2000 kilometers from Moscow, the walkabout. Last Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin treated himself to rare contact with his people by appearing like a rockstar in the midst of a crowd that had come to meet him in the small town of Derbent, on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Less than a week after facing an unprecedented mutiny orchestrated by his longtime ally and leader of the paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin is seeking to restore his image by all means. He wants to make people forget the flaws of the war in Ukraine as well as in the “Putin system” itself, which Wagner’s slingers have just brought to light. A system that is one step closer to breaking point risking bringing down the now weakened man from the Kremlin. And this question which now arises: if he falls, who will be there to replace him? Here is the portrait of the potential aspirants drawn by The duty.
Mikhail Michoustine, Prime Minister of Russia
It’s in the normal order of things. If Vladimir Putin were to, voluntarily or by force, leave the Kremlin, Michoustin would automatically become interim president of Russia, with a mandate to call an election within three months. This ordinary civil servant, who has spent a large part of his career in the tax service of the Russian Federation, has more administrative than political ambitions and should therefore stick to his strict transitional role.
Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia
He is one of the six men in the current president’s inner circle, but also the one whose name comes up repeatedly in conversations about Vladimir Putin’s succession. Probably for the worse. Indeed, the former head of the FSB, the Russian internal intelligence agency, shares with Putin, whom he succeeded in 1999 at the head of this federal service, the same hatred of the West, that at the base of nationalist imperialism which has drawn Russia into conflict with Ukraine. Partisan of a hard line, vis-a-vis NATO as vis-a-vis the movements of opposition sprouting within the country, Patrushev could thus benefit from a rupture to impose the continuity of the Putin system.
Dmitry Patrushev, Minister of Agriculture
Son of Nikolai, at 44, this young banker and politician, trained at the FSB academy, is now perceived as an increasingly credible hereditary leader to ensure the survival of the regime, by contributing to its rejuvenation. “A change of guard in the Kremlin will be the occasion for a change of generation and Dimitri therefore becomes a possible candidate”, summarizes in an interview with the Duty Russia specialist Mark Galeotti, director of Mayak Intelligence, joined in London. “Any successor to Putin will also seek to end the war in Ukraine, but not under any conditions for Russia”, an objective that the young politician, by his training and his filiation, has everything to achieve.
Alexei Dioumin, veteran of the Federal Guard Service
He is Putin’s favorite to his own estate, it is said, which benefits this soldier, ex-commander of Russian special forces during the annexation of Crimea in 2014, as much as it could harm him, in the prospect of a split or a power struggle within the inner circle of the current Russian president. Appointed governor of the Tula region in 2016, this close friend of the number 1 of the Kremlin, who one day would have saved the life of Putin during the attack of a bear, while preserving that of the animal, would be the best placed to allow the president to enjoy a quiet retirement, always close to Russian power, but above all far from the torments that could come from The Hague and its international criminal court.
Alexander Bortnikov, Director of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB)
At 71, this counterintelligence specialist has the roadmap and all the stigma needed to succeed Vladimir Putin, whom he rubbed shoulders with in the 1970s and 1980s within the FSB, before becoming named the big boss by the Kremlin strongman in 2008. In 2014, he was banned from a visa by the European Union for his active role in the first invasion of Ukraine. In 2021, the United States decided to sanction him for his participation, according to Washington, in the poisoning of political opponent Alexei Navalny, but also for his support for the war of invasion launched by Moscow against Kiev.
Sergei Sobyanin, Mayor of Moscow
It is becoming more and more possible for the first aedile of the Russian capital to sneak up to the top of the state thanks to formerly prominent candidacies that recent events have just seriously compromised. This is the case of that of Wagner’s big boss, Evgueni Prigojine, whose future is now uncertain on Russian territory, or that of the Minister of Defense, Sergei Choigou, tainted as much by the mutiny of the last few days as by his inability to bring down Kiev more than a year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sobianine, 64, was given birth, politically, by Putin, but has an international image of “liberal” which could contribute to this de-escalation necessary to start thinking about getting out of the current geopolitical crisis.
Alexei Navalny, anti-corruption activist
It would take more than the fall of dictator Putin. It would take a real revolution in Russia to bring to power this pet peeve of the regime, the victim of an attempted murder by poisoning orchestrated by the Kremlin and currently imprisoned on opportune charges in a high-security penitentiary. Even behind bars, Navalny continues to denounce the violence, corruption and hypocrisy of Vladimir Putin’s regime as well as the unjustified war launched against Ukraine. Last Tuesday, his communications team, still very active, quipped on Twitter, wondering who, Navalny or Evgueni Prigojine, at the origin of a mutiny, was the real extremist threatening the top of the state Russian. His chances of following in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela, to go from jail to the Kremlin, however, remain very slim. For now, at least.