center for army, conversion and disarmament studies

Content

Chapter IPEOPLE WHO SURROUND PUTIN

Chapter I IVLADIMIR PUTIN’S PERSONALITY

RUSSIA AFTER PUTIN. POSSIBLE SCENARIOS

PUTINISM AFTER PUTIN. THE ASCENT OF SERGEY IVANOV

SERGEI SHOYGU – SUCCESSOR OR PUPPET?

DMITRY ROGOZIN – RADICAL NATIONALIST OR COURT JESTER?

VLADISLAV SURKOV – THE KREMLIN’S “GRAY CARDINAL”

LOYAL PUTIN’S MAN IGOR SECHIN – OIL TYCOON AND RUSSIAN RICHELIEU

SERGEI CHEMEZOV. PUTIN’S ARMAMENTS BARON

ANTI-KREMLIN OPPOSITION: BETWEEN TRIUMPH AND DECLINE

THE PLAYER WITH MARKED CARDS

CONSCIENCE SPLIT AND RESULTING DOMINANCE OF ILLUSION OVER REALITY

BEARINGS OF THE LONELY KGB VETERAN

PUTIN AND UKRAINE: WILL EROSTRATUS BE GIVEN A CHANCE?

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CENTER FOR ARMY, CONVERSION AND DISARMAMENT STUDIES

he Center for Army, Conver-sion and Disarmament Stud-ies (hereinafter referred to as CACDS) was established in 1999 as a non-governmental

think-tank organization, with a mission to promote the development and expansion of democracy in Ukraine, by way of distrib-uting best practice information on public control of the security sector.

Established as a voluntary association of experts on disarmament and armament (re-armament) of regional armed forces, security sector reform, defense industry and Ukraine’s performance on the international arms mar-ket, the CACDS often deals with the subject of civil-military relations and civilian control of the security sector, as well as the develop-ment of the defense and dual-use technology industry in Ukraine. The CACDS experts are actively engaged in research on Ukraine’s par-ticipation in the international regimes for con-trol of arms and critical technologies.

In 2011, the CACDS became a founder of the News & Consulting Company “De-fense Express” (previously known as the “Defense Express News Agency”). Since 2001, the CACDS has cooperated with the “Defense Express” NCC in research programs and the publication of the jour-nal “Arms Export and Defense- Industrial Complex of Ukraine”.

The Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies:

• Conducts research on the pace, pri-orities and consequences of the security sector reform in Ukraine; cooperates with institutions of the security sector in Ukraine;

• Conducts research on the tendencies and outlook of the Ukrainian defense industry transformation;

• Conducts continuous monitoring and analysis of the export/import of arma-ments, dual-use products and sensitive technologies on the post Soviet expanse as well as their proliferation globally;

• Publishes books and materials on CACDS research, particularly by trans-lating most interesting works of foreign think tanks;

• Takes part in joint projects with interna-tional and domestic non-governmental organizations dealing with the subjects of disarmament and security sector ac-tivities or otherwise promoting democ-ratization of the society;

• Interacts with relevant ministries, gov-ernment institutions and domestic companies dealing with the security sector development (reform); provides them with comprehensive information support, expert assessments and recom-mendations;

• Distributes materials on special aca-demic conferences hosted by govern-ment institutions, as well as meetings and reports by counterpart non-gov-

Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies

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ernmental entities dealing with similar subjects.The CACDS’ action priorities over the

past five years include:• Independent research on Ukraine’s

performance on the international arms market;

• Analysis of Ukraine’s international mili-tary-technical cooperation, particularly programs on the co-development and import of defense and dual-use tech-nologies;

• Independent review of the Ukrainian Armed Forces transformation; an analy-sis of tendencies in the development of regional and international armed forces;

• Independent review of the domestic defense industry growth;

• Research on the potentials for imple-menting different projects in the nation-al security and defense domains.The CACDS conducts its research ex-

clusively by means of a multi-factor analysis of open-source information, including me-dia reports, official and expert statements, conferences, international exhibitions and forums.

