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ULY/
AUGUST 2023 • VOLUME 102• NUMBER 4

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ANDREA KENDALL-
TAYLOR AND ERI
CA FRANTZ
 The Treacherous Path
to a Better Russia
Ukraine’s Future and Putin’s Fate
Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz

F
“ or God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” U.S. Pres-
ident Joe Biden said of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir
Putin, a month after Russia launched a brutal invasion of
Ukraine in February 2022. Biden’s off-the-cuff remark, which his
administration swiftly sought to walk back, did not merely reflect
anger at the destruction unleashed by Putin’s war of choice. It also
revealed the deeply held assumption that relations between Russia
and the West cannot improve as long as Putin is in office. Such a
sentiment is widely shared among officials in the transatlantic alli-
ance and Ukraine, most volubly by Ukrainian President Volodymyr

ANDREA KENDALL-TAYLOR is Senior Fellow and Director of the Transatlantic

Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. From 2015 to 2018, she
was deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence
Council in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
ERICA FRANTZ is Associate Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University.
They are the co-authors, with Natasha Lindstaedt, of Democracies and Authoritarian Regimes.

8 foreign affairs
Illustration by Rob Dobi 9
 Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz

Zelensky himself, who last September ruled out peace talks until a
new Russian leader is in place.
There is good reason to be pessimistic about the prospects of
Russia’s changing course under Putin. He has taken his country in a
darker, more authoritarian direction, a turn intensified by the invasion
of Ukraine. The wrongful detention of The Wall Street Journal reporter
Evan Gershkovich in March and the sentencing of the opposition
activist Vladimir Kara-Murza to a 25-year prison term in April, for
example, are eerily reminiscent of measures
from Soviet times. Once leaders grow to
As the war rages rely on repression, they become reluctant to
on, Putin’s hold on exercise restraint for fear that doing so could
power strengthens. suggest weakness and embolden their critics
and challengers. If anything, Putin is moving
Russia more and more toward totalitarian-
ism as he attempts to mobilize Russian society in support of not just
his war on Ukraine but also his antipathy to the West.
If the West’s relations with Russia are unlikely to change while
Putin is in power, perhaps things could improve were he to depart.
But the track record of political transitions that follow the exits
of longtime authoritarian leaders offers little room for optimism.
The path to a better Russia is not just narrow—it is treacherous.
Authoritarian leaders rarely lose power while still waging a war
they initiated. As long as the war continues, Putin’s position is more
secure, making positive change less likely. What is more, authori-
tarian regimes most often survive in the wake of the departure of
longtime leaders such as Putin; were Putin to die in office or be
removed by insiders, the regime would most likely endure intact.
In such a case, the contours of Russian foreign policy would stay
largely the same, with the Kremlin locked in a period of protracted
confrontation with the West.
One development, however, could spark more substantive change
in Russia: a Ukrainian victory. Kyiv’s triumph in the war raises the
possibility, even if only slightly, that Putin could be forced out of
office, creating an opening for a new style of Russian government.
A Russian defeat in the war could galvanize the kind of bottom-up
pressure that is needed to upend Putin’s regime. Such a development
carries risks—of violence, chaos, and even the chance of a more hard-
line government emerging in the Kremlin—but it also opens the

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 The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia

possibility of a more hopeful future for Russia and for its relations
with its neighbors and the West. Although fraught, the most likely
path to a better Russia now runs through Ukrainian success.

