I Worked for Putin—He Was Rational, Patient and Logical

All in all, I worked in the team of Russian President Vladimir Putin's speechwriters for three years. I was present at dozens of meetings he held, both public and non-public. He seemed to be absolutely rational—perfectly logical and always in search of reasonable decisions.

Не looked just like a good corporate manager who knew how to ask proper questions and get proper answers. He was very patient and never disrespectful towards others. Adequacy was the key word.

I remember the meeting he held in the summer of 2010 during which something like 20-25 governors and members of the cabinet were present. After his introductory speech, journalists were escorted out of the room and the session became non-public.

Putin smiled encouragingly and said: "Now there are no strangers here, so please put aside all the official reports about successes and achievements of your economies and just describe in plain words which difficulties you have, so that then we together think what we can do about them."

After this, he gave the floor to the first governor. The latter was sitting right in front of me and I could see everything very clearly. The man was literally shocked.

He was prepared to read an official speech which was lying right in front of him, but he was not prepared to speak off-hand. He couldn't utter a word, just mumbling something incomprehensible.

Everybody was waiting; the pause was becoming awkward.

Sensing this and trying to fix the situation, the governor found nothing better than to do exactly what Putin asked him not to—he started reading the prepared speech about the impressive achievements of his region's economy.

Everybody burst out laughing; the governor got stuck again.

Putin was very warm and friendly. He was trying to calm down the bewildered speaker: "Please, just tell us about the problems your government is facing, we want to help you."

The governor's neighboring participant just took the sheets his hapless colleague was trying to read and started quickly turning the pages one after another trying to find the piece with the problems written on it.

"Read here," he pointed with his finger. Everyone was still laughing. Putin gestured for them to stop and he patiently listened to what the speaker was reading. He was very amicable.

Had somebody told me in those days that the time would come when Putin would be literally destroying the country he is ruling—and that's exactly what is happening now—I would have never believed it.

After the war in Ukraine started, I spent a lot of time trying to understand how it could be that someone so normal could turn into someone so abnormal. Manager into extremist. Now I think that it was not so much a matter of dynamics but rather of Putin's duplicity.

It is not that he had changed since those times I saw him last. I just never saw him in a situation where somebody was contesting his authority. What I witnessed was happening within an established hierarchy where he was occupying the top position.

He didn't feel the need to defend his status and felt secure.

It's totally different when somebody challenges him. In a situation like this, he changes completely, and I just never witnessed it.

Putin's chief trait is probably his outstanding hypocrisy. All people have some difference between what they have in store for themselves and what they have for others. But for a few of them, these two things have nothing in common at all. Putin is this kind of person.

He is absolutely lenient towards himself. He believes that anything goes when he considers it necessary—there should be no rules, no limitations. He is quite archaic in this respect.

But this approach applies only to "good guys"—namely him and his entourage—not everybody around. All the others should act within a framework of very strictly defined rules.

This hypocrisy proved to be Putin's main asset in the first years after his access to power.

Everything worked just as Adolf Hitler had described: "[People] more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."

Few understood that Putin could lie so colossally, and believed him.

Several years later, though, this asset started turning into a great liability, which ultimately led to a debacle that the Russian army suffered in Ukraine. The system began imitating its founder.

Seeing the enormous gap between what was said officially and what was actually done, seeing that no connection between the former and the latter was required, the ruling bureaucracy understood that such were the rules of the game: Just keep saying the right words and do whatever you consider necessary.

If you need money—just get access to the state funds. If you can't—sell any administrative resources you control.

I had an acquaintance who was responsible for personnel appointments in regional administrations. He was taking bribes from candidates like there was no tomorrow.

He justified himself by saying: "Well, I am a small person, I have neither Gazprom nor Rosneft (companies notorious for being controlled by Putin himself), I can't earn billions. My poor destiny is to sell petty vacancies."

It was obvious he was justifying himself by making references to the president.

A quarter of a century under these rules led to almost disastrous results.

Despite Russia's inexhaustible resources, full control over the country's political system, and the most favorable market conditions, the system Putin created turned out to be unable to achieve victory even in a sudden attack against a much smaller opponent.

The problem is that the ruling institutions in the country now are barely governable. When the situation was more or less comfortable, they seemed to somehow cope with the challenges that they were created to solve.

But when the system came under stress, it became obvious that they couldn't function. To run them effectively one needs to understand their real capabilities, to know the real state of affairs in them, but all one can get is just a bunch of false reports full of self-glorification and vain promises.

Why didn't the Russian army and all the other security agencies prepare for war? Their top brass couldn't believe that it would actually happen. They were so accustomed to empty speeches that they perceived Putin's orders as just a game of words.

"That's how the game is played. Putin should make a show that he is giving commands to prepare for war, while we should make a show that we are obeying him and following his instructions."

