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Can any authoritarian/ semi-authoritarian leader ever step down and not expect to be bumped off
Don't have a link now, soz, but the Economist suggested some years ago that he can't. Plenty of pissed off small time gangsters and businessmen out there. People who were this close to making it big before Putin and his inner circle cut them short and left them hanging in a forever limbo of not-quite-oligarch but not quite a failure either.
starfish&coffee
That is something I have always wondered though, he is suspected to be the wealthiest man in the world but can he ever retire and enjoy it? Can any authoritarian/ semi-authoritarian leader ever step down and not expect to be bumped off once they have lost control of the all military and security forces. Imagine his options are limited to forever paying someone like Wagner Group to protect him or hope somewhere like Saudi or UAE let him retire there but neither allow for much freedom. And if you don't fancy those options and decide you will die in office, I guess it allows you to take different types of decisions.