like the rest of Putin’s henchmen, they are driven by greed and their goal is personal power.
They want to make a lot of money and spend it on buying property in London and the Mediterranean or sending their children to Western schools.
Currently, sanctions make this very difficult. As a result, they became worried that no one in the FSB wants Russia to become the European analogue of North Korea.
But I do not believe that an FSB coup is brewing, at least not yet. Russians know their own history and understand that regime change only happens when the secret police, military and politicians work together, as they did in 1991 when President Mikhail Gorbachev was overthrown.
But Putin is removing key figures at all three poles of power. Colonel-General Sergei Beseda, head of the FSB foreign intelligence department, was the first to hear a knock on the door. foreign officials.
Sergei Orestovich Beseda, 68, Russian politician and government agent, since 2009 head of the 5th service of the Federal Security Service, Colonel General.
But his real crime may have been that he led Putin into believing that Ukrainians yearn for regime change and Russian occupiers would be greeted by crowds with waving flags and bouquets of flowers.
Roman Gavrilov, deputy head of the National Guard, was next hit, accused of leaking classified information to the West and “squandering fuel.”
The truth is that Putin is furious because many young soldiers of the National Guard, a paramilitary force whose peacetime role has been to quell protests in Russian cities, are protesting themselves. In Ukraine, they believe that they are treated like cannon fodder.
After Gavrilov’s arrest, the total number of generals suspended from participation in the bungled invasion is said to have reached nine. Politicians were not spared either: two of Putin’s closest associates added to the list of missing persons.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu did not appear in public for more than 12 days due to rumors of “heart problems”.
Many suspect this is a diplomatic ruse, and that the truth is that Shoigu succumbed to Putin’s rampant paranoia after his 31-year-old youngest daughter, Ksenia, posted a photo on social media of her posing with a child in blue and yellow tones of Ukrainian flag.
Then there is Anatoly Chubais, widely known as the man who spotted Putin’s talent in the 1990s and launched his political career.
Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for Cooperation with International Organizations to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals Anatoly Chubais at a meeting of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum
Chubais was rewarded with a series of lucrative sinecures…but on Wednesday he angered his protégé by resigning in protest against the war and fleeing to Turkey.
Never since the collapse of the Soviet Union have there been such fervent rumors and counter-rumours in the Kremlin. A circular firing squad is formed, everyone pointing weapons at each other.
And when conscripts begin to return from the Ukrainian front, bringing with them horror stories of war, the political temperature will only rise.
Now, most ordinary people in Russia believe the version of state television that there is a successful military operation to overthrow the neo-Nazi cabal in Kyiv and prevent ethnic cleansing or even nuclear genocide against Russians in Ukraine.
When these lies are exposed, people may begin to rebel against the man above. The fate of Putin depends on how his henchmen react to this.
Mark Galeotti is Professor Emeritus at the School of Slavic and Eastern European Studies at University College London and author of We Need to Talk About Putin.