What a Potential Coup Looks Like

It's Tuesday, the thirtieth of June , look at that. We have made it to the end of yet another month. Welcome to the President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage , and what a stage it is. Now, here at the PDB, we thought we'd try something just a bit different over the next couple of days . Sort of a respite from the chaos of the Iran conflict, the grinding brutality of the Ukraine conflict, and the other important events that typically make up the news cycle. Instead of focusing on the day's headlines over the next couple of days, we're stepping back from that daily news cycle just again for a short to take a closer look at some of the most important geopolitical challenges currently facing the world. Think of it as a series of intelligence briefings, examining the major players, the underlying dynamics and the questions that don't always fit neatly into a traditional daily news program . And for today , well, today we're starting off with a question about a key world leader that's been asked repeatedly now for more than two decades. And that question is could Vladimir Putin ever be overthrown . It's a question that tends to resurface whenever Russia faces a crisis after military setbacks in Ukraine or after economic sanctions or following political unrest. And perhaps most notably , it was asked after Wagner Group chief Yaveni Progosin launched his short lived march toward Moscow back in twenty twenty three , which of course ended with Progosin mysteriously dying in a plane explosion. It's hard to imagine who could have or chestrated that. Each time, after each crisis, speculation follows, is Putin finally vulnerable? Is his grip on power slipping? Could someone inside the Kremlin be preparing to move against him . But answering those questions requires us to first understand how Putin has managed to stay in power for so long . Because despite wars, sanctions, the occasional but short lived political opposition, and internal isolation, Vladimir Putin remains one of the most durable leaders of the modern era. So today we're going to examine the forces that keep him in power, the threats that could one day undermine his rule, and what a real effort to remove Russia's president might actually look like . The first thing to understand is that most people ask the wrong question when they think about how dictators or strong men fall. We tend to assume that authoritarian leaders are removed when ordinary people become angry or fed up enough. That public frustration eventually reaches a breaking point, and millions take to the streets and the regime collapses under its own weight, huzza. Now, occasionally that does happen, but more often, well, it doesn't. In fact, history suggests that dictators rarely lose power because of the people at the bottom of the system . They lose power when they lose the support of the people at the top. And that's particularly true in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Putin doesn't need to be universally popular. He doesn't need every Russian citizen to support him. He doesn't even need most Russians to believe everything they hear on state television, which by the way they don't. What he does need is the continued loyalty or at, least the continued cooperation of a relatively small group of people who sit at the center of the Russian state. And that includes the security services, the military leadership, powerful oligarchs, senior government official s, regional political bosses, the people who control the levers of power . As long as those groups remain intact , public dissatisfaction is largely manageable. And Putin understands this better than perhaps any world leader alive today . And that's because he came of age, watching another seemingly permanent regime collapse, of course, the Soviet Union. When the Soviet system imploded in nineteen ninety one, it wasn't because ordinary citizens suddenly discovered they were unhappy. It was because the institutions that held the state together stopped functioning. Political elites fractured, security structures weakened, economic problems multiplied, and confidence in the leadership evaporated. The lesson that Putin took from that experience was simple, never allow competing centers of power to emerge. And for the past quarter century, he's built his entire political system around that principle. Now, Putin's background is important here. Before entering politics, he spent years as an officer in the KGB, the Soviet Union's intelligence and security service, of course. He was stationed in East Germany when communist governments across Eastern Europe began collapsing. He watched crowds gather, he watched governments fall, and perhaps most importantly, he watched institutions falter and turn on the system. Years later, Putin would describe the collapse of the Soviet Union as the great est geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century . And that is his firm belief . And he's been trying to recreate the Soviet Union in one form or another for over two decades. To Putin, stability matters. Control matters. Disorder is dangerous. When he became Russia's president in two thousand , he began constructing a political system designed to prevent the chaos that he