Russian President Vladimir Putin is consolidating his control over power by promoting loyalists from the younger generation, amid increasing instability within the Kremlin, as he ages, reports Fox News.
Recently, the British publication The Telegraph reported that Putin, 73, who has led Russia for more than two decades, is “running out of cards to play,” as pressure on his regime increases both domestically and internationally.
In this context, it is revealing that the Federal Security Service (FSB) recently opened a criminal case against exiled opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky and 22 members of the Anti-War Committee, accusing them of conspiring to seize power in Russia. Khodorkovsky spent a decade in a Siberian prison before leaving Russia for the UK. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he founded the Anti-War Committee, an activist and humanitarian organization.
John Herbst, senior director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council and former US ambassador to Ukraine, recently told the British publication that the latest developments show that “the Kremlin is sliding into paranoia.”
“Everyone around him has started to think about the prospect of a world beyond Putin, so he has organized his own elite in a very careful way, so that there is no place where cracks can occur,” assessed Henry Hale, professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, for Fox News Digital.
“His people are mixed in a way that makes it very difficult for any faction to operate autonomously, in a way that could threaten the regime. At the same time, members of his own family are now beginning to rise in rank. Among those who have attracted the most attention is Anna Evgenievna Tsiviliova, born Putina”, explained the analyst.
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