Palace Coup in Moscow possibility intensifies:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

There is no way even if Hell freezes over that Russia is actually going to start a legitimate war with a NATO power and risk a general nuclear exchange over the fucking Kurds. This is the PKK and its like-minded movements trying a really, really audacious bluff. We will sooner see Putin sent to Katorga in Siberia than an actual NATO-Russia conflict, because the oligarchs know that if it goes to that the nukes'll wreck their money and they won't like being penniless any more than large parts of Europe will like Cerenkhov Radiation as street lights.

Parts of the USA may have it, but who knows after all these years if the nukes'll even work. Obama's not intending to replace them all for confidence that they will, after all. But if Russia does do this, well, Europe's long delusion that it could let the USA pay for its military defense and never have to fight any wars itself ever again just got shot between the eyes. I highly doubt Russia's oligarchs will allow this, though. Very highly.

The reason I'm all for brinksmanship with the Russians is precisely because I believe Putin, in the wake of the protests of 2011-3 and 2014-5, is fragile enough in power that a full-scale counter-response like this would topple him and that's all she wrote for his regime and that puts Russia on the back burner for another generation.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-18/kurds-warn-turkey-of-big-war-with-russia-if-troops-enter-syria

Comments

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I've been trying to figure out where the hell you got that obsessive idea that there's an imminent palace coup against Putin coming up.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The protests a few years ago. They were rather larger-scale than the "Putin is the sole voice of Russia" and "Putin's oligarchs can safely pretend they didn't happen" to me. They came rather close to knocking him out of power, moreso than the 2009 protests in Iran. I tend to think he did a less efficient job of suppressing them than it seems and that this something he probably knows but won't admit to himself.

I could be wrong, however.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

> They came rather close to knocking him out of power

Do you have a meaningful way of backing up this assertion?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Only what I remember of the protests at the time and how Putin reacted to them.

So no, not really. The articles I've tried to find on those things are unfortunately difficult to find. Seems there's a deletion policy for some topics or my Google fu on this topic just plain sucks.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I see. Oh well then.

(frozen) (no subject)

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Wow, gee, you've been all over the place with this, haven't you.

After the 5th time, my eyes just tend to glaze over after the first sentence. Sorry.

(frozen) (no subject)

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

IKR. T'is like the very definition of one-trick-poniness being brought to a whole new level.

(frozen) (no subject)

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Same (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/2069744.html?thread=151011056#t151011056) applies to you.

(frozen) (no subject)

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Then fucking stay out of it.

You already had your warning (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/2064967.html?thread=150936135#t150936135).



Do this again and you'll be spending time away.

[dz.livejournal.com]

The idea that olygarchs will overthrow Kremlin and stop it from getting into a big war with "west" if quite weak.

It would be so if "west" wouldnt' be so greedy. Russian top money guys got a very clear message that they will NEVER become a part of world's establishment.

Russianc can't buy even such a piece of shit like Opel, not talking of AMD or smtyhing like that.

So, for now, they have nothing to loose.

It does not mean per se that Russia will start nuclear war tomorrow. But olygarchs' money is not a red line.

[garote]

Yeah I'd be really surprised if anything Putin did - or would do - would ever be counter to the oligarchs he had to broker deals with just to stay in power.

[dz.livejournal.com]

Situation is not that simple. Putin does not need any oligarchs to be president. His real support is people (80+% of support is true) and "siloviki" - army and secret services. I do believe.

[garote]

Yeah but how quickly would that support evaporate, if all those people suddenly got their gas shut off in winter?

[dz.livejournal.com]

Gas? Shut down? In Russia? Do you mean nuclear war, or what?

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Besides, didn't Putin create the current clique of the top Russian oligarchs? He gave them their positions, and now they owe him allegiance.

[dz.livejournal.com]

Again, not that simple. He didn't give 'em positions, most key persons became rich with Yeltsin. He gives 'em rules, that's true. More or less stable and equal. And he controls them quite well now, not depends on them.
IMHO.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I thought it was more a phenomenon of the Yeltsinschina, not the Putin era. What Putin did was turn Russia into a monocrop oil economy right when oil prices went blooey.

[airiefairie.livejournal.com]

Putin went after Yeltsin's oligarchs, only to substitute them with his own.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Eh, maybe. I still tend to think that there's a lot of precedent for it and Putin's been careful about treading on their toes too hard for the precise reason of said precedent.