The CACDS since foundation has or-ganized and participated in several inter-national conferences and roundtable meet-ings, and delegated its representatives to speak at international security and defense forums in Europe, the U.S.A. and the Rus-sian Federation. CACDS experts publish regular articles, research materials and books.

In 2004, the CACDS, in conjunction with Defense Express and VAB-Bank (for-merly known and VABank) published “Cult. Ukrainian arms trading business” – the first book on the domestic arms export business ever published in Ukraine.

In 2006, the CACDS, in conjunction with Defense Express and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Comput-

erized Systems, published the inaugural edition of a national review of defense and dual-use technologies titled “Technosila”.

In 2008, the CACDS, in conjunction with Defense Express, conducted and pub-lished the first national research into the po-tentials for Ukraine-China cooperation in military technology, titled “Ukraine-China; from Projects towards Strategic Partner-ship”.

In 2010, the CACDS, in conjunction with Defense Express, published a research on the Ukrainian defense industry’s capa-bilities, titled “The Ukrainian DIC – a Driv-ing Force for the National Economy”.

In 2011, the CACDS, in conjunction with Defense Express, published a com-pendium on future technologies for defense and dual uses, titled “Ukrainian Arsenal. Modern Defense & Dual-Use Equipment”.

In 2012, the CACDS and the NATO Information and Documentation Center in Kyiv conducted and published a joint research titled “Integrity Building and Re-ducing Corruption in Defense Institutions: Ukrainian Experience”.

Also in 2012, the CACDS and the Ge-neva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces published a joint research on the “Challenges Facing Arms Export Con-trol in Ukraine and the Russain Federation”.

In 2013, the CACDS, assisted by De-fense Express analysts and non-staff ex-perts from Ukraine and the Russian Federation, conducted and published a re-search on the pace and quality of military rearmament programs in selected Central and Eastern European countries, as well as some aspects of the Ukrainian Armed Forces rearmament related to specific fea-tures of the Ukrainian military reform, titled “The Specifics of the Armed Forces and Defense Industry Reforms in Central and Eastern European Countries. Lessons for Ukraine”.

ince the beginning of 2015, many analysts began talk-ing about Russia after Putin. Seriously. As Putin is devel-oping the offensive, increas-

ing levels of confrontation, each new day exposes more of the grave outlook: it’s only the collapse of the Putin regime that can put an end to the Russian war in Ukraine. Stakeholders interested in a change of gov-ernment in Russia are increasing in num-bers, and those include inter alia some members of Putin’s entourage. Too many people realize too well that the top person in Russia – implacable, inflexible and deep-ly wounded – is deliberately pulling the country into a catastrophe.

The Russian President, playing a cool-headed leader, replied with undisguised irony to a question from a far-sighted jour-nalist whether he feared a possibility of a “palace revolution”. In fact, this had an effect of a perfect psychological operation; not quite a couple of weeks later, Putin’s heart failed him, making him scale back com-munication to an indecent minimum. The would-have-been emperor seems to under-stand better than others without waxing too poetic that something never-seen-before

occurred in Russian history. As Russian au-thor and human rights activist Victor Shen-derovich put it, “The Russians have found themselves fallen out of the European civi-lization; actually not fallen out but, rather, threw themselves out – with their own proper hands and with the hands of the ad-ministration”. Just before the start of 2015, foreigners began fleeing from Russia, while the Ruble fell into a downward spiral in the wake of oil prices crumbling. Interestingly, former Russian deputy minister of energy Vladimir Milov argues that Russia’s internal holdings, including 400 billion dollars, exist on paper only. Interviewed by “Economi-cheskaya Pravda” in January 2015, he said: “Holdings exist only on paper. Frankly, the issue here is not even what will happen to the economy. The issue is how the people will respond, because people have got-ten accustomed to sustainable economic growth over the past 15 years. Society was “lulled” by people who managed the econo-my and ensured the growth”.

Academics, journalists, authors – all those who have not forgotten how to think – describe Putin’s policy as becoming more deadlock and harmful for the coun-try. “The collapse of Putin’s regime is likely.

