Did President Putin just tell us whom he wants as a successor?
Let’s look beyond the media assumptions
In the media, President Putin is said to be suffering from cancer or another serious disease, and they claim that his presidency and military operation is at stake as a result of his health problems. They claim that the people around him would like nothing more than to take away his power so that they could exercise it differently. The media holds out hope for coups de etat and regime changes and regicide, giving fora for American politicians to call for assassination and sabotage and all kinds of actions against the Russian State. But are these assumptions reflective of the potentials and realities present in the Russian political system? Well, let’s look at the people with the most power around him.
First, let’s consider Nikolai Patrushev, whom Putin just named as his redundancy in the event of his lack of capacity to fulfill his duties as commander in chief to oversee the military operation in Ukraine. Well, from first glance, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to take a terribly different course from the one President Putin set, as it was Patrushev who convinced Putin of the terrible political environment of Ukraine in the first place, and media in the West considers him a “hardliner” who disparages Ukrainians and considers them inhuman. Thus, by the media’s own logic, he would not take a radically different course from Putin’s. He would not be a very different president after leaving his post as Secretary of the Security Council, a post to which he was appointed after resigning from being head of the FSB.
Nikolai Patrushev, one of Putin’s successors in the FSB (and successor as president as well?).
Next, we have Dimitri Medvedev, who already served as president of Russia and who now serves as second in command on the Security Council, just behind President Putin himself. He has been hailed as a “reformer” in the Western media who would like to bring Russia into the modern world. What was this modern world of which they speak? Well, according to Medvedev himself, he would like to bring an end to the “nihilistic” political structures of the Russian State and make those structures suitable for a “free man,” in his own words as he spoke out public ally in his capacities as both Prime Minister and President. For this reason he was praised by our media. But would he bring a different foreign policy to Russia?
Dimitri Medvedev, former prime minister and president, now vice chairman of Russia’s Security Council, is seen as a reformer in Western media, but the evidence suggests that he acts against Western foreign policy.
According to his record already as president, he would be remarkably similar to Putin in his defense of Russian national security interests. This can be seen as he ordered the occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, regions of Georgia with populations more sympathetic to Russia than to Georgia. He did this after Western leaders announced in Bucharest that they would like Georgia to become part of NATO. So protecting the interests of Russians in Georgia also served to prevent Georgia’s accession to NATO, which prevents countries from joining if they have territorial disputes. Would Medvedev, willing to engage in military operations to defend Russia from NATO, be remarkably different from Putin in foreign policy? I don’t think so. The operation in Ukraine has many similarities to Medvedev’s operation in Georgia, not the least of which is militarily supporting Russian separatism in former Soviet states.
And now we come to the current Prime Minister, the man tasked with administrating the plans of Russian statecraft. Mikhail Mishustin, before serving in his current office, was the head of the Russian version of the IRS, and has had mostly economic portfolios in his service to the Russian State. Earlier in his life, he was also a businessman who focused on understanding current IT challenges. His work history therefore doesn’t have much to say about security matters and Russian foreign policy. He does not have the pedigree to challenge the others on security matters or matters inherent to the Russian State, but he has brought great financial and technological benefit. I can’t imagine that he would be able to push a foreign policy contrary to the designs of the Russian Security Council.
Mikhail Mishustin, current prime minister of Russia, is a military and statecraft novice compared to the other two seen above.
Thus we can see how those who wish for a great upheaval in the ranks of the Russian government have no champion to lead their cause against the Russian President’s foreign policy plans. The rivals to Putin’s power either agree with him or do not have the expertise and experience to carry out a policy contrary to the designs sketched by the security professionals. There is simply no reason to believe that the Russian state faces a split of interests at the top. Western politicians may advocate for assassinations and regime change, and media acolytes may push narratives that support such actions. But they are dreaming. They are only earning the permanent distrust of the Russian leadership. They play no part in deciding who the next leader of Russia will be.