The Russian rebel told Express.co.uk that while Putin’s regime looked strong from the outside, it was actually becoming more and more fragile.
The country is only being held together through police and administrative coercion, and in effect has no functioning political or social institutions.
He argued that throughout Russia‘s history, totalitarian regimes had always collapsed from within and predicted the same fate for Putin.
“Revolution is already on our minds,” he said. “There is a need for revolution as a fundamental breakdown of the system, as a radical transformation.
“We’ve already had the long reign of Brezhnev. Brezhnev’s so called stagnation and eventually the Afghan war, the mediocre bloody war. And in the end, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the ideology.
“I’m sure that this is the path Russia is on now. Putin’s long reign of terror ends with an absolutely idiotic bloody war and there awaits a period of great turbulence and revolutionary change.”
Popkov said whether or not another Russian civil war would follow, depended on the Kremlin and not on the rebels, adding: “If there is a collapse of the Russian Federation and wars on its ruins, it will be entirely the historical fault of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”
Russia has been rocked by several brutal Islamist terror attacks, most notably the assault on the Crocus Music Hall in Moscow in March.
The attack was carried out by a branch of the Islamic State and killed more than 140 people.
The Russian rebel leader ruled out any cooperation with Islamists in the fight to overthrow Putin’s regime.
He said: “For us, the Islamists are not allies, so there is a colossal gap between us and them – an ideological abyss – they are the same enemies of freedom as Putin.
“We cannot have alliances with them, by definition – for us, this is also evil, also darkness.”