Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser of the Ukrainian president Volodimir Zelensky, stated, in an interview for Digi24.ro, that the losses suffered by Putin after the successful Ukrainian counteroffensives in Eastern and Southern Ukraine represent ”the beginning of the end for the Kremlin leader”. Podolyak assumes that the situation in Russia “will explode like a powder keg”.

Alexandru Rotaru: President Zelensky declared that after Putin signed the annexation decree for the four Ukrainian regions, there is nothing more to discuss with Putin and the negotiations will be held only after the Putin regime comes to an end. How would that occur, considering that Putin has multiple clones, as you mentioned, clones that could continue his legacy as much as they want?

Mykhailo Podolyak: It is not about the duplicates or triplicates of Putin. The problem is that Russia is in an early state of major turbulence, a situation that will lead to a revolution. Russia is losing the war, Russia will be defeated and, once the occupied territories are reclaimed, the political transformations in Russia will become more acute. There might be street protests and even if the present Russian political power is still able to control such riots, once those forcibly mobilized will start to die in great numbers it will cause a great deal of pressure from inland towards the Russian political system. Russia is now forcibly mobilizing a lot of fresh recruits in order to compensate the great losses inflicted in the ranks of the professional army. Once arrived on the frontline, these ill-trained conscripts will just make Russian casualties grow at a faster pace.

There are several stress factors here: the territorial war is almost lost. From now on, Russia will only retreat, an extremely negative factor. The second stressor shows a significantly high death toll among those forcibly mobilized Russian recruits. There is a considerable difference between a professional army and a forcibly mobilized one, this will be an extremely devastating stressor for the Russian regions. The third stress factor stays in the increasingly tougher sanctions for the Russian Federation.

Alexandru Rotaru: Do you mean that, given Putin’s actions, the regime will collapse by itself?

Mykhailo Podolyak:There is no regime that can collapse by itself. There will be irreversible processes from within. The sanctions will dramatically decrease life quality, especially when people are unable to leave a country that has its borders closed, as we believe that Russian will seal their borders after huge waves of people ran abroad trying to evade military drafting.

The forth stress factor is that conflicts already began inside Putin’s elite.

For instance, Prigozhin and Kadyrov gangs are already in an open conflict with Russian generals and with Shoigu’s henchmen. In the regions with different ethnic majorities, there are already volunteer groups forming, therefore, all these factors, together with the defeats in Ukraine, will explode like a powder keg and it will all turn to an extremely tough revolutionary scenario. This won’t happen by itself, but it will happen as a result of all those factors, from within and abroad, that will impact the Russian Federation.

Alexandru Rotaru: All things considered, the great majority of Russian oligarchs still support Putin. Do you believe that Putin's successor will be an outsider that has Western views similar to Navalny? Someone who looks towards the civilized world and wishes for the people from his country to live similarly or there will be someone with identical views as Putin?

Mykhailo Podolyak: No, certainly there won’t be anyone else like Putin and all this Russian elite - Putin's inner circle - will turn to dust, legally, economically and so on.

Now, as far as the oligarchs are concerned, I doubt that any of them truly supports the war. The Russian oligarchs, even if they publicly support the war, they are dishonest because they will suffer extreme costs due to this war, loosing all their wealth and businesses. They are having major problems with their businesses as we speak.

Finally, who could form a new govenrment of the Russian Federation? Of course, this could be Navalny or someone else. I don’t believe we can speak today about specific names, but I believe this is the moment when the liberal part of Russian politics, that was denied from the right to vote and debate, can restructure and quickly seize power from Putin’s regime, that is inevitably in a free fall.