Even Putin’s Praetorian Guard is turning against him

You’d think a ruthless autocrat who believes he faces a West that wants to unseat him with people power would make damn sure he keeps his Praetorian Guard on side. You’d think. After all, it has long been one of the Kremlin’s tenets that the West is committed to first isolating and then reshaping Russia using a ‘colour revolution’ or ‘Trojan Horse’ strategy. The idea is that popular revolutions and street protests are mobilised and weaponised by the dark arts of Western ‘political technologists’, with military force only deployed as a last resort.

Rising against post-Soviet authoritarians? The protests against rigged elections in Russia and Putin’s return to the presidency in 2011-13? The Syrian Civil War? The Ukrainian ‘EuroMaidan’ revolution of 2014? The mass demonstrations against Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko in 2021?

None of these, of course, could be natural, organic responses to corrupt and unresponsive regimes. Instead, they were made in Langley, CIA operations in every case (although the Kremlin will generously single out MI6 for a supporting role).