Next Russian president must betray Putin to survive - opposition leader Yakovenko

Sociologist and former member of Russia's State Duma from the Yabloko opposition party Igor Yakovenko said this on Espreso TV. 

He is skeptical of rumors that the son of the Secretary of Russia's Security Council Dmitry Patrushev will become the successor of Vladimir Putin, because he believes that the current president of the Russian Federation cannot have a successor.

“In order to imagine Putin's successor, you need to understand Putin's internal situation: any successor will instantly betray Putin. Any. Even his closest friend. Because to survive at the head of Russia today for the next person after Putin is to betray Putin, to hang all the sins on him. The only way for the successor to survive is to carry out the operation of handing Putin over for criminal prosecution, an international court, and then quite calmly get out of the sanctions and try to make peace with Ukraine and negotiate, so that there are as few reparations as possible. This is a separate story, and it is quite fantastic for one and only reason: there will be no successor,” the politician emphasized.

According to Igor Yakovenko, Vladimir Putin understands that he will be killed as soon as he loses power, because no one wants to be responsible for the crimes of the current president of Russia. The sociologist noted that the serious intraspecies and interspecies struggle in the Kremlin indicates that the Russian Federation is entering a period of turmoil, which periodically happened in Russian history, when the power weakened - usually after major defeats in wars.

“The defeat in the Russo-Japanese war was a great turmoil, which was called the "first Russian revolution of 1905-1907". During the First World War, Russia, although formally, did not lose, it even won, but the senselessness of the war and its hardships caused the soldiers  to simply start to climb out of the trenches and carry out a revolution, more precisely, the October coup. Immediately after that, a great turmoil began, which is called the period of civil war, interventions, etc.,” Igor Yakovenko said. 

The sociologist believes that a similar situation is brewing now. He noted that the clan of the Secretary of Russia's Security Council Nikolai Patrushev and the FSB is a clan that does not concern the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov and the founder of the Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin, but hates them.

“The Kremlin and its surroundings are becoming more and more like a jar of spiders. This is happening now. So far, Putin somehow keeps it under control, that's what keeps him going. In fact, Putin's entourage, primarily the security forces, cannot stand each other, and the consensus about what they should do now is impossible,” the oppositionist concluded.