The Persistence of Putin

The first barrier to a post-Putin Russia is, of course, Putin him-
self. After 23 years in power and despite the challenges that have
mounted since his invasion of Ukraine, Putin looks set to retain
power until at least 2036—the end of his constitutional term limit—
perhaps even longer. Since the end of the Cold War, the typi-
cal autocrat who had governed a country for 20 years and was at
least 65 years old (Putin is 70) ended up ruling for about 30 years.
When such leaders governed personalist autocracies—where power
is concentrated in the leader, rather than in a party, junta, or royal
family—their typical tenure lasted even longer, as much as 36 years.
Of course, not all autocrats are so durable; just a quarter of
post–Cold War autocrats have ruled for 20 years or more. Putin’s
durability stems from the creation in Russia of what the political
scientist Milan Svolik calls an “established autocracy,” in which
regime officials and political and economic elites are fully dependent
on the leader and invested in maintaining a status quo from which
they benefit. The longer such established autocrats are in power,
the less likely they are to be removed by the regime’s insiders. A
strong consensus among governing officials about the need to use
repression to maintain stability, as is currently on full display in
Putin’s Russia, further reduces the likelihood that the leader will
be removed against his will.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has done little to change Putin’s outlook.
His grip on power has tightened and will remain strong for as long
as the fighting continues. Wars encourage people to rally around the
flag, suppressing disagreement and dissent for the sake of national
solidarity; polls have shown that Putin’s approval rating shot up ten
points after he launched the invasion. As a wartime president, Putin
has felt empowered to clamp down on critics and quash reporting by
independent media outlets and nongovernmental organizations. Per-
haps more important, the war has better insulated him from potential
challengers from within. A stretched military lacks the bandwidth to
mount a coup. In any case, the security services have profited from the
war and have little incentive to throw in their lot with coup plotters.

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For these reasons, the dynamics created by the war and Putin’s own
actions have made him more rather than less likely to retain power
as the war rages on, further deferring political change in Russia.

The Tsar is Dead, Long Live the Tsar

Still, Putin will not rule forever. At some point, there will be a
post-Putin Russia, even if it arrives only after his death. Since the end
of the Cold War, 40 percent of longtime leaders (those rulers in power
20 years or more) of personalist autocracies have relinquished power
by dying. Putin appears set to remain in office until the bitter end.
The extreme personalization of the political system, including the
absence of a strong ruling party apparatus in Russia, makes Putin’s
passing a potentially perilous period. The most likely scenario is that
power will pass to the prime minister, currently Mikhail Mishustin,
who would become the acting president, as the formal rules dictate.
The upper house of Russia’s parliament would then have two weeks to
schedule an election. During that time, the Russian elite would battle
to determine who would replace Putin. The transition process could
be chaotic as key actors vie for power and try to position themselves
in ways that maximize and secure their political influence. The list of
regime insiders that would battle it out is long and includes the likes
of former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev; Sergey Kiriyenko,
Putin’s first deputy chief of staff; and Dmitry Patrushev, Russia’s agri-
culture minister, whose father, Nikolai, is the head of the Security
Council. Others outside the regime, such as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the
head of the Wagner mercenary recruitment firm, could add turbulence
to the transition. But ultimately, the fractious elites would most likely
converge on a technocrat, someone in the vein of Mishustin or Mos-
cow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, or another seemingly weak consensus
candidate whom all players believe can be controlled and who will
preserve the regime that benefits them.
Once the dust settles, Russia will almost certainly remain an author-
itarian country. Since the end of the Cold War, authoritarian regimes
have outlasted 89 percent of the longtime leaders who died in office.
And in every instance in which an authoritarian leader’s death led
to the collapse of his regime, its replacement was also authoritarian.
Even in personalist autocracies, where the question of succession is
considerably fraught, the same regime has survived the leader’s death
83 percent of the time. Occasionally, an authoritarian leader’s death

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 Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz

