Putin is paralyzed in crisis – again

Either way, the question is: What is Putin going to do?

Dyumin, for his part, isn’t to be underestimated. Dubbed “Putin’s bodyguard” by Western media, he was, indeed, the Russian leader’s personal bodyguard in 1999, before being promoted to deputy head of the Federal Protective Service. But there’s a lot more to the 52-year-old. Born in Kursk, he knows the region well, and he’s deeply vested in the Russian military, with his father heading the Defense Ministry’s 4th Department of the Main Military Medical Directorate.

Dyumin went to military school and studied engineering, rising to deputy chief of the special forces of the military intelligence directorate (GRU) at the time of Crimea’s annexation. He’s reputed to have orchestrated the flight of Ukraine’s former pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych, has served as chief of staff of the Russian Ground Forces and as a deputy defense minister before becoming the unflappable and effective governor of Tula in 2016.

Moved to the Kremlin earlier this year, some now see Dyumin as Putin’s possible successor-in-waiting. He’s viewed as capable, ruthless and cold — not too dissimilar from his boss. And he’s known to be methodical — a possible explanation for the tardiness of Russia’s counter-offensive.

However, another possible explanation is that Putin is once again demonstrating how he can become paralyzed in a crisis, even disappearing from public view — a characteristic that’s previously drawn comparisons to Joseph Stalin, who retreated to his dacha and remained incommunicado when German forces blitzed their way into the Soviet Union in 1941.

The parallel was first drawn by Putin’s Muscovite critics during Covid-19. Holed up in his Novo-Ogaryovo estate on the outskirts of Moscow, Putin was largely absent as the capital city battled to curb the spread of the deadly virus, with Mark Galeotti, an analyst at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, noting his trait of letting “certain serious challenges become someone else’s problem.”

And this may well explain a pattern that’s emerged when man-made or natural disasters have struck on Putin’s watch. In 2000, he was vacationing at his residence in Sochi when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea. He eventually met with the relatives of the 118 victims as a media storm erupted over his absence — and the meeting did not go well. Then, in 2018, he was criticized for a sluggish response to a massive shopping mall blaze in the Siberian city of Kemerovo that left at least 64 dead, 41 of them children. After the disaster, he was accused by bereaved families of repeating the same mistake.