The war in Ukraine has weakened Vladimir Putin’s once vice-like grip on power and he could even be killed in a coup d'état, a former Russian Foreign Minister has predicted.
Russia’s economy is being slowly strangled by sanctions, her troops are dying and the result could be that Putin is forced out by an “armed escort either to the grave or to retirement”, Andrei Kozyrev said.
Mr Kozyrev, who served under Boris Yeltsin and now lives in the United States, said that Putin would be keenly aware about how many of his predecessors were violently removed from power:
“Many Russian tsars were killed,” he mused.
“Many were dismissed one way or the other.
“Even in the Soviet Union, there were ways; Stalin was said to have been poisoned, Khrushchev was just escorted out of the Kremlin.
“With Putin, I very much expect there to be resistance growing and discontent growing that will be resolved one way or another. I don’t know which way but Russian history is full of unexpected outcomes.”
US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin participate in a tete-a-tete during a US-Russia Summit in Geneva. Image: Geopix / Alamy Stock PhotoDesperate tactics
Amid fierce resistance and mounting casualties, intelligence experts fear that Putin could use chemical weapons in Ukraine in an attempt to force them to surrender.
“They [the Russians] have backed Syrian forces in the war there, over 10 years, where Syrian forces used chemical weapons there on their own people,” the BBC’s Kyiv correspondent James Waterhouse explained to The Hard Shoulder.
“It was seen as a red line by the west that had been crossed but infamously the US never acted on that red line being crossed.
“So yes, it is a real concern on top of the misery and horror that people are experiencing.”
2HR2AHY Kyiv, Ukraine. 24th Feb, 2022. Explosion in the capital city of Kyiv early Thursday. Russia is bombing the borders of Ukraine with Poland act same time. (Credit Image: © Ukrainian President's Office via ZUMA Press) Credit: ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Live NewsAlternatively, the Kremlin might try and starve civilians into submission:
“They’ve had a lot of experience with grinding urban sieges in Syria alongside the Assad Government in places like Aleppo and Homs,” Justin Bronk, a Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology in the Military Sciences team at the Royal United Services Institute, warned.
“And so the playbook is pretty well known. I think it will just be repeated in more and more places.
“Encircle the cities, besiege them, bombard them, make life unliveable inside so that the civilians have to try and flee however they can.
“And then basically starve them out because they don’t have the manpower to take the cities street by street.”
Main image: DRKGA3 Vladimir Putin
