A Russia without Putin? Be careful what you wish for...

As if there were not enough uncertainty in the world at the moment, the week opened with new speculation about the health of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president, who recently turned 71, was said to have suffered a stroke at his residence outside Moscow and to be in intensive care or, at the very least, under the beady eye of his doctors.

Such rumours, it should be said, come around periodically, and in recent months and years, Putin has been reported as suffering from a whole range of chronic or terminal illnesses, from Parkinson’s disease to various types of cancer. As in this case, reports may be adorned with graphic accounts of the supposed emergency – a fall, spilt food, or convulsions.

I tend to dismiss such reports as black propaganda – or wishful thinking – put about by his many adversaries. The claim that Putin, known as a sports and health fanatic, travels with a personal doctor or even a medical team would not make him unique among national leaders. What is more, the reputed invalid invariably pops up, sooner rather than later, looking as energetic and spry as usual.

This does not mean, though, that such reports do not pose a dilemma for Russia watchers and mainstream journalists. Do you ignore them, even as they multiply over social media? Do you report them, thereby giving them a degree of credence they might otherwise not have had? Do you report them only to dismiss or ridicule them, which may have the same effect?

They pose a similar problem for the Kremlin, which – unusually – judged the latest speculation to be either so absurd – or so credible – as to warrant a rebuttal. Within 48 hours, the Kremlin’s long-time spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, had publicly denied either that there was anything amiss with Putin’s health or – another recurrent rumour repeated in tandem with the near-death reports – that the Russian president routinely used a “body double”. “Everything is fine with him,” he said. “This belongs to the category of absurd information hoaxes that a whole series of media discuss with enviable tenacity. It evokes nothing but a smile.”

Well, maybe it does. But even if this week’s rumours are indeed as “absurd” as the Kremlin says they are, there are two points that should be made. The first is that this time at least, and perhaps because of the graphic details doing the rounds on social media, the Kremlin chose to respond. This suggests a degree of concern at the highest level that speculation about Putin’s health could be, or could become, a destabilising factor, either in Russia’s corridors of power or in the country at large.

I would stress, this does not validate the rumours. Putin may have a long life ahead, with more hiking in the tundra, more Siberian tiger hunts and more bareback riding to come. But it does mean they are seen as credible enough for a top-level public denial to be preferred to silent disdain. That is worth noting.

The second point, not unrelated, is that – again, without validating the rumours – this might be a good time for all those engaged in forward planning, inside Russia, but especially abroad, to factor in the possibility of Putin’s sudden demise. Not as necessarily imminent or likely, of course, but as a possibility – and to be considering the implications.

There are many, of course, who have been working and hoping for Putin’s departure, for almost as long as he has been in power. Boris Berezovsky, seen by some as the original “oligarch”, was among the first to be – mostly metaphorically – gunning for Putin from the relative safety of London. A more recent opposition figure, the anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, has a presence even from prison. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a one-time energy magnate and political prisoner, is one of those looking to a post-Putin Russia in a more philosophical way from his exile in the UK capital.

And, as told by some, there has been at least one recent near miss, when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, mounted his short-lived mutiny in June (even if the very notion of Prigozhin as an alternative leader seemed as unrealistic at the time as it turned out). The challenger was swiftly seen off in power terms, and then physically.

For Russia’s president to be deposed, however, is one thing – because, for however short a time, someone has seized the reins of power. Sudden death or incapacity is different.

Does anyone know, for instance, whether Russia has a shadow team in place, ready to take over in that event? In all his 20-plus years at the top of Russian politics, Putin has never seemed much of a team player, but his public appearances since the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have presented him as still more of an autocrat alone. There is no obvious deputy or potential caretaker in the wings. How would power be passed? To whom? Would there be a vacuum in the Kremlin, or a struggle for power, or maybe a smooth and consensual transition? How long might that take, and what effect might that have on Russia, on Ukraine, on the rest of the world?

No one in Ukraine, up to and including President Zelensky, has ever hidden their hopes that Putin might soon be gone. But would anyone other than Putin – still less someone new to, or anxious about his hold on, power – be in a position to change Russia’s trajectory in the war? Would a successor to Putin necessarily want peace, at least in the first instance? Might they rather feel that their own interests, and those of Russia, were better served by a more determined pursuit of the war?

Putin has so far ridden the tiger of Russian patriotism with reasonable success. It is hard to see anyone suddenly elevated to the presidency choosing at once to change course, still less offering what would be regarded as concessions, either to Ukraine and/or its Western supporters. Those hoping, even expecting, a more liberal Russia to spring forth in Putin’s wake, may be disappointed. Indeed, the opposite may be true.

Then again, there are questions about how resilient Russia itself might be, in the event of a sudden vacuum at the top. Some Western Kremlin watchers believe that, in the event of a military defeat, Russia could break up, as the USSR did before it. For some that is a fear, for others a hope. The same might be said of a Russia without Putin.

Personally, I doubt there will be much further fragmentation. Today’s Russia, it seems to me, exists within something like its natural borders, with only the frontiers of Ukraine still to be decided – probably by military force. But some sort of looser central control cannot be ruled out. For all Putin’s efforts, central power in post-Soviet Russia has never been strong. If some regional leaders were to exploit an absence of power in the Kremlin to wrest more power for themselves, might unrest then spill over into the Caucasus, Siberia, the Pacific and the borderlands with China?

And what of Russia’s international reach in the event of looser, or no, central control from Moscow? Or without such a seasoned and familiar figure as Putin at the top? For all Western efforts to isolate Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, Putin has lost relatively little influence or prestige in other parts of the world and has strengthened relations with China, India and parts of the Middle East. How far does Russia’s global weight, such as it is, depend on Putin, and how far does it rather reflect Russia’s sheer geographical size? We may soon see.

There have been times, including in the countries of the former Soviet Union, when a transfer of autocratic power was predicted as likely to prove complex or presage civil unrest, but actually turned out quite differently. Contrary to all expectations, the 2006 death of Turkmenistan’s dictator Saparmurat Niyazov, who styled himself Turkmen-bashi, was followed by an orderly transfer of power. In Azerbaijan, the long-serving Geydar Aliyev was succeeded in 2003 by his son shortly before he died.

In Russia, the most elegant outcome might be for Putin simply not to seek a new term in presidential elections scheduled for next March – although the war with Ukraine, if still going on, might well discourage a change of power. That would assume, however, that his state of health will give him the choice. And that, not for the first time, is unknown.