in office can shift the political landscape in liberalizing ways, as when

Lansana Conté died in Guinea in 2008, and free and fair elections
were held in 2010 for the first time since that country’s independence.
More often, however, an authoritarian leader’s death in office is a
remarkably unremarkable event.
When leaders are ousted through a coup or unseated in elections, it is
safe to assume that some portion of the elite and the citizenry have lost
faith in them. That disgruntlement places the regime itself in jeopardy.
But when leaders die of natural causes, no political machinations
underlie their demise. The rudiments of the regime remain as they
were, and elites have little interest in rocking the boat. Although
they may feud behind closed doors about who should take over the
leadership, they usually get in line behind whichever individual they
deem the safest bet for the regime’s survival.
Were Putin to die in office, his successor would probably change
little about the Russian regime and its external relations. Successors
who deviate from the status quo invite fierce resistance from the old
guard, who maintain considerable control over the levers of power in
the system. New leaders who inherit office from deceased autocrats
therefore tend to adhere to the previous program. When they try
to go off track, demonstrating a tentative interest in liberalizing
reform—as did Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Shavkat Mirziyoyev in
Uzbekistan during their first terms in office—the organs of the state
loyal to their predecessors usually pressure them to revert to more
traditionally repressive practices.
Successors of deceased autocrats also tend to keep waging their
predecessors’ wars even when such wars are going badly. The political
scientist Sarah Croco has found that successors who come from within
the regime are likely to continue the conflicts they inherit, given that
they would be seen as culpable for a wartime defeat. In other words,
even if Putin’s successor does not share the same wartime aims, this
leader will be concerned that any settlement that looks like defeat
would abruptly bring his tenure to an end. Beyond figuring out how
to end the war, Putin’s successor will be saddled with a long list of
vexing problems, including how to settle the status of illegally annexed
territories such as Crimea, whether to pay Ukraine wartime reparations,
and whether to accept accountability for war crimes committed in
Ukraine. As such, should Putin die in office, Russia’s relations with
the United States and Europe will likely remain complicated, at best.

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 The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia

A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM

The war has strengthened Putin’s hold on power, and even his death
may not usher in significant change. At this point, only a seismic
shift in the political landscape could set Russia on a different path.
A Ukrainian triumph, however, could precipitate such a shift. The
clearest victory for Ukraine would entail the restoration of its inter-
nationally recognized 1991 borders, including the territory of Crimea
that Russia annexed in 2014. Battlefield realities will make such a
comprehensive victory difficult to accomplish,
but lesser outcomes that see Russia lose parts
of Ukraine that it held before the February A clear Ukrainian
2022 invasion would still send an unambigu- victory could
ous signal of Putin’s incompetence as a leader,
one the Kremlin cannot readily suppress for
spur major change
domestic audiences. Such outcomes would in Russia.
raise the prospect, even if only slightly, of
Putin’s ouster and a greater reckoning in the Kremlin. The most prob-
able path to political change in Russia, then, runs through Ukraine.
A Russian defeat will not easily translate into a change at the top.
The personalist nature of Putin’s regime creates particularly strong
resistance to change. Personalist dictatorships have few institutional
mechanisms to facilitate coordination among potential challengers, and
the elite tend to view their own fates as intertwined with that of the
leader; these dynamics help personalist rulers withstand military losses.
But even personalist authoritarians are not immune to the fallout
of a poor military performance. The political scientists Giacomo Chi-
ozza and H. E. Goemans find that from 1919 to 2003, just under half
of all rulers who lost wars also lost power shortly thereafter. As with
other seismic events such as economic or natural disasters, military
defeats can expose leaders as incompetent, shattering their aura of
invincibility. Shocks can create a focal point for mobilization, opening
the way for the collective action necessary to dislodge entrenched
authoritarian rulers. In such systems, citizens who want reform often
exist in larger numbers than assumed but keep their preferences hid-
den. Operating frequently in a distorted and unreliable information
environment, they know little about whether others share their views,
leading to a situation in which everyone keeps their heads down, and
opposition remains private. But a triggering event such as a military
defeat can change calculations, encouraging reformist citizens (even

