Putin ‘will nominate his chosen heir this year rather than risk being toppled’, former ally says

Vladimir Putin will nominate his chosen successor this year rather than risk being toppled as the Russian President’s popularity continues to plummet amid a series of military defeats in Ukraine, his former ally has claimed.

Putin will seek to hand over power to a chosen heir and retire to his £1billion Black Sea ‘palace’ rather than risk the ignominious fate of toppled tyrants like Muammar Gaddafi, said Abbas Gallyamov, Putin’s former speechwriter.

The Russian leader will seek to give up power to a technocrat successor who could negotiate an end to the war with Ukraine and the West, and probably not fight the 2024 election, he told Khodorkovsky Live YouTube channel.

Gallyamov said the despot will likely nominate a ‘trusted underling’ as president – like the Mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, or his deputy chief of staff Dmitry Kozak.

Putin’s circle no longer see him as a ‘guarantor of stability’ and are alarmed by the rise of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the well-armed Wagner private army, which is so far loyal to the Kremlin but could turn on an elite seen as failing in the war, Gallyamov said.

They fear being slaughtered with Prigozhin’s sledgehammer – the extrajudicial punishment given to his jail convict soldiers who refuse to fight or seek to defect to Ukraine.

One of Prigozhin’s former Wagner mercenaries, who changed sides in the Ukraine war, Yevgeny Nuzhin, 55, had his head taped to a brick wall and was beaten to death with a sledgehammer in November when he was captured by his former colleagues. 

Prigozhin praised the defector’s execution and said that a ‘dog receives a dog’s death’ in response to the video of Nuzhin being bludgeoned to death.

Since Putin’s war began, Putin’s allies like Prigozhin and Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov have begun jockeying for power and prominence, suggesting that they could one day want to supplant him.

It comes as Putin was accused of ‘driving his own people to slaughter by the thousands’ in his drive to secure the key settlement of Soledar in eastern Ukraine. 

Putin has seen his popularity plummet after his army has seen a series of devastating losses on the battlefield.

Gallyamov said: ‘The apparatus looks at Prigozhin and stops seeing Putin as guarantor of their stability. 

‘The whole apparatus sits in horror, looking at Prigozhin and being scared that [his forces] will come after them. They personally fear his sledgehammer.’

If Putin seeks nomination for yet another term – he has been president or PM since 1999 – he ‘might really slip and fail to be elected’.

Gallyamov warned: ‘He would try to rig the elections, [but it is] fraught with revolution. This is far too big of a risk for the system.’

He is likely to nominate a trusted underling as president – like Mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin, or premier Mikhail Mishustin, or his uber-loyist deputy chief of staff Dmitry Kozak, Gallyamov said. 

‘Such people can really win the election,’ he said. ‘Yes, then they will have to negotiate with Ukraine, with the West, and break the deadlock within the system.’

Yet ‘for Putin, this is a good option, compared with Gaddafi,’ he said.

‘At least Putin will have guarantees of personal security.’

Current laws mean he would be a ‘senator for life’.

‘He will get the opportunity to end his days calmly in [his] palace in Gelendzhik,’ Gallyamov said. 

Images of the controversial £1 billion Black Sea mansion were revealed by opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, now seriously ill in solitary confinement in a grim Russian jail.

The palace boasts a vineyard and a ‘striptease’ room known as a ‘hookah’ with a stage and performer’s pole.

It includes a ’16-storey underground complex’ compared with the lair of a James Bond villain.

It was also described as ‘a whole anthill in the rock under the house’.

An engineer turned whistle-blower who reportedly worked on the construction – named only as Viktor – thought of the palace as a ‘national treasure’ suggesting the underground passageways buried in the rock were more ingenious than Dr No’s bunker.

The palace designs included on the eighth subterranean floor ‘a balcony – literally a loggia hanging over the sea’ built into the cliff, from which the owner can enjoy wine tasting from the palace stocks, he said.

Evidently stung by the revelations, Putin’s oligarch crony Arkady Rotenberg claimed unconvincingly that the palace – guarded by Kremlin security operatives – belonged to him rather than Putin.