Russia after Putin.Possible scenarios

Valentin Badrak, Dmitry Kozlov

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5Valentin Badrak, Dmitry Kozlov

Most of our opposition politicians see their future with the so-called constitutional component and talk about the elections to the Duma in 2016, presidential elections in 2017,” Russian historian, philosopher and theologian Andrei Zubov said in February 2015.

Deterioration of the Putin-led Russia got so progressive by the start of 2015 that it made its self-isolation inevitable. As the Kremlin envoys are laying themselves out to search and find allies (and, miraculously, sometimes find them, as was the case with Greece and Venezuela in early 2015), global skepticism about Putin is gaining momen-tum. Expressed in the form of sanctions, this skepticism, in February 2015, grew to the level where the world is ready to dem-onstrate its unity and put the vain, stubborn man to where he belongs. It must be said that, by the start of 2015, the audacious ar-rogance of the Moscow emperor gave way to growing amazement and apprehension. Indeed, he still keeps an impressive arse-nal of ‘last-resort arguments’ ranging from fighter aircraft and precision-guided mis-siles to the ‘nuclear button’. But the truth is that even his closest allies see the inad-equacy of their boss even better than does the rest of the world, and the instinct of self-preservation will sooner or later show them the right way. Incidentally, it’s not a coincidence that the authoritative The Guardian newspaper wrote at the end of December 2014: “With oil revenues tailing off sharply, on the one hand it will expose how little has been done to diversify the Russian economy during the boom years, while on the other the amount of money

to share among the group of billionaires around Putin will shrink dramatically. … If the economic situation continues to de-teriorate, and the political turmoil contin-ues, one school of thought suggests Putin could be in trouble from within his own inner circle… For those in the inner circle, sanctions have in some cases meant losing business, property and travel opportuni-ties in the west… Even among those ideo-logically in tandem with Putin, if their vast wealth begins to be threatened their loyalty may waver”.

A broad consensus appears having been reached among analysts to the effect that Putin, as befits the man of fixed ideas, will stand his ground until the end. But this is what has recently made him vulnerable to his own allies. One thought has been in-creasingly heard from within the Kremlin; no matter how far assertive one man in the Kremlin will be, the economic downfall in Russia will inevitably kill the carefully built police-authoritarian regime. The architect of the Russian war in Ukraine is still being able to contain the Russian people without also solving their problems, but, instead, drawing their attention to the “American threat” by manipulating public conscious-ness by means of the well tuned propaganda machine. However, in February 2015, can-didates for Putin’s final choice as his suc-cessor began to increase their media pres-ence. Particularly in January 2015, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, during a visit to the Chkalov Proving Flying Center of the “Russian Helicopters” Holding, flew on a combat reconnaissance and attack he-licopter Ka-52 “Alligator”. Such examples

6 Russia after Putin. Possible scenarios

are aplenty, be it implacable Sergei Iva-nov who arrogantly denied Western lead-ers’ statements as “idiotic”, or loyal Sergei Shoygu with his demonstrations of Russia’s “flexed nuclear muscles” or oversea voyages in search of new allies. But there are also other contenders for this role. For example, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in late 2014, offered himself to be the leader of the “transitional government”. There is a growing trend ob-served that Putting should, if not fall into oblivion, at least give way to someone who will be able to rebuild the burnt bridges be-tween Russia and the rest of the world.

Against the background of growing confrontation, every new counter-step by the West quietly tightens the noose around Putin. If the self-styled republics LNR and DNR are officially labeled terrorist organi-zations, the world could designate Russia as State Sponsor of Terrorism. There occurred kind of a chain reaction, which was excel-lently described by Ukrainian author and journalist Yury Shcherbak thus: “Putin will be accused of crimes against peace (planning, preparation, incitement or waging of aggressive war), crimes against humanity (murder, enslavement, persecu-tion on political or ethnic grounds, theft of public and private property, destruc-tion of towns and villages)”. Shortly after-wards, former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Paula J. Dobriansky wrote in The Washington Post on February 13, 2015 that Russia should be prosecuted for its crimes against humanity. She says ‘Russia’, but many hear ‘Putin”. A change of rhetoric is all about timing. In fact, Putin has become a threat to the Russians. Even the Russia-backed terrorist warlords in the Donbas (like a certain insurgent leader Igor Strelkov-Girkin) have come to take shots at

the Russian leader. On 9 February, again, Rogozin emerged with a statement that Russia’s massive military modernization programs have fallen in jeopardy because of growing prices of defense industry products amidst ruble’s collapse.