believed had consumed Russia during the nineteen nineties. Independent television networks were brought under state influence. Political opposition was marginalized, regional governors lost much of their autonomy. Wealthy oligarchs were given a choice. Stay out of politics and keep your fortunes, or challenge the Kremlin and face the consequences . Now, some did choose poorly. Others got the message. Over time, Putin created a system in which nearly every major center of power became de pendent on the Kremlin. The security services expanded their influence. Political rivals found themselves sidelined. Key industries fell under the control of loyalists. Regional leaders learned that their careers depended on remaining in Moscow's good graces. The result wasn't a traditional dictatorship in the style of Stalin. It was something more sophisticated, a system of patronage, loyalty, and mutual dependence. The people around Putin became wealthy and powerful because Putin remained in power, and Putin remained in power because those same people benefited from the system that he built. That's one reason the predictions of his imminent downfall have repeatedly proven wrong . Observers often focus on public opinion, but the more important question is whether the people closest to Putin still believe that their futures are safer with him than without him. For most of his rule, the answer has been yes , but every authoritarian regime has weaknesses. And perhaps the most revealing glimpse of those weaknesses came in the summer of twenty twenty three, when an unlikely challenger emerged from within Putin's own camp. Yavkeny Progosh, the head of the Wagner Group, a man who had spent his years serving the Kremlin's interests around the world , and a man who would eventually launch the most serious challenge to Putin's authority in more than two decades . All right, coming up after the break, the Wagner Mutiny, the march on Moscow, and what the biggest challenge to Putin's rule actually revealed about the strength of the Russian system. And we'll answer the question , Is there a realistic path to Putin's downfall? And if so, what would it actually look like? I'll be right back . Hey, Mike Baker here. Let me ask you a question. How many times during the week do you drop, I don't know, ten or twenty or thirty dollars on essentially meaningless items? You know what I'm talking about? 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And listeners to the PDB get twenty percent off their first purchase when using the code PDB at checkout. That's an additional twenty percent off for better plants and better growing f atast growingtrees. com using the code pdb at checkout. That's fastgrowingtrees. com code pdb now is the perfect time to plant and use code pdb to saf todaye. Off veral isid for a limited time, terms and conditions may apply. Welcome back to the President's Daily Brief. Now, if ever there was a moment when Vladimir Putin appeared vulnerable, it came in June of twenty three. The challenge didn't come from a foreign government. It didn't come from a democratic opposition movement. It didn't come from angry protesters filling Moscow's streets . It came from one of his own men. Yvkkeny Progoshin had spent years as one of Putin's most useful allies. The founder of the Wagner Group, Progoshin built a reputation as a ruthless operator, willing to do the Kremlin's dirty work wherever it was needed. Wagner forces appeared in Syria , Libya, several African countries, and eventually on the front lines in Ukraine. For years, the relationship benefited both men. Putin gained a powerful force that could operate outside traditional military structures. Prog gainosedhin influence in wealth and access to the highest levels of the Russian state. But Russia's invasion of Ukraine changed the equation. As the war dragged on, Progoshin became increasingly outspoken in his criticism of Russia's military leaders hip. He publicly attacked senior generals. He accused the Defense Ministry of incompetence, and he increasingly portrayed Wagner as the only force willing to tell the truth about the war. Then, in June of twenty twenty three , the feud exploded into open rebellion. Progoshin accused Russia's military leadership of attacking Wagner forces and announced what he called a quote march for justice. Within hours, Wagner's fighters seized military facilities in the southern Russian city of Rosstavondon. Columns of armed vehicles began moving north toward Moscow. The images were extraordinary. For the first time in Putin's long rule, heavily armed forces were openly challeng ing the authority of the Russian state. As Wagner advanced, confusion spread throughout Russia. Security forces erected offensive positions around Moscow. Roads were dug up to slowly advance. Helicopters and aircraft were deployed against Wagner columns. For a brief moment, it appeared that Russia might be on the verge of a genuine internal crisis , and then almost as suddenly as it began, it ended. Following negotiations reportedly brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, Progosin called off the march, Wagner forces turned around, and the immediate threat disappeared. Two months later, Progosin was dead after, a private jet carrying him and others exploded