Many believe a dictatorship falls once 3.5% of the population takes to the streets. Even Erica Chenoweth, whose research gave rise to the figure, now calls protest size an unreliable predictor of success. The outcome is decided by whether the army and police agree to shoot, and in Russia they will.
In October 2025, Tanzania's president won 97.66% of the vote after the main opposition party was barred from the election. That same month, 92-year-old Paul Biya won an eighth term in Cameroon, and 255 people were arrested in Côte d'Ivoire for disputing the count. Elections here no longer change power. They confirm it.
Since 1950, only four heads of state have come to power through purely peaceful protest. Far more dictatorships have fallen to coups: in one study, 102 of 201 autocracies were toppled by insiders. What does this mean for Putin's regime and for a Russian opposition that still relies on peaceful marches?
Since 2022, hundreds of thousands of Russians have fled Putin's war, most of them young, educated and politically active. Yet in 2022, Russians filed only about 18,400 asylum claims in Europe, and fewer than a third were granted. Many ended up in Armenia, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Israel instead.
Garry Kasparov sees Trump's second term as the Putinization of America, with Elon Musk as its leading oligarch. Alexander Dugin welcomes the same changes and calls Trump Putin's ideological twin. Both agree that Trump's America is starting to look like Putin's Russia. They differ only on whether that is a disaster.
In 2022, many in the Russian opposition believed that Ukraine's victory would quickly bring down Putin's regime. Three years later, the Russian economy has survived sanctions, and the West avoids a direct clash with a nuclear power. Would a bad peace be better than endless losses?