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if they are only a small minority) to go public with their positions

and leading to a cascade effect in which more and more citizens do
the same. Put simply, a defeat in the war could serve as the spark that
mobilizes opposition to Putin’s rule.
Crucially, in the event of a Russian defeat, moves against Putin
will most likely not come directly from his inner circle. In personal-
ist systems such as Putin’s Russia, regime insiders tend to struggle to
coordinate an effective challenge to the leader, not least because the
leader seeks to play them off one another. The Russian elite are split
into what the Russian analyst Tatiana Stanovaya calls the “technocrats,”
who are senior bureaucrats, regional governors, and other implementers
of Putin’s policies, and the “patriots,” who are the heads of the security
services, senior officials in Putin’s United Russia party, and the likes
of Prigozhin. These groups hold different visions for solving Russia’s
problems and shaping the country’s future. There is therefore a very real
risk that a move by one group would not be supported by the other,
potentially bringing down the whole system from which they all bene-
fit. Such dangers create high barriers to any challenge to Putin from the
inside. Even if some members of the elite wanted to punish Putin for
wartime failure, they would have a hard time mustering a united front.
Putin has sought to divide his officials to better insulate himself
from a coup. For example, the patriot camp—comprising Russia’s
security services and the most likely origin of an elite move against
Putin—is intentionally segmented into the Federal Guard Service,
the National Guard, and the Federal Security Service, hindering
the sort of unity and coordination necessary for a coup. The current
absence of a viable alternative to Putin also means there is no center
of gravity around which a challenge could coalesce. His ability to use
the security services to monitor dissent (including using one service
to monitor another) and the high costs that come with the detection
of dissent further lessen the chances of an elite rebellion from within.
The data confirm that longtime authoritarian leaders face little risk
of coups. Among post–Cold War authoritarian leaders in power for
20 years or more, only ten percent have been ousted in a coup. And,
tellingly, no longtime personalist authoritarian leader over 65 (such
as Putin) has been ousted in a coup in this period.
But forces originating outside the regime could unseat Putin and
meaningfully change Russia’s approach to the world. Given the lack of
effective institutions to channel dissent in today’s Russia, opposition to

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 The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia

Putin could spill over, creating a groundswell that could dislodge him.
In fact, in cases in which longtime personalist authoritarian leaders
do not die in office, the most common way that they are pushed out
of power is by pressure from outside the regime. Since the end of the
Cold War, a third of personalist dictators who were in power for 20
years or more were toppled by popular protests or armed rebellions.
Putin’s actions since the invasion raise the possibility of such pres-
sure. Traditionally, autocrats seek to create an apathetic, demobilized
citizenry that they can easily control. Until the invasion, Putin pre-
sided over Russia this way. Since he began the war, however, he has
been forced to announce a “partial mobilization,” calling up 300,000
Russians to fight in Ukraine. He has placed Russia on a wartime
footing. As the Russian writer Andrei Kolesnikov has observed, it is
no longer possible for Russians to stay disengaged. “More and more,
Russians who are economically dependent on the state are finding
that they have to be active Putinists,” he noted in these pages. Public
acts of support for the regime have become more common, as have
incidents in which Russians report on the “antipatriotic” activities of
their fellow citizens. But a more mobilized society could ultimately
prove difficult for the regime to control.

MASS APPEAL
A bottom-up challenge to Putin’s rule would create the possibility
of political change in Russia but is not without risks. Pressure from
below brings with it the potential for chaos and violence should it
culminate in an armed rebellion, for example. In Russia, efforts by
ethnic minorities to push for greater sovereignty, as they did after the
fall of the Soviet Union, could further delegitimize Putin and even
lead to his ouster. Several factors work against such centrifugal forces.
Putin has increased his influence over regional leaders by making
them more dependent on Moscow; patriotic pride in the Russian
state remains strong in the republics; and the cause of secession is
not especially popular anywhere in Russia’s sprawl of republics. Yet
the comparative data suggest it should not be dismissed. The political
scientist Alexander Taaning Grundholm has shown that although
the personalization of an autocracy makes a leader less vulnerable to
internal threats such as coups, it does so at the expense of raising the
risk of civil war. In the post–Cold War era, 13 percent of longtime
personalist leaders were ousted through civil wars.

