Putin’s new term will show if the system he built can survive without him

The next six years will show whether Putin is willing to allow technocrats outside his personal sphere to take over the system he created.

Expert comment Published 13 May 2024 3 minute READ

On 7 May, Vladimir Putin was inaugurated for his fifth presidential term. The ceremony took place in a very different context from his previous inaugurations, with a war raging and the army rattling its nuclear sabre.

Team Navalny and Proekt (an independent Russian investigative journalism outlet) released new footage of ‘Putin’s Palace’ on the Black Sea to coincide with the event – but its impact will be negligible. With their network destroyed, Navalny dead, and the war in Ukraine ongoing, anti-corruption investigations have long lost their effectiveness.

Instead, when watching the inauguration, with Putin surrounded by the same faces in the magnificent splendour of the Kremlin’s royal chambers, time appeared to have stopped.

Putin has never seemed more like a tsar. But there’s one big difference: the tsars had clear succession plans. Putin does not.

The same old faces

Russian presidents appoint new governments at the start of each presidential term – including a new prime minister. It was not surprising to see Mikhail Mishustin reappointed in that role.

Mishustin and his team have been very effective for Putin, especially during wartime. Also, the political cycle is not yet over, and it makes sense for Mishustin to remain and finish tasks that can be held up as wins for him and the president.

That being said, his reappointment was not a certainty. The Kremlin often prioritizes control, changing the heads of government and presidential administration periodically.

Putin’s broader model of personnel decision-making has stopped working, especially following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Mishustin has greatly expanded his influence over his four years in post, and it might have made sense for the Kremlin to move him elsewhere to stop him becoming too powerful. Now that he has been reappointed, Putin’s administration will need to use other mechanisms to keep him under control.

Sticking with Mishustin was likely the easiest option. In that respect it is indicative that Putin’s broader model of personnel decision-making has stopped working, especially following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Putin often chooses to stick with officials already in post, or relies on ageing acquaintances to fill high-level positions. For example, Putin’s 70-year-old classmate, Irina Podnosova, was appointed to replace the 80-year-old chairman of the Supreme Court, Vyacheslav Lebedev, who died in post.

In other cases, the Kremlin does not act at all: the position of head of the Accounts Chamber has been vacant for more than a year and a half, with an acting head in place since the end of 2022.

The succession

The most important personnel issue – that of Putin’s successor – remains. The president’s recent meeting with Alexei Dyumin, a former bodyguard often listed as a potential successor, could be significant.

We now know Shoigu will be replaced by Andrei Belousov, outgoing first deputy prime minister and long-term economic advisor to Putin.

The Kremlin does not make all of Putin’s meetings public, so the publicity of this meeting was clearly meant as a signal of Dyumin’s centrality.

It was thought Dyumin might replace Sergei Shoigu as minister of defence. The recent detention of an important member of Shoigu’s team, deputy minister Timur Ivanov, suggested that Shoigu’s team was under assault.

Although Dyumin is not a military man, he did serve as deputy minister of defence for a short time – and he currently holds the rank of general. In addition, since 2016, he has been the governor of the Tula region, which is one of the main centres of the military-industrial complex.

Instead, we now know Shoigu will be replaced by Andrei Belousov, outgoing first deputy prime minister and long-term economic advisor to Putin.

Replacing Shoigu with Belousov will not fundamentally change anything, since Belousov – like Shoigu – does not come from a military background. That makes them more easily controlled by the Kremlin.

At the same time, Belousov’s appointment as defence minister shows the importance Putin places on economic efficiency with the war effort. His appointment will allow space for figures like Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, to grow in influence.

Meanwhile, the next phase in Dyumin’s career remains unclear.

Putin’s coming presidential term

Putin’s incoming term will show whether the system he has built can endure and evolve – with or without him.

By the next presidential election, Putin will be 77. His generation of officials is already starting to disappear from the scene – and the president has no one to replace them with, except his own close associates and the children of trusted courtiers.

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At the same time, another system operates at a lower level – a system that is technocratic, more modern, and institutionalized. The key characters of this system are people like Mishustin and Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy chief of staff of the Presidential Administration.

This coming presidential term will show whether Putin is able and willing to allow the system to transition from his more personalist model to this second, newer model.

This coming presidential term will show whether Putin is able and willing to allow the system to transition from his more personalist model to this second, newer model.

As for the war on Ukraine, Putin is not interested in ending it any time soon. But he can’t continue endlessly, due to limited resources, both human and military-technical. These restrictions give Putin around a year and a half to reduce the intensity of the war and transfer confrontation with the West to a format that is less burdensome for Russia.

It is easy for the Kremlin to choreograph a splendid inauguration, but it is quite another matter to deal with the fallout of the war, the succession of a president determined to crush opposition, and the many other tasks that need to be tackled during the coming presidential term.