DESPITE his tyrannical rule, Putin’s fragile regime is one step away from collapse.
The bloodthirsty tyrant took power 25 years ago today, but could soon follow in the footsteps of his friend, ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, if he loses the war with Ukraine.
Putin has ruled with an iron fist since assuming the presidency on New Year’s Eve 1999.
The swaggering KGB thug – then 47, now 72 – took over from the weak and booze-soaked Boris Yeltsin.
Despite originally trying to build bridges with the West, he proceeded to put Russia into a screeching reverse gear.
Over the next quarter century, he plunged the world into a quagmire of mistrust and brought it to the breaking point of war: he again ended the Iron Curtain, as happened in the darkest days of the Cold War.
He has survived a coup attempt and wide-scale protests, mercilessly killed his enemies, invaded his neighbours and launched the biggest war in Europe since WW2.
But it is believed that despite his iron fist, Putin’s empire is still built on sandy foundations and may slip through his fingers.
Vlad’s wonderful paranoia, which underlies much of what he does, is his deep concern about being deposed, dragged into the streets and killed – just like the defeated Libyan dictator Gaddafi.
It is a concern that will have been revived after he was forced to offer safe haven to the dictator Assad, whom he ousted from Syria in a lightning revolution.
Delivering his resignation, Putin’s predecessor Yeltsin said: “I am leaving. I have done everything I can. “
Yeltsin Putin to “take care” of Russia.
In response, Putin addressed Russia for the first time promising to maintain the country’s freedoms.
He said, “Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of the media and the right to property, those basic principles of a civilized society will be transmitted through the state. »
But Putin has systematically crushed the freedoms of the Russian people while aspiring to power.
Vlad has been so successful that in his time there have been eight British prime ministers and five US presidents.
Russia’s sovereignty, its strength, Putin’s main mission.
When Putin speaks now, he is full of resentment and anger and claims that the West has lied and disrespected Russia.
Other than staying in charge and enriching himself, the crafty leader has looked to expand borders to restore Russia as a great power.
He has been accused of being more like a mob boss than a president.
The tyrant defended his 25 years in power to the BBC just days ago, saying Russia had almost been destroyed when he took over.
He said: “I think we are moving away from the brink. . . We were heading towards a general loss of sovereignty. “
Dr Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told The Sun that Putin began his reign probably normally, but that megalomania had been present.
He said, “You don’t know anyone until you assume this position of power. »
Mendoza said Putin spent the first years of his rule consolidating his strength and the oligarchs who put him there.
“He warned that there is still in him, first, a detail of cruelty, and second, the feeling of knowing what he was looking to do, in what direction he was seeking to take the country,” he said.
Putin, Mendoza said, has since established himself as “the ultimate arbiter of Russia’s interests” and has publicized the tyrannical monster we know today.
“There are other people who have wonderful business interests, but they exist only on Mr. Putin’s whim, and whoever opposes him is crushed mercilessly. “
To govern, Putin has relied on his friends in the siloviki (the secret spy elegance from which he comes) who have been under a mafia regime.
These officials are Putin allies who have “enduring loyalty” to the dictator.
Many even come from the KGB and spent time in East Germany with Putin.
Mendoza said, “They know that they are together, that they are together, that together they are still in force, or that they will all continue together. “
But everything has been simple and Putin’s strength has been threatened in recent years.
In March, the terrorist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall by ISIS-K operatives left another 145 people dead.
This attack is revenge against Russia waging wars in the Middle East.
In December, his friend Bashar al-Assad was expelled from the force when his army surrendered to a militant offensive.
Vlad sought to make Russia more powerful by fighting in Africa and the Middle East.
But the military may simply pose a risk to its internal power.
Last year, Putin was nearly overthrown by Eugene Prigozhin and the Wagner Group after the mercenary proposed a coup.
Mendoza said: “I think what Prigozhin’s departure told us is that the regime is just one step away from disaster, one step away from fall, and even if Putin may be in control, there is a genuine risk to his power. “It’s very complicated. ” to find out if he will. “
The Russia expert said that Putin was now less secure than he was five years ago as he hadn’t been able to achieve the decisive victory he pledged to secure in Ukraine.
“I think the biggest challenge he faces now is that he didn’t win the war in Ukraine,” Mendoza said.
“He promised that he would win, and in a sense, despite all the propaganda and all the narratives, the Russians will know that something is wrong when Ukrainian drones attack Moscow. “
Another crisis point that Putin could face is his succession.
Mendoza says that the Russian has enough strength to remain in force for life and will continue to weigh down any opposition.
Unlike Assad, Putin has any army that is willing to fight for him, like it prepared to do against Prigozhin.
But the classic Russian way of being a leader is a palace coup.
Mendoza said: “The way he would do it, of course, is if, within his circle, someone makes a decision in which he has failed in some way.
