"Recall that Gorbachev survived a coup in '91. But he was out of power four months later. The coup underscored his essential weakness," tweeted Council President Ivo Daalder following the mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner group.
Council President Daalder joins Jen Psaki on MSNBC to discuss the implications for Putin's grasp on power in the coming days as a result.
"No one knows of course, but clearly the last 48 hours have really weakened him in a way that we haven't seen really in his entire presidency, which is now in its 24th year, or indeed in any time since the end of the Soviet Union. We have a leader who has been directly challenged in the same way that Gorbachev was directly challenged, which is a sign of weakness.
"And although it is true that no one else has come out to support Prigozhin around Vladimir Putin, [at the] same time, these forces were able to move about 800 kilometers without any resistance, and whatever resistance there was it was quickly shot out of the sky. And it was only an outsider, Lukashenko, who was able to find a way out of this.
"Right now, everyone in the Kremlin, starting with Vladimir Putin, is looking around figuring out who can they trust, who's about to knife them in the back, who is going to defend them. And that's going to be there for quite a while.
"It tends to be that revolutions eat their own children. We may see that in this case that is happening as well. And so it is a really dangerous period because on the one hand, Ukraine is now launching in full force its counteroffensive, but on the other hand, we don't know what's happening inside the Kremlin. Putin hasn't been seen or heard from, we don't know what the military leadership of Russia is, it's a deeply uncertain time.
"And I think that's what the NATO leaders were talking about: how to make sure that we don't make it any worse than it already is. And at the same time make sure that Ukraine finds a way to benefit because that ultimately is what this is about."
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