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Already, Russia’s regions have borne the brunt of the costs of

Putin’s war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has relied disproportionately
on fighters from Russia’s poorest regions composed of large popula-
tions of ethnic minorities, including once rebellious republics such
as Chechnya and provinces such as Buryatia and Tuva. In Tuva, for
instance, one of every 3,300 adults has died fighting in Ukraine. (The
comparable figure for Moscow is one of every 480,000 adults.) In
other regions such as Khabarovsk, people have been disillusioned
with Moscow for some time, as evidenced
by antigovernment protests there in 2020
After the war, after the Kremlin arrested the region’s popu-
Russia will almost lar governor. Another round of mobilization
concentrated in the regions, coupled with
certainly remain mounting economic hardship, could feed
an authoritarian secessionist sentiment.
country. A military defeat for Russia could be
the catalyst to set the process in motion. A
Ukrainian victory would signal further weakness in Russia’s central
authority and in the Russian military, increasing the likelihood that
secessionist groups see the moment as ripe for taking up arms. The
return to Russia’s regions of now veteran fighters with access to
weapons but few economic prospects would further facilitate such
movements. Political entrepreneurs, such as Prigozhin, may also fac-
tor into these dynamics. Prigozhin’s efforts to upset the power bal-
ance in the Putin regime could ignite conflict between the Wagner
paramilitary company and the Russian armed forces and security
services, and flare into outright insurgency.
The Kremlin would, of course, meet any secessionist bids with
violence, as it did during Russia’s two wars with Chechnya. It is
impossible to predict whether such moves for independence could
succeed or whether a leadership change at the top, forced by this
growing debacle, could prompt a national reckoning and lead Rus-
sians to abjure their country’s imperialist designs on their neighbors.
What is more certain, however, is that violent upheaval tends
to beget more violence. When post–Cold War autocrats have been
ousted as a result of civil war, their departures have virtually guaran-
teed the establishment of new dictatorships or, even worse, outright
state failure. Examples include the emergence of the Kabila family’s
regime in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) after

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 The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia

the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Soko in 1997 and the breakdown

of the state in Libya after Muammar al-Qaddafi’s ouster in 2011.
Should an armed insurgency unseat Putin, not only would the after-
math be violent, but the odds of a new dictatorship coming to power
would also be high.
But there is another, less bloody form of bottom-up pressure
that could usher in a more liberal Russia: popular protests. Twenty
percent of longtime personalist authoritarian leaders in the post–
Cold War era have been ousted by mass protests. Of course, such a
movement faces incredible obstacles in today’s Russia: high levels
of repression, the Kremlin’s dismantling of the opposition, and the
exodus of hundreds of thousands of (often liberal) Russians since
the invasion who might have otherwise taken to the streets. And
even if dissenters could crowd public squares in large numbers, large-
scale protests are by no means guaranteed to topple Putin, given
that authoritarian regimes can generally ride out such movements.
Consider, for example, the experience of Iran this year, Belarus in
2020 (and in 2010), and Russia itself after controversial elections
in 2011 and 2012. In each case, an authoritarian regime suddenly
seemed vulnerable in the face of mass protests, only to reassert its
control, often violently.
The aftermath of the mass protests that ousted Hosni Mubarak in
Egypt in 2011 and Omar al-Bashir in Sudan in 2019 reveal that such
movements can also bring new, and potentially worse, authoritarian
regimes to power. The military coup that toppled the democratically
elected leader Mohamed Morsi in Egypt in 2013 illustrates well
that powerful security apparatuses do not simply go away when
authoritarian regimes lose power. Should these actors conclude that
democracy does not suit their interests, they can simply use force
to snuff it out. Even worse, events in Sudan this year make clear
that the security apparatus itself is often not unified after the end
of personalist rule. Once a strongman is no longer at the helm,
his divide-and-conquer strategies can pave the way for conflict to
explode among different factions. The security forces in Russia are
certainly powerful enough to mount a formidable challenge to any
leader who threatens their interest. And their division into distinct
groups increases the chance that they might come to blows with one
another. Successful mass protests are not, in other words, guaranteed
to produce a better Russia.

