You have all the powers that Putin currently does. Everyone completely loyal to Putin is now loyal to you. Enemies of Putin are enemies of you. Putin no longer exists, and there has been a clean and absolute transfer of power to you. The economic, military, social and political situations are the same as they now are. You are not inhabiting Putin’s body, you are just you. You’re magically transferred to the Kremlin. The world at large doesn’t know your past life, to them you have magically appeared as the new ruler. To everyone who knew you before, you just vanished.
Edit: no one knows your past life YET. They’ll quickly figure it out. You will not lose any support based on your actions in your past life.
Nice try, Putin.
Try to learn Russian really quickly.
Resign. I can’t handle that kind of responsibility
- Give Volodymyr a call
- Pull out of Ukraine and Georgia
- Hand over Putin to ICC
- Instruct the loyalists that democratic reform is coming, and nobody is to be given the window/tea treatment.
- Call Navalnys widow and tell her to prepare her political aparatus
- Announce an election in 6 months (should be enough to prepare everything, I guess?) with international observers encouraged to participate
- Realize that I have no fucking idea how to ensure that elections on that scale are free and fair, so I ask for assistance from aforementioned observers.
- Pull an epic prank on Lukashenko. Possibly involving potatoes.
- Realize that I am in no way fit to run a country, and start planning my (safe) exit. Once the election results are in I’ll be gone without a trace.
- Repeal putins laws
- Start releasing political prisoners
- Last thing I do before leaving is calling this guy named/called Misha whether he’s fine with Murmansk, or if he wants the city to have a new name.
Sounds like a good way to get a pro Putin oligarch elected. Even with fair elections they have a lot of support.
There will be an epidemic of falls through windows. It will affect oligarchs and will spare the population. There is a cure: leaving the country after having relinquished all your money to the government.
Oligarchs problem solved.
Sounds like how Stalin got his start. “If I just kill this small group of bad people things will be better.”
Oh no, the people who replaced them are corrupt too. Ok, this next wave of executions will surely send the right message.
If I were truly thrown into this scenario, my first step would be accepting likely death. Even if you maintain status quo and do no good, you’ll be killed by the next guy in line. There’s nearly no way to both satisfy the current oligarchs and maintain enough power to prevent being replaced by one of them. There is also no way out, as Russia has carried out assassinations in foreign countries. Not that you’d make it onto a plane.
So I really would try to do all that. I’d tell them that whatever force got me there also gave me time to enact failsafes so that, if I disappeared, every property that every Russian billionaire owned would make unexpected contact with drones. Then I’d go ahead and post Putin’s files with every billionaire’s dirt and holdings hoping to start some fires they’d need to put out before coming for me. From there, an aggressive push towards democracy by appealing to the people in the hopes that they’ll back me, which might buy a little extra time.
I think this secures a few hours. They won’t want to move against a complete unknown that suddenly became president. That’s enough to call Biden (allegedly to negotiate US withdrawal from Ukraine in exchange for election interference in Harris’s favor) and send him every bit of data on the military that I could. That might be enough deterrence to buy more time: “the US military knows everything now, so killing me might have consequences.” I’d CC several other NATO members, but for time’s sake Biden is probably the one to call.
Maybe I could get some bodyguards that appear loyal to me, maybe not. But every bit of bluster I could muster, I’d throw it down out the gate, then start trying to fix the country before they call the bluff.
Yeah, I still die quickly, but even a single step towards improvement is worth my life. An easy decision to make when it was forfeit the second I became president. Even if I failed miserably, merely dumping presidential documents would have been worth it. Perhaps it’d get the ball rolling.
Edit: I missed the part where everyone loyal to Putin would be loyal to me. That opens up a ton of space to actually set up these failsafes or move against the oligarchs myself, as well as secure the Kremlin with men more or less actually loyal to me (by wiring them all a million USD on the spot with promise of more). Putin put down a rebellion from one of the most powerful oligarchs, so there might actually be a way to survive long enough to do many of the things on that list. I’d probably not dump the oligarch files and keep that on a disappearance failsafe then proceed mostly the same hoping to generate serious, potentially irreversible momentum before dying.
What are my goals? The same as Putin?
If yes: continue attrition fighting, but defensively. The goal is to stretch out ukraine losses past the point of western support. Keep offering varying “peace deals” that solidify the capture of oil and gas resources and access to the black sea. Claim the fighting will stop once the Russian territory is liberated (the captured oblasts). In the backroom arrange to let israel to start their middle east ground war, that will distract and drain support from Ukraine. Move the conscript soldiers to the Russian side of the north eastern border with Ukraine. Negotiate to get CIS volunteers as part of the defensive home guard.
If no: pull back troops to very defensive lines across rivers. Dig in. Don’t try to take any territory. Negotiate for return of some territory in exchange for crimea and total access to black sea, settle for crimea and a promise not to join NATO for 20 years.
Focus on energy export pipelines to Europe and China, try to pivot industrial base to post solar future. China is the biggest long term competitor, find a niche that is critical to Chinese interests like oil (negiotate with kz to be sole supplier)
Goal is whatever you want, but keep in mind if you erode your base of support you’ll likely be defenestrated.
In the second scenario, would you opt for less adversarial relations with the West? Would you try to maintain/rebuild the greatness of Russia?
Second scenario Is all about economic health. Can’t pay my cronies if we don’t have money! Russia’s diplomatic past, and its current position, requires an antagonistic relationship. It could be built out so it’s not necessary, but that would take a very long time, more than one generation. However, staged niceness could be negotiated for economic concessions or trade deals. The greatness of Russia would be an exercise in public relations, military victories are not necessary.
