While Russia’s propaganda machine works overtime to portray recent summits in Alaska and Tianjin as triumphs for Moscow, the Kremlin has been quietly auditioning candidates for president. As of today, the field seems to have narrowed to two.
Each has been nurtured by a major Kremlin clan — one under Rostec CEO Chemezov, the Chekist boss of Russia’s defence industry, the other under Nikolai Patrushev, a former FSB director and security council secretary.
Both want Ukraine back under Moscow’s sway. But Patrushev is more hawkish and still favours armed force. Chemezov would prefer to pause the war, see sanctions lifted, then undo Ukraine by corruption and political subversion — as Moscow sought to do from 2003 to 2014, when their proxy Yanukovych was ousted for scrapping Ukraine’s roadmap to EU integration.
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