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Nevertheless, popular protests provide the most promising path

to a more liberal Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, there have
been seven instances in which an authoritarian leader who had been
in power for 20 years or more was unseated through protests. In three
of those—in Indonesia in 1998, Tunisia in 2011, and Burkina Faso in
2014—the countries staged democratic elections within two years.
Those odds may seem low (and young democracies can backslide),
but consider that there are no examples of democratization after the
departure of similar authoritarians who died in office or were over-
thrown via a coup or civil war. Other routes to a better, democratic
future simply do not exist. Put simply, Russians themselves have the
best chance of bringing about a better Russia.

PREPARING FOR A POST-PUTIN RUSSIA

No matter how he leaves office, Putin’s exit will likely occur with
little warning. His departure will spur significant debate about how
best to approach a post-Putin Russia, not just within policymaking
circles in Washington but within the transatlantic alliance more
broadly. Some allies will view Putin’s demise as an opportunity to
reset relations with Moscow. Others will remain adamant in their
view that Russia is incapable of change. The United States must
therefore consult allies now about the best approach to a post-Putin
Russia to avoid the prospect that his departure becomes divisive.
The unity of the alliance will continue to be critical to managing
relations with a future Russia.
In any scenario, it will be difficult to discern the intentions of a
new Russian leader, even one who comes to power with the backing
of the Russian people. Rather than seeking to decipher Kremlin
intentions—which a new leader will have an incentive to misrep-
resent to secure concessions from the West—the United States and
European countries should be prepared to clearly articulate their
conditions for an improved relationship. Such conditions should
include, at a minimum, Russia’s full withdrawal from Ukraine, repa-
rations for wartime damage, and accountability for its human rights
violations. As much as the United States and European countries
will want to stabilize relations with a post-Putin Russia, Moscow
must also be interested in the proposition.
Given the dim prospects for and the uncertain outcome of any
future protests, the expectation of U.S. and European officials should

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be that Russia will remain an autocracy even after Putin departs.

Since the end of the Cold War, authoritarianism has persisted
beyond the departure of a longtime autocratic leader in 76 percent
of cases. When such leaders are also older personalist autocrats,
authoritarianism endures (or states fail) 92 percent of the time. Such
leaders deeply entrench authoritarian institutions and practices,
casting a long shadow over the countries they rule.
Managing relations with Moscow therefore requires a long-
term and sustainable strategy to constrain Russia and its ability
to wage aggression beyond its borders. Such a strategy should also
aim to weaken the grip of authoritarianism in Russia over time.
Corruption has been a key enabler of the Putin regime; illicit net-
works entrench regime interests and prevent individuals outside
the regime from gaining influence within the system. To weaken
these barriers, Washington must properly enforce sanctions on the
Kremlin’s cronies in the business world, combat money laundering,
make financial and real estate markets in the United States and
Europe more transparent, and support investigative journalists in
their bid to uncover such corruption. The United States can also
bolster Russian civil society, an important force in forging a more
liberal and democratic country, beginning with supporting the work
of the many actors in Russian civil society—including journalists
and members of the opposition—who have fled the country since
the start of the war in February 2022. Backing them now would help
lay the groundwork for a better relationship between the United
States and a post-Putin Russia.
Ultimately, however, Washington and its allies can do little to
directly shape Russia’s political trajectory. A better Russia can
be produced only by a clear and stark Ukrainian victory, which
is the most viable catalyst for a popular challenge to Putin. Such
a resounding defeat is also required to enable Russians to shed
their imperialist ambitions and to teach the country’s future elites
a valuable lesson about the limits of military power. Support for
Ukraine—in the form of sustained military assistance and efforts to
anchor the country in the West through membership in the Euro-
pean Union and NATO—will pave the way for improved relations
with a new Russia. Getting there will be hard. But the more deci-
sive Russia’s defeat in Ukraine, the more likely it is that Russia will
experience profound political change, one hopes for the better.

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