But Putin’s actions threaten the future of Russia, Shvets says, because his aggressive behavior has reinvigorated NATO, undermined the possibility that the Russian economy can modernize and develop, and likely guaranteed that the United States will choose a second Ronald Reagan in 2016 to contain his country, reducing its importance and possibly its size. Shvets, who studied with Putin and then worked under TASS cover as a KGB officer in Washington in the 1980s, offered these and many other observations about his former colleague, someone whose KGB career, he says, showed him to be below average in competence and whose presidential career reflects the skill of others in using television to boost any leader.“Do you seriously think, that a man who annually disappears from public view for seven to ten days in order to have a facelift and to fill himself up with Botox is capable of unleashing a nuclear war?”

Like its Soviet predecessor, Shvets continues, the Putin elite is terrified of the possibility that there will be a popular revolt, one that would sweep them from power and lead to its members being hanged from lamp posts “as it was in Budapest during the anti-Soviet uprising in 1956.” The former KGB officer says that the probability of Putin pushing the nuclear button is “nil.” Even more than the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation lacks the reliable counter-force weapon delivery vehicles which could take out an opponent’s nuclear capacity and prevent a response. It could hit cities, but in that case, the response would be devastating for Russia. But there is a more serious reason for thinking Putin won’t start a nuclear war whatever he says. “Do you seriously think,” he challenges his interviewer, “that a man who annually disappears from public view for seven to ten days in order to have a facelift and to fill himself up with Botox is capable of unleashing a nuclear war?”According to Shvets, “now the chief strategic conflict of Russia is the one between the striving of Putin to remain in place until his death and the objective requirements of the country for normal development.” If he succeeds in staying in office for long, “Russia will either fall apart or be converted into a third-tier state like North Korea or Mongolia.”

Exactly the same thing is taking place in Russia today, he argues. And just as in the Soviet case, the siloviki near the top are destroying the country. They are pushing for actions, such as an expanded invasion of Ukraine, that will lead to more sanctions and more problems for the Russian economy. Simple logic would dictate against such a move, but “as the late Berezovsky said, ‘it is difficult to predict the logic of idiots.’”Now, thanks to what Putin and his entourage have been doing, “the fate of Russia to a significant degree depends on the US president.”