and crashed north of Moscow. Huh , what could have caused that? The rebellion was over and Putin had survived. Now, at first glance, the Wagner mutiny looks like evidence that Putin's system is fragile. The private army manages to seize a major Russian city and advance hundreds of miles toward the capital . But many intelligence analysts came away with a different conclusion , because despite the drama of those events , the institutions that actually matter remained largely intact . All of the major institutions remained loyal. Military leadership, intelligence services, regional governors stayed loyal, and the political elite stayed loyal. Most importantly, no significant faction within the Russian establishment openly sighted with progosion. And that's a critical point. Successful coups almost never succeed because of one ambitious individual deciding to challenge the government. They succeed because powerful institutions decide to join that individual or those individuals. And during the Wagner Rebellion, well that never happened. In many ways, the mutiny demonstrated both Putin's greatest vulnerability and his greatest strength. His vulnerability was obvious. The fact that the rebellion occurred at all exposed cracks within the system. It revealed frustrations among some military personnel, and it showed that internal tensions created by the war in Ukraine were real . But it also demonstrated Putin's strength. When the crisis arrived, the people whose support actually mattered largely stayed where they were, on his side. And that's why understanding Putin's future requires us to focus on the forces that could eventually change that calculation. The real danger to Putin comes from three potential threats, a major military catastrophe, an elite revolt or a succession crisis. Let's start with the military. History offers plenty of examples of seemingly powerful leaders whose political fortunes collapsed after a disastrous war. Russia itself provides perhaps the most famous example, in nineteen seventeen, years of military defeats and staggering casualties and economic hardship helped bring down Tsar Nicholas II and ultimately swept away the Romanov dynasty. More recently, as another example, Argentina's military government collapsed after its defeat in the Falklands War in nineteen eighty two. The lesson is straightforward. Military failure can undermine a regime's legitimacy, especially when that regime has tied its identity to strength and compet ence and national prestige . And Putin has done exactly that. For much of his rule, he's presented himself as the leader who restored Russia after the turmoil of the nineteen nineties, the man who rebuilt the military , the man who stood up to the west, the man who returned Russia to a great power status . That makes military performance particularly important to his legitimacy. Could a defeat in Ukraine threaten his hold on power ? Well certainly, but it would likely require something far more significant than the setbacks that Russia has already absorbed. Moscow has survived failed offensives, territorial losses, economic sanctions, and even the Wagner Mutiny without triggering a broader crisis of confidence among the elite. A truly dangerous scenario would be a military collapse so severe that senior officials, military commanders, and security leaders begin to question whether Putin can still safeguard the interests of the state and their own . The second threat is an elite revolt, and historically that's how many authoritarian leaders actually fall. The greatest danger str.ong An many is not a public anger, but the moment the key insiders decide he's become a liability. That could include military leaders or intelligence officials, powerful businessmen or senior political figures who conclude that the current course is unsustain able. The challenge is that Putin has spent twenty five years making this outcome difficult. Potential rivals have been weakened, divided, or co opted. Multiple security agencies monitor one another, and no single institution has been allowed to accumulate enough power to challenge the Kremlin on its own . Even so , if enough influential figures were to reach the same conclusion at the same time , that Putin's continued rule poses a greater ris k than his removal, the foundations of the system crack. The third threat is succession. Now Putin is now in his seventies, and while persistent rumors about his health have circulated for years, the more important issue is what happens when he eventually leaves the scene. One of the paradoxes of authoritarian systems is that leaders often become so dominant that they struggle to prepare a successor. Naming an err canor create a rival , failing to name one can create uncertainty . As a result, some of the most dangerous moments for authoritarian regimes occur not during periods of crisis, but during leadership transitions. If Putin was suddenly incapacitated or unexpectedly removed from the political stage , competing factions inside the Russian state could find themselves maneuvering for influence. And in that scenario, the greatest threat might not be Putin's departure, but the uncertainty that follows. All right, coming up after the break, we'll answer the question at the heart of today's briefing. If Vladimir Putin were ever removed from power , what would that actually look like? I'll be right back . Hey, Mike Baker here. Now this fourth of July, of course, it's right around the corner, but it's a big one. The nation's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, right? How about that? Celebrate right though, with America's favorite foods from Gold Belly. You got to do it upright. It's the two hundred and fiftieth birthday. Come on. 