![Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia with an iron fist since 1999 - but invading Ukraine may have been a step too far. Picture: Shutterstock Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia with an iron fist since 1999 - but invading Ukraine may have been a step too far. Picture: Shutterstock](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/tPntrWhUbGLyDWYCTv46rt/40c6d009-0908-45dc-bb98-5ff4bb8b7b4c.jpg/r0_40_3000_1727_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
President Putin, a self-styled student and rewriter of history, would be more aware than most he owes his leadership of Russia to a financial crisis and a disastrous war.
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When President Boris Yeltsin plucked Putin, then head of the state security agency, from relative obscurity in August 1999 and made him Prime Minister, it could have been a poisoned chalice. The country was in the grip of a financial crisis exacerbated by the disastrous First Chechen War. It had defaulted on its international debts in 1998.
When the civil war in Chechnya exploded into violence on Russian soil weeks later with a string of bomb blasts that claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians, the new PM responded with "the Putin touch".
Denouncing the bombers as Chechen terrorists, he ordered a massive aerial bombing campaign and pledged to kill them anywhere they could be found; "even in the outhouse". The Second Chechen War had begun.
Yeltsin, already in poor health and out of favour in a country disillusioned by economic hardships and the loss of national territory and prestige following the collapse of the USSR, was done. On August 9, 1999, he named Putin as his preferred successor and then, on December 31, resigned and made him acting President.
The former KGB operative and taxi driver has ruled Russia with an iron hand ever since. An entire generation of Russians has grown to maturity knowing nobody else at the helm. And, if the events of recent days are an indication, with thousands of protesters taking to the streets of Moscow and elsewhere to protest the war and support democracy, they think it's time to change.
It seems possible - thanks to the incompetence of the Russian military, the unexpectedly stiff resistance of the Ukrainians, and the speed and extent of the Western response to the unprovoked invasion of the former Soviet satellite - that they may just get their wish.
Putin is reportedly bunkered down in the Urals, in his equivalent of Hitler's "Eagle's Nest", with a cadre of oligarchs he fears might flee the country if they are allowed out of his sight. The economy is in free fall. The Russian ruble is down by 30 per cent in value, a massive hit not only to the savings of ordinary citizens but also to the almost $900 billion war chest Putin squirrelled away to pay for his war - believed to be costing $35 billion a day - and to blunt the impact of sanctions.
Millions are lining up to withdraw money from ATMs, food and fuel prices are skyrocketing, and the interest rate was just doubled to 20 per cent in an attempt to put a floor under the ruble. The stock market plunged 40 per cent before trading was suspended. And it's only going to get worse, with President Joe Biden reiterating on Wednesday the West would do whatever it took to crash the Russian economy.
"When the history of this era is written, Putin's war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger," he said.
Meanwhile the Russians have yet to take a major Ukrainian city - a lack of progress that has Putin fuming - and the 60-kilometre-long assault convoy heading for Kiev is reportedly starting to grind to a halt as fuel runs out. It's certainly not where Putin hoped to be by now when he ordered his "special military operation" last week.
The trouble is that, unlike Yeltsin, he has failed to put a succession plan into place - and, having surrounded himself with "yes men" for more than two decades, he is not going to stand down or be set aside by a legitimate successor.
While Putin's removal would be by far the quickest and simplest resolution to the most dangerous crisis since Cuba in October 1962, it remains to be seen how that could be brought about. That said, history often plays out in the most surprising ways.