According to an array of experts on Russia and authoritarian regimes, Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to launch an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a precipitous increase in the risk of him being deposed and Russia seeing another revolution.
Writing, "What events could actually bring down Putin? And how likely might they be in the foreseeable future?" Vox's Zack Beauchamp added, "The best research on how authoritarians fall points to two possible scenarios: a military coup or a popular uprising. During the Cold War, coups were the more common way for dictators to be forced out of office. But since the 1990s, there has been a shift in the way that authoritarians are removed. Coups have been on the decline while popular revolts, like the Arab Spring uprisings and 'color revolutions' in the former Soviet Union, have been on the rise."
Admitting that the idea of ousting Putin seems farfetched due to the security measures he has put in place, Beauchamp found a few experts who said the door for a possible internal revolt has been opened.
"The experts I spoke with generally believe the Ukraine invasion to have been a strategic blunder that raised the risks of both a coup and a revolution, even if their probability remains low in absolute terms," he wrote with Brian Taylor, a professor at Syracuse University and author of The Code of Putinism, adding, “Before [the war], the risk from either of those threats was close to zero. And now the risk in both of those respects is certainly higher."
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Naunihal Singh, a leading scholar in military coups, agreed that there may be rumblings in the ranks about turning on Putin, telling the Vox columnist, "There are reasons why Putin might be increasingly concerned here."
According to Beauchamp, "In Singh’s view, the Ukraine conflict raises the odds of a coup in Russia for two reasons: It could weaken the military leadership’s allegiance to Putin, and it could provide an unusual opportunity to plan a move against him. The motive for Russian officers to launch a coup would be fairly straightforward: The costly Ukraine campaign becomes unpopular among, and even personally threatening to, key members of the military."
Harvard’s Erica Chenoweth agreed, chiming in, "Russia has a long and storied legacy of civil resistance [movements]. Unpopular wars have precipitated two of them.”
"Chenoweth’s research suggests you need to get about 3.5 percent of the population involved in protests to guarantee some kind of government concession. In Russia, that translates to about 5 million people. The antiwar protests haven’t reached anything even close to that scale, and Chenoweth is not willing to predict that it’s likely for them to approach it," Beauchamp wrote before later adding, "It can be difficult to talk about low-probability events like the collapse of the Putin regime. Suggesting that it’s possible can come across as suggesting it’s likely; suggesting it’s unlikely can come across as suggesting it’s impossible."
"We don’t really have a good sense of how key members of the Russian security establishment are feeling about the war or whether the people trying to organize mass protests are talented enough to get around aggressive repression," he wrote. "And the near-future effects of key policies are similarly unclear. Take international sanctions. We know that these measures have had a devastating effect on the Russian economy. What we don’t know is who the Russian public will blame for their immiseration: Putin for launching the war — or America and its allies for imposing the sanctions? Can reality pierce through Putin’s control of the information environment? The answers to these questions will make a huge difference."
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