Even when the generals understood that it was no longer a game, they couldn't change anything. What could each of them do? Come to Putin and tell him: "Sorry, my president, I didn't think you were serious. I thought you were kidding. So now—when I see the degree of your earnestness—I need to confess that my ministry is not prepared for war."

It's obvious that one couldn't tell this to Putin, as it was clear what reaction would follow. We should keep in mind that members of his government are not samurais, they are mere opportunists. So they just let the matter slide hoping to hold on somehow.

After all, there was always a chance to shift responsibility for lack of success onto neighboring agencies. Russian bureaucrats are extremely professional in this.

Besides, there was hope that Ukraine would turn out to be just the same—a conglomerate of fakes instead of institutions—and it would crumple quickly. It worked in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea...

What Putin and his elites didn't understand was the amount of change Ukraine went through over these years and the scale of effort the nation invested into its institutions. The latter were no longer hollow, they were filled with substance, so Putin's truck crashed into something like a thick concrete wall.

Many observers are speaking now that Putin is driven by his "desire to restore the Soviet Union". That's how he wants it to look, but actually he is not. He is not a romantic, he is a cynic.

Had he really been a real fan of the USSR, he would have joined the struggle for its restoration back in the 1990s.

There were a lot of political parties fighting for it at that time, Putin could have joined them. Or, if he didn't like something about those, he could have created his own party. Back then, the country was democratic and founding parties was not a problem.

Putin did not do anything like that, he preferred to make a career under those very authorities that destroyed his beloved USSR. Nothing at that time told us that he really cared for it.

Original Putin is neither expansionist nor adventurist. He cares much more about stability and comfort. He escalates only in order to keep what he thinks rightly belongs to him—his throne—than trying to obtain something new.

I know that it sounds counterintuitive, but if you consider the circumstances in which he undertook his military campaigns beyond the Russian border then you will get my point.

It happened three times: In 2008 with Georgia, in 2014 with Crimea, and in 2022 with mainland Ukraine. Before he set on all of these three operations, he came across serious challenges to his authority.

In 2008, he didn't risk changing the constitution and had to step down in order to comply with two-term limit rule. Dmitry Medvedev took lead of the country with unexpected earnestness and reformist zeal.

Quickly, it became obvious that the new president was not going to just replicate Putin's agenda, he was going to play his own game of modernization and only god knew how far he would go.

I was working in the government then and I very well remember the tensions that were rising between Medvedev's Kremlin and Putin's cabinet.

At this very moment, the war happened and confined Medvedev in a "patriotic" stable, severely limiting his ability to "go West".

My explanation is that the hawks in Putin's entourage provoked that war, and not without his consent. The aim, I believe, was to create an abyss between Medvedev and the democratic world. The plan worked 100 percent.

By 2014, Putin got stuck in a double crisis: First domestic, which started during Bolotnaya mass protests against stolen elections; second foreign, after the government of his ally Viktor Yanukovich was toppled in neighboring Ukraine in what was described as an "American-sponsored coup".

Had Putin not responded by taking over Crimea, he would have been doomed. His image of a strongman—the only real source of legitimacy for him—wouldn't have recovered after "losing Ukraine to America".

With the help of the Crimean operation, Putin managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and obtain several years of undisputed authority, domestic peace, and political security.

By 2022, the latter was visibly eroding again. Putin's electoral rating fell from 76 percent in 2015 to 45 percent in January 2020. The only polling center that was measuring it, FOM, has stopped publishing its electoral rating figures—and it is quite clear why.

The trend looked like a looming political disaster; Russians were fed up with Putin and didn't plan to vote for him.

Yes, Putin has the second line of defense against such threats—governmental control over the electoral process and the ability to falsify the elections. But it's a doomsday weapon that is better to be avoided.

It is OK to steal votes in municipal, regional, or national parliamentary elections, but the elites should know that the president himself is really popular, and that he doesn't need any help from bureaucracy to be re-elected.

This is what makes him look like god among them—his popular mandate.

He is indispensable only while he is really desired by the Russian majority and can't be replaced in people's eyes by anyone else. Otherwise, the bureaucracy can decide that since it is she who puts Putin into the presidency, it is in her power to substitute him with somebody else.

Perception of this kind opens the gates for a possible coup attempt. At least since Machiavelli it is known that the best way to avoid mutiny organized by nobility is to be loved by people.

Besides, there is an aesthetic side to this. Putin really enjoys being popular. For him, it's a recollection of his sweet young years when he just came to power. Believe me, I watched him many times close enough: He really relished being adored by people.

He needed not only power and money, he craved genuine popularity no less.

So all the above is said to show that in view of an approaching presidential election Putin desperately needed to do something in order to stop the process of erosion of his electoral base.

