04 August 2022

Carnegie: War in Ukraine Has Sparked a New Race to Succeed Putin

The war in Ukraine and ensuing sanctions have failed to cement Russia’s power vertical or unify the country’s influential business and political groups. Had President Vladimir Putin gotten the swift victory he was clearly counting on when he launched his “special operation,” he would have solidified his position as ruler, but as the conflict drags on, the elites are being forced to think of their future and to try to find their place within it. 

Putin himself demonstrates no intention to step down, but looks increasingly relegated to the past. The elites and potential successors are watching his every military move, but they can already see that he has no place in their postwar vision of the future. His sole remaining function in their perception of the new era of peace will be to nominate a successor and leave the stage. 
 
The war has, therefore, set in motion a public race of the successors. In recent years, political maneuvering in Russia was kept in the shadows, but in this new era, loud proclamations and high-visibility political gesturing are again the norm. It is as though an active election campaign is already under way, with bureaucrats and functionaries within the ruling party doing their best to get into the limelight and even attacking one another. Until recently, such behavior was almost unthinkable: the presidential administration worked in silence, while high-status functionaries at the ruling United Russia party restricted themselves to making promises on social policies.
 
Former president, ex-prime minister, and deputy chair of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has been particularly busy making statements. His over-the-top, hardline comments on foreign policy issues and insults hurled at Western leaders often look comical, but the role he’s trying to play is clear. It blends tough isolationism with populism, firmly placing the blame for internal woes on the shoulders of external enemies. 

Another politician newly making loud gestures is the first deputy chief of staff and curator of the Kremlin’s political bloc Sergei Kiriyenko, who has now been given responsibility for overseeing the breakaway republics in the Donbas. He has become one of the new era’s highest profile politicians, though previously—ever since he became a presidential envoy in the early 2000s—he had never demonstrated any inclination for the limelight. 

But now Kiriyenko has taken to wearing khaki and talking loudly of fascists, Nazis, and the unique mission of the Russian people. He headlines public events, and in the Donbas he unveiled a monument to “Granny Anya,” the elderly woman the Russians tried to turn into a symbol of the “liberation” of Ukraine. He is clearly emphasizing his status as curator of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DNR and LNR): something done by neither of his predecessors in that role, Vladislav Surkov and Dmitry Kozak.  ...

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