26 June 2023 , 18:34
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When Russian President Vladimir Putin saw footage of the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi he went quiet.
According to a story that went round the western intelligence community he watched it over and over again, silently and with a blank expression.
He did not utter a word, so the story goes, although as with everything in the Kremlin it is impossible to know if this really happened.
The most important thing to Putin is his own power, wealth and survival and it is possible the death of dictators such as Gadaffi and Saddam Hussein had a profound effect on him.
That was back in 2011 and the now beleaguered Russian leader may be thinking back to how he felt then about a despot’s horribly lonely and depraved death, stabbed by a baying mob.
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Gaddafi's final moments before he was assassinated following the overthrowing of his regime in 2011 (ENTERPRISE NEWS AND PICTURES)And he may be wondering how he got it all so wrong.
His KGB training in espionage, agent recruitment combined with his street gang St Petersburg mentality made him an arch strategist.
But the so-called Wagner coup attempt may signal the beginning of the end for Putin, an end that actually started with the disastrous full-scale Ukraine invasion last year.
It is possible he has been so fearful of his reign ending that he went too far in trying to avoid it by trying to keep up his strongman image.
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He thought he could get away with the Ukraine invasion, took a chance on getting a great victory for Russia and pretty soon realised his mistake.
And he has spent every waking hour since trying to blame other people for it.
He has allowed Wagner Group mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to play the ego-driven hooligan who lambasts the Russian military for months.
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Yevgeny Prigozhin left the Southern Military District headquarters on Saturday (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)Putin’s strategy here was, it seems, to pave the way for Prigizhin’s rivals, defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov to take the blame for the war.
Putin used Prigozhin’s insulting outbursts against these two as a means to divide and rule and also publicly to point the blame for the war bungles without actually saying it himself.
This petty, evil, guttersnipe tactic may have worked had it not been for Putin’s proxy mouthpiece Prigozhin going too far and like most ego-driven thugs, believing in his own publicity.
Prigozhin, it seems, went along with all of this, falsely claiming his men were being killed because supplies had been delayed by the Russian Ministry of Defence.
As an ex-KGB, Putin is an expert strategist (AP)But for some reason, the bungling former jailbird brainlessly went off piste, forgot the script and ludicrously took it upon himself to march on Moscow.
Putin moved quickly in securing a U-turn but is now in deep trouble having had to do a deal to avoid bloodshed on the capital’s doorstep and give Prigozhin a get-out.
It has weakened him hugely and his days, weeks or months as Russian leader are surely numbered if not his days, weeks or months alive.
It is possible he will go the way of those dictators before him.
Gaddafi was captured and dragged from a drainpipe he tried to take refuge in after he was overthrown (ENTERPRISE NEWS AND PICTURES)There is some hope that perhaps he will flee to one of his palatial homes, where a new regime, probably equally as corrupt and anti-western, will seize him in revenge for train-wrecking the Russian Federation.
And then it is entirely possible he will be handed over to the Hague as a sacrificial offering, finally to face justice and signalling an end to his sordid reign over Russia.
Or, as some believe, was the entire coup plot a ruse which has ended up with thousands of Wagner troops led by Prigozhin being repositioned in Belarus just north of Kyiv?
This would once again threaten Kyiv and undermine the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
This would mean Putin may still think he has a chance of surviving as President.
But his survival now depends on saving face regarding the Ukraine war, which is next to impossible without a victory soon.
And with his military in such chaos, many of his special forces apparently defecting to Wagner Group, that too seems impossible so Putin’s Presidency will struggle to survive this.