If Putin’s been ill for a while, however, and this is just the endgame of something like cancer, then it’s a different ballgame, and we can expect that those deals have already been made. Expect to see the usual suspects in the security and military forces moving some chairs around while the farce of a new election is organized according to previous arrangements. In that case, Medvedev again is the likely choice for another term, although in a weakened condition, since these deals will have been made when the Boss was alive and healthy.
Finally, if this really was a coup, then I’m having trouble figuring out who arrested whom. Did Putin finally scare the people around him so badly – with loose talk, for example, about nuclear weapons – that they’ve removed him before he gets them all killed and turns Russia into a wasteland? I find that doubtful; some of Putin’s generals are just as hard-line as Putin himself, and their genetic deference to authority will not allow them to hose the Boss just because of a piddling war in Ukraine.
If Putin was removed by people more hard-line than Putin, I’d like to know who those guys are, because “more hard-line than Putin” is pretty much synonymous with “psychopath.”
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