Russian President Vladimir Putin is invariably described by outside observers and officials alike as a strong leader known for keeping an iron hand on the helm.
Yet the actual reality is very different from this flattering—and self-serving—portrait. Increasingly, Putin’s personal role in routine domestic policy as head of state is consumed by tactical maneuvering rather than by taking major decisions. The problem with this approach to governing is that it unintentionally forces Putin into uncomfortable situations in which making a clear choice can feel far too dangerous. That state of affairs explains why day-to-day Russian political governance all too often lends itself to constant ambiguity, half-measures, and inertia.
In the last two years, there have been many such situations in which Putin has refrained from making a clear choice. Some of that hesitation has ended up costing him dearly. For example, the failed mutiny by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was a stark demonstration of the consequences of Putin’s unwillingness to resolve situations.
For almost a year, Putin did not intervene in the mounting conflict between Prigozhin’s quasi-private army Wagner and the Russian Defense Ministry. Instead, Putin banked on Prigozhin’s patriotism and personal loyalty to prevent things from getting out of hand. At the same time, Putin sent signals that he supported the Defense Ministry, not least because it is a pivotal institution in waging war against Ukraine. All the while, Putin made use of Wagner’s services, which further fueled Prigozhin’s ambitions. By letting the conflict run its course, Putin found himself in a situation with Wagner-controlled tanks closing in on Moscow.
Even before the war, Putin’s power was showing signs of erosion. There were indications that Putin’s role as the final arbiter of important squabbles and policy decisions was being reduced. We saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic and are witnessing it again now as regions are left to manage the social-financial consequences of the war on their own. After his return to the Kremlin in 2012, Putin gradually began delegating much of the routine governance to other team members, often appearing disengaged or uninterested in his regular responsibilities. Over time, he chose to focus on what the Kremlin likes to call “presidential-level” issues and niche areas of personal interest, such as genetics, biology, or space.
This pattern of presidential disengagement opened the door to a situation, especially after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, whereby the Kremlin’s domestic authority, while still central, is increasingly being offset by zealous, bottom-up initiatives. Putin’s detachment from domestic policy concerns, paired with decreased sensitivity to elite and societal pressures, has at times led to hasty decisions with little regard for long-term consequences. In so doing, Putin has created even more room for uncoordinated actions at lower levels.
Today’s Putin can be compared to the supporting structure of a house. His role is similar to that of load-bearing walls on which everything rests. In the eyes of the Russian elites, including those who are dissatisfied with the president, Putin is perceived as a guarantee that things will not collapse. But it is important to distinguish that from an actual guarantee of stability.
Following the annexation of Crimea in early 2014, the elite’s notion of stability itself began to change. Predictable socioeconomic development based on market principles and an established political system soon gave way in the face of geopolitical upheaval, including U.S.-EU economic sanctions, Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war, Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the smoldering conflict in the Donbas.
The launch of the full-scale war against Ukraine and the unprecedented Western sanctions and self-isolation that followed were surely a major shock for the elite. But they did not, in and of themselves, interrupt Russia’s domestic equilibrium. In the first year of the war, elite and society support for the regime did not collapse. Indeed, everything was quickly refashioned to adapt to the new state of affairs—much to the relief of many within the elite.
At the same time, surging government spending on the war and the needs of the defense industry led to record low unemployment and soaring salaries as labor shortages emerged. Over time, government spending caused by the war led to overheated economic growth, along with an increasingly hard to manage surge of inflation. The Russian central bank responded in textbook fashion by pushing interest rates to over 20 percent, but its policy action has not tackled the underlying problem.
Today it is abundantly clear that the Russian economy is overheating, even as average citizens report that they are living better than ever. While Western policymakers continue to pin their hopes on the Kremlin’s growing economic burdens making it hard to sustain the war, public sentiment is evolving in unexpected ways. According to a Levada Center survey conducted in July 2024 before Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region, Russians’ positive assessment of living standards approached a record high in the wake of a slight decline in 2023. (By the end of 2024, the overall perception of the situation had become slightly less optimistic.) The ongoing devaluation of the ruble, while cause for concern among the more affluent parts of society, is far from catastrophic for the bulk of Russians who live from paycheck to paycheck.
