Sergei Guriev calls Putin’s sweeping reshuffle last week a “meaningless coup,” because the changes he called for would give him a new path to holding onto power after his current – and legally his last – term ends in 2024. Yet his coup is “a non-event: the dramatic overhaul of political institutions implies no change in Russia’s political regime.” The overhaul would weaken the presidency while shifting powers to the Parliament and the prime minister. What is new is the substantial power the Putin-led State Council and Security Countil are going to receive.

Although Putin rules with an iron fist, he has avoided simply declaring himself president for life, after learning the lesson in 2011, when he announced his return to presidency. He had served two consecutive terms as president from 2000 to 2008 and one term as prime minister. The parliamentary elections that year were widely seen as rigged. His decision to run in 2012 triggered the biggest street protests Russia saw since the 1990s.

The author says Putin “seems to have thought of everything.” This time around, he looks determined to engineer the transition of leadership in a way that is less likely to trigger a backlash. The constitutional changes he called for give him several options to hold on to power — while allowing him four years to set his course. Even when he steps down as president in 2024, he will remain Russia’s dominant politician in a more powerful role as prime minister or in the State Council.

Putin’s effort to “create a new union with Belarus, enabling him to restart the term-limit clock” had failed. Minsk had rejected his call for unification with Russia. Then he chose “the example of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stepped down as president, but retained much of the authority he held in that role. Shortly before his resignation, Nazarbayev strengthened Kazakhstan’s Security Council and subsequently became its chairman.”

That Putin has to “go to such lengths to protect himself and his potential successor reveals how tenuous his position is,” given his high approval rating – it “now stood at a paltry (for him) 64%.” The changes include limiting a future president to two terms in office – he has served four – tightening residency requirements for presidential candidates, and letting parliament choose candidates for prime minister and the cabinet.

Russia has put national law above European court rulings. It does not abide by the judgements from the European Court of Human Rights, declaring international court orders unenforceable in Russia if they contradict the constitution. According to ECHR, almost 72% of the pending cases concern six countries, and Russia is its biggest purveyor of cases - Alexei Navalny’s many criminal convictions had been overturned in Strasburg.

In 2014 the ECHR ordered Russia to pay more than $2bn in compensation to shareholders in the defunct Russian oil firm, Yukos, formerly owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oligarch jailed by Putin’s henchmen. He left Russia in 2013 but has become Putin’s most powerful critic in exile. He “apparently poses too great a threat” to his tormentor’s preferred successor, that he won’t be qualified to run for high political office in Russia following constitutional changes.

Khodorkovsky and his supporters need much endurance. Russia will outlast Putin. The question is how to rule Russia in a post-Putin era, given its weak institutions and low morale after two decades of kleptocracy under Putin. It is a fear that haunt many Russians, who have a history of authoritarian rule.