Replacing Vladimir Putin

There is a move among certain Western politicians to replace Vladimir Putin as Russia's President.  Interestingly, a recent news item on Ukraine's Ukrainska Pravda website more clearly lays out this potential issue as shown here:

 

The article claims that the source for the news item is the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.  The article opens with this:

 

"A group of influential people who oppose President Vladimir Putin and who plan to assassinate him, is forming among the Russian business and political elite, according to the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine."

 

Apparently, the goal of this group of influential people is to remove Vladimir Putin from power as soon as possible and replace him with an individual that will restore economic ties with the West, a move that will obviously favour Western corporations over those located in Russia.

  

Here is another quote from the article (with my bolds):

 

"A part of Russia's political elite sees Federal Security Service Director Alexander Bortnikov as Putin's successor. It is Bortnikov who has recently fallen out of favour with the Russian dictator. The official reason for the FSS leader's downfall is fatal miscalculations in the war against Ukraine.

 

It was Bortnikov and his department who were responsible for analysing the views of the Ukrainian population and the capacity of the Ukrainian army.

It is known that Bortnikov and some other influential members of the Russian elite are considering various options for removing Putin from power. In particular, poisoning, sudden illness, or other "accident" is not excluded.

It is possible that these processes are connected with the recent "leak" of the location of Chechen units in the north of Kyiv."

 

Alexander Bortnikov, a former KGB operative, is the Director of Russia's Federal Security Service or FSB, a position he was appointed to in 2008 by then President Dmitry Medvedev, and is a trusted member of Putin's entourage.  Under his leadership, the FSB has expanded its operations both within and outside of Russia. He is also the chair of Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee which co-ordinates counterterrorism measures across Russia.

The article concludes by stating that this leak of information may have been undertaken to weaken the influence of Ramzan Kadyrov, a Putin-allied Chechnyan warlord, Head of the Chechen Republic and close ally of Vladimir Putin.  He is widely viewed as Putin's "attack dog" as shown in this video from Politico Europe:

Chechen forces who have been identified as elements of the Russian National Guard or Rosgvardiya are supporting Russian troops currently in Ukraine.

By leaking this information and by weakening Kadyrov, Ukraine's Directorate of Intelligence may be attempting to establish cooperation with Ukrainian authorities in advance by working around the current leadership of Russia.

In case it should happen to disappear, here is a screen capture showing the entire article as saved on Archive:

As you can see, while the mainstream media loves to portray the current military actions in Ukraine as a simplistic black and white issue (i.e. Russia all bad, Ukraine all good), there is an underlying complexity to the Ukraine narrative that most of us in the West simply cannot understand without a great deal of study, something that our ruling class has neglected to do.  History has long shown that replacing a world leader that is deemed unacceptable by the West doesn't always work out for the betterment of those who choose to overthrow them.  In any case, in my estimation, the only way that Vladimir Putin will leave office involuntarily in the near future is if he loses the confidence and backing of the Russian military, the powerbrokers in Kyiv, Washington, London, Brussels, Ottawa and others be damned.