It is also specific that the master of the Kremlin is progressively losing credibility. As Russian political analyst Stanislav Bel-kovsky put it, “Putin wants to don Stalin’s uniform and return to the Yalta-Potsdam world of 1945,” but this is “impossible be-cause that world collapsed in 1989 along with the fall of the Berlin wall.” Even more pessimistic is Russian poet Igor Irten’ev, who, as early as in May 2014, spoke out prophetically, “I am very pessimistic about the future, foresee great upheavals in Russia when it runs out of oil money, which will run out very soon “.

The wait-and-see stance of Berlin and Paris, temporary weakness during the gru-eling Minsk negotiations on February 12, the snapping of toothy jaws in the US Con-gress amidst Washington’s hesitation and indecisiveness, the launch of a very danger-ous idea of freezing the conflict in eastern Ukraine, see-saw battles amidst the growing battle experience of the Ukrainian military – these are all suffocating factors for the Kremlin intriguer. This is confirmed by syn-chronous statements made in January 2015 by philanthropic billionaire George Soros and the authoritative The Economist maga-zine. Words by the renowned financier and open society crusader came as a harbinger of Putin’s agony. The prominent expert in the nature of money stated in the middle of January 2015 that the sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and Europe for its in-terventions in Ukraine have worked much faster and inflicted much more damage on the Russian economy than anybody could have expected. The increased damage is


largely due to a sharp decline in the price of oil, without which the sanctions would have been much less effective. An analyst at The Economist is writing the following, “ …as the oil price fell Russia has not (so far) become any friendlier to the West nor to its neighbors. Mr Putin seems determined to break that correlation. Indeed, he has of-fered the war and patriotic euphoria as a compensation for the falling oil prices and lack of economic growth. The only way to bend the trend is by escalating aggression. This year will see a contest between Mr Pu-tin’s regime and the oil price. It will not be a pretty sight”. Well-known British expert James Sherr believes that Russian econo-my will collapse in two years at the latest: “When it comes to damaging Russia, time favors the West. Within two years, if not less, the prolongation of existing pressures will seriously impair Russia’s ability to pur-sue the course it pursues with such tenacity today. (“Mirror Weekly”, 13/02/15).

A similar view is shared by Russian op-positionist politician Boris Nemtsov: “The price of oil, in my opinion, will stay at a low level for a long time. In Russia, falling price of oil has invariably led to a change of government sooner or later. In the same to-ken, if the current crisis drags on, a change of government in Russia is inevitable”. Nemtsov is confident that the current Rus-sian crisis is a direct consequence of Putin’s war in Ukraine.

It’s my sincere belief that if sanctions continued during a full year, and the Rus-sian economy remained under severe pressure of falling oil prices and sanc-tions, Putin will start pulling back forces from Ukraine, or the Russians will be looking for a new leader, said John Herbst, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and current Director of the Eurasian Center. Well, Putin, instead of a reasonable reset of

relations with the West and the withdrawal of troops from Ukraine, made a reckless, albeit outwardly brave step: he has gone for all-or-nothing – launched an almost open offensive deep into Ukraine, having deployed enormous quantities of arms and military equipment in the Donbas regions [controlled by Russian forces], in addition to about a dozen thousand military person-nel to help organize military action and re-inforce local insurgents.