“One minute he’s there and one minute he isn’t.
“But I think that’s less likely right now, given the people who are the most likely to launch the coup are his allies, anyway.”
With Putin’s succession uncertain, would-be leaders vying for strength may pose a long-term crisis point.
Most of his allies are the same age and Putin has made it clear that he will start a dynasty.
Mendoza said: “The young Putins remain firmly out of the public eye and there is no indication that any of them will run to govern with dad. ”
With the successor uncertain, if Putin were to die suddenly, a civil war could ensue.
He said: “[The system] relies largely on Putin’s private force and there is an obvious possibility of collapse.
“If he dies and it’s not clear, it may simply be a war between other factions that might need to take power. “
Mendoza said that to stay in power, Putin will have to continue making Russia look tough and win in Ukraine.
He said: “If he achieves something that could be a victory, then I would expect him to continue looking to expand Russia’s borders and locate other places, perhaps in Moldova, perhaps even making inroads into the Baltic States.
“In recent years he has set himself the goal of being, you know, the restorer of the Soviet Empire. “
Mendoza said Vlad now counting on his foreign policy successes whilst the domestic economy weak.
“A big drop in the value of oil is just one step away from a domestic economic disaster. “
Former NATO leader Lord Robertson told the BBC in 2023 that the “megalomaniac” Putin once had another man.
Robertson said: “The guy who stood with me in May 2002, right next to me, and said that Ukraine is a sovereign, independent geographic region that will make its own security decisions, is now the guy who says that [Ukraine] is a sovereign region, independent geographic region that will make its own security decisions.
When the pair first met in 2000, the then-Secretary General said Putin wanted to integrate Russia with the defence alliance.
Putin told Robertson: “‘I want to resume relations with NATO. Step by step, but I want to do it.
“And he said, ‘I want Russia to be part of Western Europe. This is our destiny. ‘”
Robertson’s Putin-converting face possibly comes from isolation from those around him, who have begun their own propaganda.
Robertson said: “I, Vladimir Putin, have very thin skin and immense ambition for my country.
“The Soviet Union was recognised as the second superpower in the world. Russia can’t make any claims in that direction. And I think that ate away at his ego.”
Mikhail Kasyanov, who was Putin’s minister from 2000 to 2004, says Putin has been unrecognizable since the days he met him.
Kasyanov told the Times: “He is now a other user in his behavior, as well as in his political attitudes.
“We were building a democratic state and we were reaching out to Europe and the Western world.
“Putin pretended to adhere to democratic principles, but at home he remained a KGB agent. “
At the top, Putin crushed the opposition, circumvented legislation and rigged elections.
After the first eight years as Russia’s president, Putin resigned as prime minister, just to avoid violating the Kremlin’s two-term limit.
A long list of influential Russians have died under murky cases during Putin’s reign.
Murders, from poisonings to shootings, from fallen windows to plane crashes, paved the way for him to force his hand with blood.
It has even targeted others in Britain, targeting former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the deadly Novichok nerve agent in the 2018 Salisbury poisonings.
Several politicians, journalists and lawyers were also killed by Vlad’s henchmen in the KGB.
Putin’s most formidable opponent, Alexei Navalny, 47, died in February in the strict criminal regime of Polar Wolf in the Russian Arctic while serving a 19-year criminal sentence on false accusations of “extremism. “
Navalny reportedly died of a punch in the center after being forced to spend hours in freezing temperatures.
Experts said the brutal approach was once a “hallmark of the KGB. “
Endlessly vocal Putin critic and the head of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin, 62, died in August last year in a fireball private jet crash, according to Russia’s investigative committee.
He was a close confidant of Putin before he launched a rebellion in June last year, vowing to “punish” Russia for a deadly missile attack on one of his training camps in eastern Ukraine.
Putin’s uprising was a “death blow” to Russia and a “stab in the back to our people. ”
VLADIMIR Putin revealed that he has two young children, in an unexpected moment at his live televised press conference in 2024.
The Russian tyrant revealed he enjoys watching films with his “little ones” amid claims he has a pair of young sons with Olympic gymnast lover Alina Kabaeva.
Vladimir Putin let slip the biggest hint of his future offspring so far, in a marathon televised question and answer session in Moscow.
Rumors about secret children surrounded the despot for years after independent journalists discovered a possible new family in development.
Unverified claims imply that the elderly tyrant and longtime spouse, Kabaeva, a woman decades his junior, would already have children.
Ivan, 9 and Vladimir, 5, are said to be the latest two additions to the Putin family tree.
He never showed those young women in the Kremlin, officially stating that he has two daughters: Maria Vorontsova, 39, and Katerina Tikhonova, 38.
There is a secret third child, known as 21-year-old DJ Luiza Rozova, given to Vlad through former housekeeper Svetlana Krivonogikh.
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