Putin’s detachment from social and economic challenges, which was already evident, has now been aggravated by the war. Complicating matters further is Putin’s harsher and more dismissive attitude toward the elite’s more parochial interests. The Kremlin’s current financial and budgetary priorities, which consist of ensuring domestic stability and resilience, have been imposed at the expense of the private sector and large state-owned businesses.
Various parts of the private sector, such as real estate developers and industrial concerns, are furious about the crushing weight of relentless tax hikes and soaring interest rates. The head of the central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, has come under unprecedented attack and has arguably become one of the most unpopular figures within parts of the Russian elite. Of course, such criticism does not take into account that “the main goal of the Bank of Russia’s monetary policy is to ensure price stability,” according to its policy guidelines. But for Nabiullina’s efforts, the Russian economy surely would have been battered by runaway inflation.
At the same time, the economic headwinds facing the private sector and major business players, coupled with the absence of effective levers to influence political decisions and the erosion of established rules of the game, are leading many to take independent action to safeguard their own interests. This dynamic is clearly visible in the handling of assets previously owned by foreign companies that have exited the Russian market following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For example, Umar Kremlyov, a previously unknown figure, has become the owner of Rolf, Russia’s largest car dealership. Kremlyov’s rise can be attributed to his close connections to Alexei Rubezhnoi, the head of the Presidential Security Service (FSO).
The eagerness of the siloviki (people affiliated with the Russian security services) to deliver results is evident in the surge of arrests at the federal and regional levels. Such moves have at times even targeted figures who are benefiting politically from the war (for example, the speaker of Nizhny Novgorod’s city council). In other cases, these crackdowns ignore formal procedures entirely. Consider, for example, the pressure campaign against Nikolai Lyubimov, who until recently was a member of the Federation Council. Normally, the upper chamber of parliament must vote to strip a member of their immunity before they can be detained and questioned. In Lyubimov’s case, that step was skipped, and Lyubimov appears to have signed his resignation letter in the presence of prosecutors.
Another striking trend is the revision of privatization deals from the 1990s, which flies in the face of Putin’s repeated assurances that such reversals would never occur. There have already been dozens of such cases, signaling a profound shift in the state’s approach to property and governance.
Back to the 1990s
This new reality is forcing players to adapt to conditions of insecurity and sharply reduced predictability. Back in the 1990s it was common to talk about wild capitalism (dikii kapitalizm). Nowadays, we are witnessing the advent of so-called wild Putinism. In these conditions no one knows what tomorrow may bring. Everyone needs to be prepared to be arrested or imprisoned at any moment, regardless of their position and rank. In previous years, it was taking the initiative that could carry political risks. In today’s Russia, it is inaction and passivity that are becoming dangerous.
The 1990s in Russia, of course, were a period marked by chaos and lawlessness. These comparisons have been prompted by a noticeable increase in high-profile crimes, including contract killings and corporate raiding of businesses, both of which were commonplace during the 1990s.
The most high-profile example of this trend was the deadly shooting in the center of Moscow in September 2024 near the office of Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer. Wildberries has long been controlled by a previously married couple, Tatyana Kim and Vladislav Bakalchuk, who are now in the middle of a bitter divorce. Suleiman Kerimov, the well-connected oligarch originally from Dagestan, and his partners have been in talks with Wildberries CEO Tatyana Bakalchuk over a merger with Russ, the country’s biggest outdoor advertising company.
In response, Vladislav Bakalchuk turned to Ramzan Kadyrov, the notorious head of the Chechen republic, for help. The resulting confrontation drew huge media coverage, thanks to a shootout just 500 meters from the Kremlin in which two Wildberries security guards were killed and seven people wounded. Since then, threats and accusations have been exchanged between the parties.
