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.
- 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.
I mean, it kinda worked for him
“The murdering will continue until corruption decreases”
I think it’s a good plan. I either stop corruption or I run out of people (which technically will stop corruption too).
They’ll try a coup
Only if I’m not fast enough spreading the pandemic
- Get murdered somewhere around step 4 at the latest
Fortunately for OP, they didn’t use numbered bullets, so they’re safe!
Regular bullets work just as well, if you happen to fall on one during a quick exit from the upper floor.
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.
Stop the war.
Apologize.
Find someone else to run the show.
I do not accept the new position and therefore I leave Russia secretly, as fast as possible, and go back to my home.
After all, I want to live a little longer than Russian leaders usually do.
Start special operations into every single nation bordering Russia at the same time and immediately board the next flight to Venezuela.
Live in exile and laugh my ass off while Russia balkanises right before I get murked by half a dozen hitmen at the same time.
I didn’t think this through. But so did Putin.
Invite DJT, Bibi and several other leaders to my dining room, on 14th floor, with great view as with many, many windows …
Nice try, Putin.
Just asking for a friend
Abdicate. And die I guess. I couldn’t even navigate politics in the US, no way could I politick at a Vlad level.
Wow, this is my one of my least favorite reincarnation isekai yet
Change the name to Vacation-land for Lawyers in Love.
assign everyone a government mandated fursonaFreak the fuck out.
Pull back from Ukraine, Crimea, and Georgia, and negotiate an immediate ceasefire.
Call as many political scientists and scholars as possible and get their advice on how the fuck I can design a reformed system of democratic governance that is robust enough to withstand the inevitable attempts to undermine and corrupt it.
Find the multitude of stashed billions from the various oligarchs and seize it, use the money to invest in overhauling Russian society–improving infrastructure and education, improving the standard of living, etc.
Call as many political scientists and scholars as possible
This is the most reddit answer
What, asking experts who have studied a topic and has forgotten more about systems of governance and effective anti corruption efforts than I’ll ever know is somehow bad now? The fuck?
It isn’t bad, it’s just the type of answer you’d see on reddit. I don’t know what i’d do, frankly.
Should I consult experts?
I dunno, maybe
- Lemmy
You’d probably be tossed out a window before the day was over, TBH.
Yeah, it’s a fantasy, and an extremely off-the-cuff, low-detail, wouldn’t-it-be-nice-if list. In reality, I’d probably either shut up and change absolutely nothing while I figure out the power structures, or I’d just work out a payoff to quietly step down and leave without a fuss.
Yeah, people forget that tyrants never stand on their own. They are propped up by a complex system of corruption that benefits from the tyrant’s decisions. They will defend this system and the head authoritarian. Not out of love, devotion or loyalty, but to protect their own sources of ill gains. Just like a Mafia, it holds up on a shared complicity of its members on the crimes being committed. This is why generals force low level officers to witness the violations and tortures, and corrupt politicians tie in their underlings in the money laundering schemes. If everyone has something to lose, then everyone conspires to keep the corrupt system going.
Ctrl+A, Delete
Probably get assassinated if I’m being real
Oh my god, first things first, repair relations with Ukraine. Secondly end the war. Thirdly repair relations with the west.
Then begin the task of figuring out why a random white guy in Ohio suddenly became the ruler of russia.
Also, stay away from windows and tea. I imagine MANY russians would attempt to take the life of an American who’s ruling their world.
But also, I’d actually make attempts to improve the health and happyness of people in russia. And increase tolerance towards gay people. It’s like the 1980s over there in that regard.
Free healthcare
*with purchase of one healthcare of equal or greater value
nuke it
New Fallout game just dropped