As Trump prepares to meet ‘Putin’ in Budapest – the subject of a coming essay – Moscow is designating its next-in-line. Their choice confirms that, even with a new face on the Kremlin brand, Russia’s policy of fascist aggression remains unchanged, with arch-hawks more entrenched than ever, doubling down on their wars.
How do we know? Kremlinology has changed over the decades. Under Stalin, diplomats and spies sifted rumours. Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, photos and film reflected ‘proximity to power’. With the rise of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and the early Putin, Kremlinology was virtually a lost art. For about two decades, Soviet and Russian political elites shared and over-shared their views. Journalists, diplomats and businesspeople feasted on an embarrassment of analytical riches.
Putin’s new model of digital dictatorship ended this openness. Tragic milestones such as the murders of leading journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2015 marked the end of free media and political opposition. Habitual sharing ended, as fear returned and the state reasserted repressive control. Real analysis once again meant reading Kremlin runes.
How do we do it now? Seasoned experts track clan, family and group networks and dynamics. Investigative journalists and sanctions teams map weapons flows, shadow financing structures, business ties and corruption. Amid pervasive disinformation, the blogosphere still turns up the occasional gem. People with firsthand insights occasionally get the chance to speak freely.
In retrospect, the Putin era of restored Russian autocracy featured remarkably little palace drama over its first two decades. Cliques and climbers came and went, rose and fell. But few big ripples disturbed the Kremlin mill pond. Putin and his core retainers ruled supreme, gobbling up Russia’s core assets as they went.
This relatively smooth sailing started to end in the spring of 2022, when Ukrainians thwarted Russia’s all-out invasion. This was the worst defeat Moscow had sustained since the first Chechen war. The Kremlin’s reverie of invulnerability ended altogether in June 2023, when a potty-mouthed restaurateur-turned-propagandist led a flying column of his own mercenaries towards Moscow. Lead elements of this mutiny reached Kashira in Moscow oblast, only 120 kilometres south of the Kremlin.
This was utterly unprecedented in the annals of modern Russia, Soviet and Tsarist history. Ukraine shattered Russia’s always fragile myth of military invincibility. Prigozhin exploded the illusion that Putin was untouchable. After hasty TV addresses and frantic backroom deal-making, an open coup was averted. Prigozhin was later said to have perished in a fiery crash. Business as usual seemed to resume.
The calm was deceptive. Two popular frontline generals who shared Prigozhin’s views were dismissed shortly after the mutiny. A year later, Prigozhin’s key demand was met: the minister of defence was replaced. Through 2024 military leaders associated with the old regime were ousted; purges continued into 2025. At the same time, Russia was deepening its military cooperation with China, Iran and North Korea.
Meanwhile, as we summarized last month in ‘Kremlin Callbacks’, there was rampant speculation about succession. Prominent commentators insisted that Kremlin ultras – the arch-hawks around Nikolai Patrushev, Putin’s KGB pervasive shadow through his entire presidency – were losing ground to a more pragmatic group around Sergei Chemezov, another KGB war-horse who had been with Putin in Dresden in the 1980s.
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