So, in January 2015, dissatisfaction with Putin’s policy course increased dramatically, even among his inner circle. In late Janu-ary, Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, reported that the dictator has narrowed his inner circle down to several military and security chiefs, and drastically reduced the amount of communication even with the people supposed to be his friends. Many media outlets quoted Olga Kryshtanovs-kaya, an opinion poll expert, as noting that Putin has run into a difficult time: “He is being criticized both by the liberals and the ‘hawks’”.

One way or another, but in the worst case it can be that Putin may hand over the reins of power to someone from the military and security establishment. Not improb-ably, this someone will be even worse than Putin – the hardline Ivanov or tight-lipped but quick-minded Shoygu. Another viable candidate is Dmitry Rogozin, a loyal vassal, who has grown sharp ‘political fangs’ over all his years of being besides Putin, and, also, has shown himself a decent enough actor. It seems that intellectuals and men of logics such as Chemezov, Surkov or Sechin, for example, are less suited for the ‘succes-sor’ role. Rather, they will more likely be assigned the role of guardians of all life as-pects of their current patron.

Softer, more positive scenarios in which power in Russia would come to


someone from among oppositionist politi-cians, such as Nemtsov or Navalny or even Khodorkovsky, are less likely than “worse” scenarios. These are only likely under cer-tain, extreme circumstances. For example, if the Russians rose in sufficient numbers in protest against Putin’s disastrous course of action in Ukraine. Not only is this very un-likely in conditions of a police-ridden state, but such protests can be easily stamped out, given the availability of a powerful repres-sive machine, supported by a horde of ser-vant mass media.

Boris Nemtsov – an uncompromising critic of the current Russian regime, who has been so bold as to describe Putin’s in-ternational policy course as being “stupid”, and ascribed the current crisis in Russia to Putin’s cronies and their villainous state capitalism – has pretty better chances of winning. But the limits of his popularity can hardly be expanded to nation-wide propor-tions, especially if one takes into account that overwhelming majority of the Russians favor a strong-arm policy, even if this puts them in oppositions to the outside world. In Russia, the tradition to have a ‘czar’ as a ruler has gone nowhere. For this reason, the appointment to the successor’s role of one of military/security chiefs from among Putin’s inner circle appears to be more likely than selection of a level-headed adequate leader who would be able to mend fences with the West.

But even so, if Putin continued to persist and unwilling to show flexibility in relations with the Western world, his ousting from power will be programmed. Although the West seems to agree to a reasonable palliative option, it is Putin personally who can turn on ‘acceleration mode’ on the path to self-destruction. As things stand now, this scenario looks more probable than one in which the Kremlin

czar would go for reasonable compromises or concessions. The timing of such a sce-nario is uncertain and depends more on whether the West is consistent enough in its consolidated effort to counter the Kremlin. This may take from several months to a few years in case the Western attitude is sluggish, lacking in coordina-tion and consensus. For Ukraine, any sce-nario in which Putin is ousted from power would open a new chance. If the Ukrai-nian government is able to effectively take advantage of the confusion or realignment of forces in the Kremlin in order to create factors for strategic deterrence of Russia, a triumph in the battle for Ukraine will be virtually a done deal, likewise the inter-national community’s struggle to advance democratic values.

As the decline of Putin’s era is inevi-tably forthcoming, it would be helpful to outline possible scenarios of how this could play out.

Scenario # 1: Revolution from withinThis can be carried out in a latent

form, resembling outwardly Yeltsin’s re-tirement from office in 1999, with the ap-pointment of a credible successor support-ed by a massive PR campaign in the mass media, and subsequent legitimization of the successor through elections. The fo-cus will be on the preservation of Puti-nism after Putin resigns from the political scene, meaning a continuation of the cur-rent policy of serving the interests of the Kremlin’s kleptocracy, preservation of the alliance between the big business and the military/security establishment, and the pursuance of the current neo-imperialist foreign policy strategy.

The most likely successors are Sergei Ivanov and Sergei Shoygu. This scenario calls for Putin to retire from big politics.