In Moscow’s corridors of power, rumors circulated that Kerimov had ordered a hit on Kadyrov. In response, Kadyrov openly declared a “blood feud” against Kerimov.
This story is a telling example in so many ways. First and foremost, it is remarkable that Kadyrov felt comfortable using deadly force against Kerimov’s allies in the Russian capital, even though Putin had personally approved the merger. Second, there has been endless publicity about the dispute, featuring grandstanding by Kadyrov that included appeals to traditional values (Kadyrov called on Tatyana Bakalchuk to return to her husband). Russia’s supposedly omnipotent siloviki have appeared helpless, unable to tell whom they can put in prison and whom they cannot. Then there is the deal itself, which makes little financial sense.
Putin’s role in the Wildberries scandal is, if anything, even more puzzling. While at first, Putin supported the merger and appeared to be on Kerimov’s side, he embarked on a visit to Chechnya in the wake of the shooting. Kadyrov and his allies surely viewed the trip as a sign of Putin’s continued support for Kadyrov, without whom the North Caucasus could become destabilized.
Such vacillation is also clearly visible in Putin’s approach to personnel policy. For several years now, Putin has been reluctant to rotate senior figures. Many of his longest serving advisers—for example, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev, FSB director Alexander Bortnikov, Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin, and Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov—are all in their seventies and well past the official retirement age. Other longtime insiders remain in their cushy positions, contrary to longstanding perceptions that the team is in serious need of generational replenishment.
Following Putin’s ritualistic re-election in March 2024, he declined to stage a major reshuffle, apart from asking several longtime lieutenants to swap jobs. Notwithstanding personnel reshuffles in the presidential administration or cabinet of ministers, there has been no shift in the country’s overall direction, since Putin allows his subordinates minimal room for strategic action. This creates a bizarre situation in which a certain type of official is able to thrive: specifically, those who are capable of staying active while being mindful of a narrowly defined corridor of opportunities—let’s call them the proactive implementers.
The most high-profile element of last spring’s reshuffle was the departure of Patrushev from his longtime role as head of the Security Council and replacement with long-serving Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Yet even that move led to no discernible changes in terms of policy or the real balance of power. Andrei Belousov, the economist and bureaucratic survivor named as Shoigu’s successor, has not created a powerful center of influence for himself.
Today Belousov has in many ways become a lonely, symbolic figure serving in a part of the government department where nearly everything important is decided by the leadership of the General Staff and even his own influential deputy ministers, all of whom are familiar figures to the president. This is another vivid illustration of the head of state’s unwillingness to decide anything—even in critically important areas like the direction of the war in Ukraine and the looming rebuilding of Russia’s battered military.
Putin’s predilection for half-measures and avoiding tough decisions is also evident in the long-running battle over the fate of YouTube in Russia. The fact that the authorities are themselves divided and have staked out contradictory stances in the policy debate is surely a contributing factor. For example, hawkish voices in the government, ranging from Kadyrov to hardliners in the State Duma, embrace isolationism and call for all Western influence to be banned and replaced by alternative homegrown platforms.
People working in the IT sector, on digital policy, or on domestic politics see the problem quite differently. For those who have ambitions of developing Russian video hosting services, it’s a simple question of money, influence, and access to lucrative state contracts. Inside the presidential administration, the situation is different. Officials responsible for domestic politics well understand that banning YouTube could trigger a wave of social discontent and anger; therefore, they advocate proceeding with caution. Finally, there is the geopolitical logic of not banning YouTube, which remains useful for disseminating Russian propaganda internationally.
Until recently, Putin’s own position hewed closely to the political logic that the site should not be blocked until there is a functioning Russian analogue to YouTube.
For almost two and a half years, the standoff between competing points of view prevented YouTube from being blocked outright. But now supporters of a ban have found a solution that bypasses the need to get a clear go-ahead from Putin yet is comparable in terms of effectiveness to blocking. Since August, the Russian authorities responsible for overseeing the internet have throttled YouTube while blaming the service’s owner, Google, for the performance issues experienced by average Russians. By December 2024, YouTube had become practically inaccessible for users despite the absence of any official decision. This is another very telling example of how members of the Russian elite and state structures are learning to achieve their goals without initial orders from Putin. The president himself prefers to let his staff take the initiative in socially sensitive cases.
