Over two decades, Vladimir Putin has transformed Russia's political order from a corrupt but pluralistic system into one where all authority flows through a single person. The oligarchs, governors, and generals who once negotiated among themselves now exist only at his sufferance, their wealth and position revocable at will. What has emerged is not a stable autocracy but a brittle architecture of fear — one that cannot correct itself, cannot plan for succession, and cannot outlast the man at its center.