For Russia and for the whole world in the long term, this means the continu-ation of confrontation – by virtue of the very configuration of the Russian state as it has been created by Putin. It’s prob-able, however, that there will be some pe-riod of “thaw” both in the domestic and international policies, due to the overall fatigue from Putin, and the expectation of change. An inevitable result will come in the form of improving relations with the West, which could drive the post-Putin elite to do internal evolution and progres-sive liberalization with subsequent transi-tion to true reforms. Similar scenarios of soft democratization have been successful in many totalitarian governments.

Scenario # 2. ReshuffleA sub-variant of Scenario #1, this is

possible in case Putin will “smell a rat” and decide to take the lead in pressing for long overdue change by picking somebody as he did with Medvedev. In this scenario, Putin would be awarded some sort of a symbolic position in the architecture of government, which, given the gap existing between of-ficial positions and their actual places in the current Kremlin hierarchy, will not pre-vent him to continue to be the “first among equals” in the shadow “Politburo”. This suc-cessor could be someone from Putin’s inner circle or a compromise figure such as Ku-drin or, again, Medvedev. The probability is that there will be some sort of a last-minute variant involving a renowned opposition-ist who will be ready to trade-off principles for the highest public office and an oath of loyalty to actual “masters of Russia.” One way or another, the role the President will be representative and symbolic only. As with Scenario #1, there will be little, if any, policy change, but “the effect of Putin’s re-tirement” will play into the hands of Russia.

Scenario #3. Nationalist RevolutionFor Russia, this is the worst-case sce-

nario with world-wide implications. This can be resorted to by radicals if they find Putin’s policies to be insufficiently sturdy, or in the event of a precipitous drop in public confidence in the Russian leader. Despite a dramatic rightward shift observed recently in Putin’s rhetoric and actions, and the ef-fective policy of appeasement of radical na-tionalists being pursued via “hand-picked nationalist” Rogozin, there are many in the ranks of marginal and radical chauvinist parties who feel Putin’s regime to be insuf-ficiently sturdy. The “threat from the right” will grow if there is little progress in the Russian offensive in Ukraine, if there is an aggravation of the internal interethnic situ-ation, or if there any attempts to make the country’s international policy less aggres-sive. Still, the Russian military and security establishment are generally loyal to Putin, and they are well motivated and equipped to stamp out an insurgency effectively and efficiently should it occur. A true threat arises in case that there is an alliance of na-tionalists, liberals and part of the military/security establishment where nationalist sentiment has been traditionally strong. In this case, there is a hypothetical probability of the rise to power of ultra-conservative, radical forces hostile to the West, who are spiritually close to the despotic Islamic governments in the Middle East. This sce-nario offers a wide selection of potential leaders ranging from puppet nationalist-jester Rogozin to half-crazy ideologues of the Russian World, or even veterans of the ongoing war in Ukraine, many of whom are obsessed with extreme forms of chauvin-ism. In a nuclear-armed nation, the possible seizure of power by militant radicals (prob-ably, following on the 1917 revolution mod-el, with a short preceding reign of a weak


liberal provisional government) will have unpredictable implications. The possibility and probability of a planetary catastrophe becomes pretty realistic with this scenario.

Scenario #4. Status QuoThere still remains a probability, al-

beit minor one, of preservation of the sta-tus quo for a long time. However, further continuation of the current architecture of government with Putin at its top will no longer benefit anybody, including to a large extent even Putin himself. Continu-ation of Putin’s tenure as the ‘czar of Rus-sia’ will be conducive to stagnation in all spheres of life and to a gradual but sure deterioration of the political system that he built, which, as befits any vacuum-sealed political regime devoid of any possibility of change, will become pro-gressively more decrepit and rotten from within – only to eventually explode and collapse as the USSR did in 1991. In fact,

this will be simply a postponement of the inevitable, a precursor of any of the three scenarios described above. Each extra year of Putin’s tenure as ‘czar’ will add to sever-ity of turmoil after his departure from the ‘throne’, which is certainly evident for his inner circle to see. What can make him step down are not plummeting oil prices, international sanctions or economic tur-moil, but, rather, extreme fatigue of his darling political system. Russia is stand-ing at ‘crossroads’ between liberalization and dipping deeper into nationalist ob-scurantism. But there is no room left for Putin in both of these sub-scenarios. Even if Putinism continues as a political system of government, the founding father has become superfluous in the system he cre-ated himself. Putin’s retirement would be beneficial to all stakeholders. Changes are progressing slowly, still they are progress-ing. Therefore, the sunset of the Putin era is around the corner.

