A few weeks ago, one of the members of the Russian government turned to President Putin and asked, “Vladimir Vladimirovich, well, what will happen to me after March 18?” He asked his question in the presence of other ministers, and the upcoming elections were certainly on all their minds. They were all worried about whether they would keep their positions after the election. The rest, however, knew better than to say anything.
According to my sources, Putin smiled his usual sly smile and replied, “Well, why, even I do not know what will happen to me after March 18.” Everyone there understood that the minister had made a terrible mistake. You cannot publicly demonstrate weakness, and you cannot ask Putin about your future. Not that he would give a straight answer anyway.
Putin has always known what would happen to him after March 18; his re-election for a fourth term was a given. But in the months building up to the elections, the Russian political elite was in a state of tremendous stress, waiting in horror for the day of the presidential election—not because they had doubts about the result, but because they were terrified of what would come next. Even following the attack on former military intelligence agent Sergei Skripal, the ministers were not particularly afraid of potential conflict with the West. The fundamental changes to come were far more serious.
Under the current Russian constitution, this should be Putin’s last six-year term in office. But virtually nobody in the bureaucratic elite of Russia believes that Putin will step down in 2024. “There is a misconception that Putin is tired, needs rest and wants to live the life of a billionaire,” says a former minister who still has personal access to the president. “But Putin is far from being tired. He is interested in everything and digs into every matter, paying attention to all the details. This is his lifestyle, this is who he is. He can’t imagine life without power.”
From the moment of re-election, Putin will start devising a complicated scheme of ruling the country in the future. Perhaps that means finding a loophole in the constitution, or changing it, or building a new structure of the state. All sources speaking to TIME from Putin’s inner circle are certain—at least for now—that Putin will somehow remain in power.
The ruling bureaucracy understands this means an era of turbulence is coming. The question—as the outspoken minister put it—is what this means for the rest of us.
The emergence of a new tsar
Putin has changed considerably during his time in power. He never planned to remain in the president’s office forever. During his first term as president in 2000–2004, he considered refusing to run for re-election. As I reported in my book All the Kremlin’s Men, his friends were future oligarchs amassing great fortunes as businessmen,such as Yury Kovalchuk and Gennady Timchenko, or the heads of special services such as Director of the Federal Security Service Nikolai Patrushev. For them, Putin was the guarantor of omnipotence and they put tremendous pressure upon him at that time.
During his second term, he started to think about his contribution to history and how he would be remembered. In 2008, he yielded the presidential office to Dmitry Medvedev and became prime minister, exercising control from behind the scenes. But the experience rankled him—he was particularly annoyed by how Medvedev reacted to the Arab Spring protests in 2011.
The Arab Spring reminded Putin of the so-called “color revolutions” which took place in the former USSR republics in 2003–2005. Looking at what was happening with the weakened regime of Muammar Gaddafi, Putin believed that Russia should in no circumstances support the international operation against Libya, seeing it as part of a global conspiracy in which Russia would be the next target.