“Regime change could happen in two directions. There are lobbies within the siloviki (camps of secret service agents and military, ed.) who think that Putin did everything wrong and that he should have taken tougher action, for example by using chemical weapons or a mobilization at the beginning of the war,” explained Grozev. The mouthpiece of the hawks is Igor Girkin, who in 2014 militarily carried out the secession of Donbass. The fact that Girkin is now allowed to publicly criticize Putin shows “that he has the protection of some powerful people.”
On the other side are the oligarchs, who are suffering under Western sanctions. They are trying to gain access to the siloviki in order to persuade Putin to end the war, Grozev said. “It’s an open battle between hawks and doves and I’m not sure who will win.” The deaf have a chance to prevail because they have a higher level of sophistication, more access to “political technology” (a euphemistic term for various methods of political manipulation, ed.) and also the support of the West.
The founder of the disclosure platform “Bellingcat” has been dealing with the Putin regime and its criminal activities for several years. Grozev gained international fame when he tracked down the assassins after the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In a phone call made under a false identity, Navalny was able to get one of the perpetrators to describe how the poison attack was carried out. Grozev found out about the group’s creative data-journalistic approaches, such as the use of airline passenger data.