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Please join us wherever you listen to podcasts , and we also have a YouTube page as well youtube. com slash at Politics by Faith . Welcome back to the President's Daily Brief. So let's return to the central question that we've been examining throughout today's briefing. If Vladimir Putin were ever removed from power, what would that actually look like? The answer is that it probably wouldn't look like the dramatic scenes most people imagine. When people think of coups , they tend to picture tanks rolling through the streets or soldiers seizing television stations and crowds gathering outside government buildings. Now those things certainly happen from time to time, but in a modern authoritarian state like Russia , a serious effort to remove Putin would likely unfold in a far quieter and far more deliberate fashion. The reason is simple. The people most capable of removing Putin are the same people with the greatest interest in preserving stability. Senior figures in the security services, military leadership and political establishment understand that a chaotic struggle for power could create exactly the kind of uncertainty that they've spent decades trying to avoid . Their objective would not be revolution, their objective would be control and the maintenance of the system that provides for them. That means a real Kremlin coup would probably begin behind closed doors rather than in the streets . It might start with a series of private conversations among senior officials who've concluded that Putin has become more of a liability than an asset. It might involve key security figures quietly coordinating with political leaders and military commanders. Now, if that happened, Putin could find himself increasingly isolated, not necessarily arrested, not necessarily confronted, simply cut off from the institutions that have sustained as r aule. History shows that authoritarian leaders often appear powerful until the moment that the people around them stop following orders. Once that process begins, events can move remarkably quickly. The public face of such a transition would almost certainly be carefully managed. Rather than announcing a coup, Russian authorities would likely present the change as an orderly transfer of power. Health concerns might be cited, constitutional procedures might be invoked , statements would emphasize stability, continuity, and national unity . The goal would be to reassure both the Russian public and the broader elite that the state remains firmly in control. And that brings us to another point that's often overlooked in discussions about Putin's future. The removal of Putin would not necessarily produce a dramatically different Russia. In the West, there's often an assumption, perhaps even a hope that a post Putin Russia would naturally become more democratic or more aligned with Western interests. Perhaps, but there's little reason to assume that outcome is inevitable . The people most likely to succeed Putin are individuals who emerged from the same political system that he built. They may disagree with his tactics, his management of the war in Ukraine, or his handling of specific issues , but many share similar views about Russia's role in the world and the importance of maintaining a strong centralized state . In other words, the end of Putin would not automatically mean the end of the system that Putin created. And that's why intelligence analysts tend to be cautious whenever predictions of Putin's imminent downfall begin s circulating. Now, can Vladimir Putin be overthrown? Absolutely. No leader remains in power forever. But after more than twenty five years in office, he's built a political structure specifically designed to make that outcome difficult. If his rule ultimately comes to an end through anything other than a natural succession, the most likely threat will not come from angry crowds gathering in Moscow's streets. It will come from inside the system itself, from the military and the security services and the political elite that have supported him for decades. And if that day ever arrives , then the struggle for Russia's future will almost certainly begin long before the rest of the world realizes that it 's even started . And that my friends is the president's daily brief for Tuesday, the thirtieth of June. Now, if you have any questions or comments, I do hope you'll reach out to me at PDB at the firsttv dot com. And as always, if you're Jonesen for an ad free PDB experience, we can make that happen. Just become a premium member of the President's Daily Brief by visiting pdbremium . com. It's really that simple. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back later today with the PDB afternoon bulletin. Until then, stay informed, stay safe , stay cool.