The only way to achieve this goal was to find a pretext which would allow him to switch the nation's attention from domestic affairs to international ones. He needed the Russian public to keep its watchful eye on what America was scheming, not what was happening in this public's own backyard.

Putin's chief problem in the last few years was people's loss of interest in his favorite topic—geopolitics. The country was fed up with foreign news. People wanted to see their lives improved, and they finally stopped caring about what America and other foreign powers were doing.

Domination of the domestic agenda was leading Putin and his system toward political disaster and the only guaranteed thing that could save the president's popularity was the return of the public's interest in the foreign agenda. Escalation was the key.

What one should understand about Russian public opinion is that there exist two archetypical paradigms—domestic and international—which have very little in common. When the former prevails, the authorities are viewed negatively: As corrupt, uncaring, and authoritarian.

Opposition from this point of view is a sum of disgruntled citizens who are fighting for people's rights. Everything changes when the nation looks at politics through the lens of foreign policy. In this case, the government turns "patriotic" and "strong", while the opposition is deemed "unpatriotic" and "anti-Russian".

In fact, all public politics in Russia is the fight for either the foreign or domestic agenda, and which of those frames will prevail.

Putin decided to escalate when he saw that the previous level of tensions between Russia and the West stopped producing the necessary degree of consolidation in Russian society.

Like what happens with drug addicts who get used to a certain type of narcotic, they increase the dosage to get the desired effect.

Of course, Putin could never think that in Ukraine he might come across strong resistance from a fully-fledged country governed by legitimate authority, otherwise he would have chosen some other, easier target, like it was in 2008 with Georgia.

But he hoped that it would be something more like what he met in 2014 in Crimea. He didn't understand that the Ukrainian weakness in that moment was not a result of innate deficiency of the nation, it was a temporary lack of coordination inside the society which had just gone through a revolution and had not managed to consolidate power.

What hampered Putin in understanding that? One might say that he fell prey to his own propaganda efforts. He was trying so hard to portray Ukraine as some inferior nation that he didn't notice how he created a framework within which nobody in the ruling bureaucracy was able to tell him the truth.

To say that Ukraine would be able to withstand Russian assault meant that one would have to argue with what Putin had already stated publicly and what immediately became the official point of view.

In Putin's Russia, arguing with the president is impossible—unless you want to be declared an enemy of the state. Nobody in the elites wants that.

Things that I described above led to the greatest mistake of all; the greatest that Putin has made in 23 years of his presidency. It put the regime on the brink of collapse.

Inability to win the war creates internal divisions, and Yevgeny Prigozhin's revolt showed how deep and wide they could go.

One should understand that the mutinous head of the Wagner group was not an enemy of the system, he was its integral part. So, it was not an attack from outside, it was a political crisis that happens when an inefficient system comes under stress—a conflict over survival strategy.

Yes, by killing Prigozhin Putin fortified his positions significantly. His message to the elites was quite convincing: "Don't think that I'm weak. I might not be able to cope with the external enemies but I'm still powerful enough to eliminate the internal ones."

This effect will not last forever though. In a month or two, Prigozhin will be forgotten and the old trends will start working again. The main one among them the weakening of Putin's standing in society.

As I already mentioned, the only real source of legitimacy of the Russian president is his presumed strength. Even his loyal supporters know that he is not democratically elected, that he doesn't care for people, that he is corrupt, and so on.

The only thing that makes them loyal is their understanding: It's useless to oppose him, he will win anyway.

This basic assumption is dying now. The Ukrainian army is advancing slowly but surely. Putin's troops are retreating, the economy is dying, dissatisfaction of the population grows.

When defeat becomes obvious there would be very few reasons why the population and the elites should remain loyal to the strongman who is no longer strong.

Putin's rule is very archaic. It is based on fear of repression. But in this archaic world the ruler who can't prove his strength loses his power and very often his life.

Putin evoked in people the most primitive—primeval—emotions, among which there is almost no place for anything like compassion, empathy, or mercy.

This world is ruthless: If you become weak, you are doomed.

The end might come in the form of a popular revolt or palace coup or army mutiny or a combination of all these variants. I wouldn't rule out that sensing increasing risks, Putin will choose a successor and step down, just like Boris Yeltsin did 23 years ago.

Objectively speaking, this is the only way that he can save himself from a revolution and subsequent trial.

If the successor that he chooses turns out to be smart enough, if he stops the war, starts negotiations with the outside world and liberalizing reforms at home, this will give Putin a chance to peacefully end his life as a pensioner, just like what happened with Yeltsin.

To avoid a revolutionary scenario, the government itself should offer to change Russia.

Putin is unable to do it, so it should be somebody else.

Abbas Gallyamov is a political consultant based in Israel and a former speechwriter to Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

All views expressed are the author's own.

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