Vladimir Putin weakened by Ukraine war, but don’t expect power change: western official

The war in Ukraine has killed tens of thousands and triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

President Vladimir Putin has been weakened by his decision to invade Ukraine, but a change in power at the top in Russia is unlikely any time soon due to the autocratic nature of its political system, a western official said on Wednesday.

Putin, the longest-serving paramount Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin, has dominated Russia for nearly 23 years since Boris Yeltsin gave him the nuclear briefcase on the last day of 1999.

After changes to the constitution in 2020, some Russia-watchers expected Putin to rule until 2036. But the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has changed perceptions.

“He has been weakened by this really catastrophic error,” said the western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak freely. “We are seeing the Russian military humbled on the battlefield by Ukraine.”

The official said the war had strengthened Ukrainian statehood and prompted the further enlargement of the NATO military alliance thus weakening Putin, who turned 70 on Oct. 7.

“People can see that he has made a big error,” said the same official. “They (the Russians) didn’t have a Plan B – they thought that this was going to be really easy.”

“That has to mean that people are talking more about succession, they are talking more about what comes next, they are imagining a life beyond. But what I am not doing is suggesting that that’s any time soon.”

Though there was unlikely to be a change of Kremlin leader soon, the official said that the middle of the 2020s was starting to look “more interesting.”