Putin’s real threat comes from Russia’s ‘turbo-patriots’

Does Vladimir Putin face a challenge, not from cuddly, West-looking liberals, but from even sharper-toothed nationalists? Certainly this is suddenly the message coming from loyalists.

Oleg Matveychev, a parliamentarian and spin doctor, who also has a widely-read blog, has made waves by claiming in an online video that ‘2023 will be very dangerous,’ because of the threat of so-called ‘turbo-patriots.’ Discounting the liberals (who ‘have all run away’), he warned that the turbo-patriots had become ‘the only danger to our state.’

His scenario was that after some new reversals in the war, a combination of disgruntled nationalism, anger at corruption and ‘a light dose of leftism’ could trigger some rising. Looking to next year’s presidential elections, he also predicted that the turbo-patriots could put forward their own candidate and, when he loses, claim that the election had been rigged and use this to mobilise a national rebellion.