A Structure Without Putin
In regions of the world where natural disasters are common, aged and cracked buildings are reinforced so that they don’t just suddenly collapse onto the heads of their helpless inhabitants. Something similar is taking place right now in Putin’s Russia.
Putin was re-elected for another six-year term less than a year ago. For the Russian elites, the issue of a successor has shifted from being taboo to increasingly irrelevant. The logic may seem hard to grasp, but consider the following. For many years, Russian elites grew accustomed to the notion of an eternal Putin and that it was dangerous, if not reckless, to engage in visible pre-succession maneuvering. Yet the older Putin gets and the more detached from day-to-day decisionmaking, the less the Russian elites believe he will be willing or able to guarantee a stable transfer of power to his successor. Therefore, various players’ attitudes about an eventual transition to the post-Putin era increasingly serve as a tool for political manipulation and infighting.
After all, choosing an heir is only half the battle: he then needs to be crowned and provided with resources and political weight. The later Putin turns his hand to this operation, the weaker his control over the process will be and the less weight his successor may have. In this respect, not enough attention is paid to the fact that Putin is not just approaching old age in a decade or so: he is already an old man.
Virtually all the key players within the regime now live and plan according to the logic that under Putin, anything can happen: mutinies, the seizure of Russian territory by Ukrainian troops, another round of mass mobilization and anti-war protests, and even the assassination of Putin's most visible opponent. Putin’s frequent nuclear saber-rattling has fostered a sense of doom and helplessness within the elite and the general public, reflecting their sense that they are completely lacking in power or tools to influence such weighty decisions.
That in a nutshell is the new reality of Putin’s Russia. Outside Russia, there is war. Inside Russia, the dramatic horrors of the 1930s and 1990s are returning. In response, everyone is starting to build their own supporting structures, and that is causing ripple effects on many different levels.
At the same time, angry political players will become increasingly willing to start sawing away at the supporting structures of their enemies—often under the guise of patriotism and the fight against those who cannot be trusted. For example, in recent months, political battles have been brewing between the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Supreme Court regarding a case before the Constitutional Court over the statute of limitations for the state seizure of assets. There is also a similar dispute between the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Federation of Independent Trade Unions over the property received by the latter. Those with administrative resources make use of staffing policy or criminal cases, while those with financial resources are starting to get their hands on assets, whether confiscated foreign assets or domestic ones that have been nationalized and then privatized again.
State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin is also building his own structures, competing with others to lead the fight against Western influence within the country while striving to maintain his diminishing role as a key arbitrator between the Kremlin and the “in-system” opposition parties represented in the Duma. At the governmental level, the new energy minister, Sergei Tsivilev, has been very busy, leading to a wave of rumors in Moscow late last year that the state will soon move to tighten its control over oil companies. These reports triggered great irritation among senior oil industry players, including Rosneft CEO Sechin who is now reviving the long-dormant presidential commission on the fuel and energy complex, having made sure to pack it with siloviki in advance.
Not to be outdone, regional governors, parliamentary deputies, and senators are mobilizing various activists and supporters of so-called traditional values, Russian Orthodoxy, and the pet causes of ultra-patriots. This frenzy is stirring up a crackdown on Russia’s LGBTQ community and reproductive freedom. Even more bizarre are attempts to ban non-existent movements like supporters of childlessness for married couples or fringe groups like quadrobers and so-called furries who imitate or dress up as animals. There are no alleged destructive ideologies too small or marginal to rally against.
More troubling is the unprecedented wave of anti-migrant sentiment, fueled by the war and last year’s terrorist attack against Moscow’s Crocus City concert hall. This has driven radical changes in migration policy, which directly contradict Russia’s economic priority of addressing current labor shortages and provoke resentment among ethno-national elites in Russia’s republics. To counterbalance the anti-migrant nationalist campaign, a faction within the presidential administration was forced to launch an initiative aimed at mitigating the anti-migrant backlash. This effort, in turn, instantly faced anger from ultra-patriots.
