Catherine Belton knows Vladimir Putin. The former Moscow correspondent for the British “Financial Times” lived in Moscow for a long time and wrote a book (“Putin’s Net”) about the Kremlin ruler.
In an interview with the Austrian “ Standard ”, Belton now talks about how and when Putin’s rule in the Kremlin could end.
“Putin’s biggest threat comes from his own security services. There are younger, more forward-thinking members there who, like their predecessors in the late Soviet 1980s, are noticing that Putin’s course is leading to international pariah status and badly damaging the country,” Belton told The Standard.
According to Belton, on the other hand, the West does not need to expect an overthrow of Putin from the oligarchs. “Anyone who thinks the oligarchs can simply go to Putin and demand that he end the war doesn’t understand Putin’s Russia,” explains the Kremlin expert. “Under Putin, oligarchs are not oligarchs, they are hostages of the Kremlin. They can easily be threatened with imprisonment or with losing their business if they don’t follow the Kremlin’s orders.”
“Putin’s Net – How the KGB Retook Russia and Then Set their Eyes on the West” by Catherine Belton.
The historian Liana Fix and Fabian Burkhardt from the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Research write in a guest article for “Zeit” that Putin “closely merged his own fate with the outcome of the war” by declaring partial mobilization.
“The West should prepare for various scenarios and watch carefully to see if the dominoes are moving in Moscow,” Fix and Burkhardt continue. The West should still pay attention to three signs, according to the “Zeit” article:
In any case, cancer should not stop Putin. Belton doesn’t believe rumors that Putin is suffering from blood cancer or Parkinson’s. “CIA Director William Burns said in late July that Putin was ‘too healthy overall’. In fact, evidence of illness vanished over the summer,” Belton said.
In the early stages of the war there had been repeated rumors about such a disease. By the summer, “his performances for the first few months of the year made it seem like he was writhing in pain and clinging to his desk, such as when meeting Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu,” Belton told The Standard. .
“However, he seems more relaxed since he changed his army’s tactics, focused on eastern Ukraine and launched an energy war against the west. An insider told me that Putin is believed to have had surgery in May. But that cannot be checked,” reports the Kremlin expert.
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