How might a Putin assassination play out?

President Biden was wrong to blurt out at the end of his prepared speech in Warsaw that Vladimir Putin could not be allowed to remain in power. He was wrong because once you go down that road, no elected leader is safe. Democracy becomes a lottery and assassination ends up as a legitimate tool of international discourse. 

On the other hand, Biden was absolutely right. And we know it. If the head of the Special Operations Executive had put up a plan to assassinate Hitler in 1941 that sounded as though it might actually work, does anyone suppose that Churchill wouldn’t have leapt at it? Hitler, he told the Cabinet, was “the mainspring of evil and an outlaw,” who, if captured, should be executed without trial. The SOE, dubbed in Whitehall the Ministry for Ungentlemanly Warfare, existed for the very purpose of rubbing out the enemy by any means possible. 

Russia’s President is not only evil – par for the course among the world’s dictators – he commands a vast army equipped with modern weapons, including nuclear missiles, that is in the process of demolishing Ukraine and murdering its people. He is not a functioning autocrat; he is a homicidal monster. 

In the event that US Special Forces made it into the Kremlin, or wherever it is that he is holed up, and put a bullet through Putin’s head, the world at large would cheer. In the Situation Room in Washington, the generals and admirals would be lining up to shake the President’s hand. In the Oval Office, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing as Western leaders, even as they nervously looked over their shoulders, professed their admiration and relief. 

Yes, it would be risky, and yes there would be consequences. Russia’s ruling clique would feel obliged to protest, even as they jostled with each other to take over the top job. The head of the Republican Guard would be shot. In Washington, the Secret Service would think it prudent to double the guard on the White House. In London, Boris Johnson would be fitted out for an armoured vest. 

But in Moscow, once the smoke cleared, there would be quiet satisfaction among most of the brass hats and party big-wigs that a way out of the Ukrainian morass had suddenly opened up. The opportunity would be there for a new Krushchev (if not a new Gorbachev) to replace the Stalinesque mini-me who had ruled over them with an iron fist for the last 22 years. 

What would ordinary people in the street think? They would be confused. Some would be angry, calling for revenge. Others would heave a sigh. The overarching sense would be that their country had been humiliated. But, really, given all that has happened – and is still happening – is it the amour propre of Russia that we should be considering here rather than the survival of an independent Ukraine? Or is it possible that world leaders, following the lead of the old African dictators’ club, feel that their personal survival, no matter how badly they behave, trumps all other considerations?

If Putin did end up on a mortuary slab, it would make sense for his generals to pretend that it was one of them who had pulled the trigger, acting, one imagines, on behalf of a hastily conceived movement for national revival. It might equally make sense for the Pentagon and Langley to go along with the lie. Better for all concerned that Putin should have been executed by one of his own than by an agent of US imperialism. 

Realistically, of course, none of this is going to happen. It’s not only that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had kittens when Biden experienced his “For God’s sake” moment, it’s also the case that the CIA and US Navy Seals lack the capability to mount the necessary operation. It took them forever to find and kill Osama Bin Laden, who was living almost openly in the government quarter of Islamabad. After a $25 million bounty was placed on his head, Saddam Hussein wasn’t shot, he was found hiding in a spider hole and handed over to be hanged. The CIA’s repeated attempts to murder Fidel Castro after the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs became a running joke. The agency’s only real success came in 1974 when Chile’s Marxist president, Salvadore Allende, obligingly committed suicide during an intense military assault planned and funded in Washington.

And if Putin, like Hitler in 1944, survived, his vengeance would be swift, which is the best, and only, reason for us to look elsewhere for answers.

The point is that Tom Cruise and the Mission Impossible team can stand down. Putin is safe. For now. Unless one of those still permitted to speak to him face to face has his own Von Stauffenberg moment. 

We can only hope.