Stephen Kotkin: “I have long been calling the Putin regime ‘hollow yet still strong.’ It remained, and remains, viable as long as there is no political alternative. Now, we might see just how hollow the regime is. Putin has unwittingly launched a stress test of his own regime. He had already lost his mystique with the bungling of the aggression against Ukraine. Mystique, once lost, is near impossible to regain. The old cliché about the emperor and clothes. He still possesses enormous power, rooted in structures he built around himself, such as his Praetorian Guard, and those he unbuilt—his razing of the landscape of political possibilities besides himself, and severe repression to demobilize the populace.”
“There is one thing that all dictators properly fear: an alternative. And Putin, shockingly, after years and years of indefatigably suppressing alternatives, of promoting nonentities to his inner circle to ensure no one could threaten him, has allowed one to take shape.”
