Putin’s rage: the Russian President won’t be easy to topple

How will Vladimir Putin’s hold on power end? Will he be quietly retired by Kremlin rivals angry at a national humiliation, like Nikita Khrushchev after the debacle of the Cuban missile crisis? Deposed by KGB men even more hawkish than himself, like Mikhail Gorbachev? Overthrown by a popular revolt, like Tsar Nicholas II? Or will he die in his bed still the undisputed tyrant of a police state, like Joseph Stalin?

Prediction has become a risky business in Russia ever since Putin threw his usual calculation and caution to the wind and launched a rash and fundamentally unwinnable war against Ukraine. But it is nonetheless worth examining where Putin’s vulnerabilities lie – and how unfolding economic collapse, international isolation and the likely failure to achieve his goal of a quick decapitation of the Ukrainian state could undermine his once-unassailable position.

Some in the West seem to believe that Putin might be deposed by top generals who realise his plans are doomed – an Operation Valkyrie scenario, like Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.