“Something is seriously wrong in the Kremlin”
Yesterday a high ranking Kremlin official resigned, fled the country, and announced to the media that he had done so in protest of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. At the time we pointed out that a single Kremlin defection wasn’t going to destabilize Putin or take him down – but that it could be a sign of something much larger going on.
Anders Åslund, an expert on Russia and Ukraine, is now pointing out that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Russian chief of general staff General Valeriy Gerasimov haven’t been seen in nearly two weeks. People at this level of government aren’t necessarily in front of the cameras every day. But for them to both disappear for nearly two weeks, in the midst of a crisis, suggests that – as Åslund puts it – “something is seriously wrong in the Kremlin.”
We don’t know what’s going on, of course. These two officials could be dead. They could be under arrest. They could be in hiding. Or they could merely be trying really hard to keep a low profile, in the hope they survive the ugly way in which this could play out. But the more Kremlin officials who disappear, the more it suggests that Putin’s government truly is destabilizing.
There’s a critical mass point at which the issue will be forced in one way or another. We’re all just waiting to find out where that point ends up being. In the meantime it’s worth remembering that, particularly early on in the invasion, the U.S. government seemed to know Putin’s every move before he made it – suggesting it may have had help from inside the Kremlin. So the U.S. may already know why these Kremlin officials are disappearing. We’ll see.