Last but not least is Putin’s clumsy attempt to promote veterans of the Ukraine war to high-ranking positions. Thus, the war has become a powerful political calling card that is made use of both for the purposes of career growth and for launching attacks on rivals.
Every Man for Himself
For many outside observers, it’s taken for granted that Russian politics are orchestrated from above to boost the regime’s political control, to strengthen the power vertical, and to centralize the Kremlin’s management of Russian society. But that is decidedly not the case. Rather the war has triggered the fermentation of the political field, activating highly radicalized demands (both among the elites and society) that have lain dormant for many years. It is also reigniting forces that rely on the promotion of their own mini agendas (say, to ban this or that) in order to survive and accumulate resources. In this respect, the question of what will be banned next in Russia is now completely irrelevant: what matters is that the process is taking on a life of its own.
Even in the pages of Kommersant, which is unfailingly loyal to the Kremlin, the columnist Dmitry Drize wrote: “Just say what is allowed, and everything else will be banned by default.” In this political manifestation of wild Putinism, there is little that still depends on Putin himself. Rather the ultra-conservative direction of traffic is gaining such momentum that erecting a barrier in the path of this wave could at some point threaten the stability of the structure itself.
Also in the mix are the angry patriots (including war bloggers who are often fiercely critical of the authorities’ handling of the war in Ukraine), the spate of privatization deals that are now being revised, predatory moves by the Prosecutor General’s Office (which genuinely frighten many in the business elite), and the tunnel vision of the security services, which was partly responsible for enabling the devastating terrorist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City concert hall.
Contrary to external impressions, the war has not shored up the domestic political order. Instead, it has made those who were already vulnerable much weaker, and those who were strong vulnerable. It has also sharply reduced the significance of the letter of the law, destabilized the work of the legislative branch, and made it impossible to guarantee anything to anyone. Today, the reality of the political and economic order is that to have a claim on meaningful stature and a right to exist, you have to find ways to demonstrate that you are pro-Putin, pro-war, anti-NATO, anti-American, and pro-“traditional values.” But for prosperity, career growth, and security, even that is no longer enough.
Under this period of wild Putinism, the president’s personal involvement in the functioning of the country (anything other than the war and foreign policy issues) is becoming not only minimal, but often meaningless. Consumed by the demands of the ongoing geopolitical confrontation with the West, Putin has little time to devote to domestic politics.
Slowly but surely, much of the country’s elites are gradually descending into survival mode: it’s every man for himself. Property is being redistributed. The war is fueling enormous growth opportunities for some lucky businesses while proving disastrous for many others. Frequent bans and the criminalization of entire sectors of public life are mere features of adaptation to a long period of uncertainty. And through all this runs a darkening thread: a whole host of regional entities, government bodies, and enterprises that cannot count on federal protection from shelling or drones have little choice but to arm and protect themselves.
Regardless of any plans or ideas of the Kremlin itself, the country is traveling under its own steam toward “patriotic” lawlessness in which the key to success will not be closeness to Putin or his associates, but a willingness to act according to the credo of “might makes right”—albeit under the flag of Putinism. Putin is not only not needed for this transformation; indeed, he could even prove a hindrance. We are seeing the rise of various kinds of moralizers, persecutors, and other patriots with access to administrative or financial resources. In this situation, it will be extremely difficult for many players to remain on the sidelines, waiting for better times.
This state of affairs challenges the widespread assumption that Russia is becoming more politically controlled and the Putin system more resilient. The war has gradually transformed the domestic political landscape into one where no one is safe, and no one is influential enough to feel secure. With an aging president, diminished respect for the rules of the game and unwritten guarantees, and a highly unpredictable geopolitical environment, the further degeneration of Russian political life appears inevitable as Putin’s future becomes increasingly hostage to unpredictable internal dynamics.