re: #140 ericblair

That being said, the analysts I’ve heard don’t see a mass uprising in Russia due to the Kremlin’s diligent longstanding repression of any liberal opposition. The risk for Putin is a palace coup, where the plotters decide that Putin is unpopular enough for the takeover to succeed. They “systemic” opposition parties are opposition in name only, but I think the closest you could get to a populist takeover would be where a faction of the Communists seized the Presidency. More likely it would be one of the other powerful clans in the mafia system, but that would be replacing one bald mob boss for another and wouldn’t solve anything.

I could see a scenario like that; protests continue and get bigger with every passing day. Eventually, increasingly panicky Kremlin insiders conclude that Putin has essentially outlived his usefulness and is now a major liability, so they overthrow him and replace him with someone more palatable.

Hard to say of course. But it’s a possibility.