t a recent press conference, Putin said he did not intend to stay in the presidential office throughout his life, but did not rule out that he

could run for another term. Given the clear divide between the real and the formal hi-erarchy of authority in the Russian Federa-tion, notably the possibility of the “rule by proxy” using a Medvedev-style puppet as president, a transfer of presidency looks pretty likely. A flurry of Western criticism, effectively directed mainly against Putin personally, has turned him into an odious figure, whose removal from the political fore would have a powerful propaganda effect and contribute to the improvement of relations with the US and the EU. For fans and supporters in Russia and abroad, it would be possible to concoct yet anoth-er “tandemocracy” where Putin, having turned himself into an icon of anti-Amer-icanism, will continue to please his “flock” by his presence in the Media space while formally being on the sidelines.

In this context, the increasing media buzz around the “successor” topic seems to be quite natural. Since the identity of the heir to the Russian “throne” remains a mat-ter of debate, it would be wise to consider a man who was already mentioned as a candi-date for presidency in the recent past – the

man representing the worst nightmare pos-sible for the Russian Opposition and for ev-eryone anticipating changes in the Russian Federation’s domestic and international policies, and the man who is going to pur-sue “Putinism” after Putin leaves office.

Sergei Ivanov was born in 1953 in Len-ingrad. Ivanov graduated from the English translation branch of the Department of Philology at Leningrad State University. After graduation, he spent some time in the UK, polishing his English language proficiency. Upon return from abroad he linked his fate with the secret services, hav-ing enrolled to serve in the KGB in 1975 (the same year as the future president of the Russian Federation). While serving at the local branch of the Committee, he became acquainted with a young First Lieutenant of Justice, Vladimir Putin, with whom he was able to develop and share a strong friend-ship since then. In 1976, Ivanov finished the Higher Courses of the KGB in Minsk, and four years later completed postgradu-ate studies at the Red Banner Institute of the KGB of the USSR. During years up to 1985, he was serving in the KGB residencies in Finland, and later – in Kenya.

Unlike his friend and colleague, who was quick on the uptake on the rapid changes and transformations taking place in the country during Perestroika, Ivanov

Chapter IPeople who surround Putin

Putinism after Putin.The Ascent of Sergey Ivanov

Dmitry Kozlov

A


remained loyal to his job at secret services both at the time of the 1991 coup d’etat at-tempt by the Gang of Eight and in years after the final collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus he demonstrated his conservatism and far lesser sensitivity to changes than Putin had, on the one hand, and the unshakable loyalty to his native organization, regardless of its name or nationality, on the other hand. In the period from 1991 to 1998, Ivanov continued service in the structures of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, and resigned from service while being in the position of the first deputy di-rector of the European Department at the FIS. After the 1998 Russian market crash, Sergey Ivanov became chief of the forecast-ing and strategic planning department, an office which he held in conjunction with his role as deputy director of the Federal Secu-rity Service, headed by Putin.

Soon afterwards, Yeltsin steps down from presidency, and the finest hour comes for Sergei Borisovich, as well as for his pro-tégé. On November 15, 1999, he became Secretary of the Russian Security Council, and also its permanent member, continu-ing in this position after appointment to the office of the Minister of Defense and, later, Deputy Prime Minister – up to 2007, when Ivanov’s influence suddenly stopped to grow. By that time, many saw him as a successor to Putin whose second term was coming to an end. Surprisingly, however, a premium was placed on a formally more pro-Western liberal, Dmitry Medvedev, and there are several reasons for this. On the one hand, despite a very close relation-ship with Putin, Ivanov has repeatedly demonstrated an attitude of authority and dominance, if not that of patronizing superiority towards Putin, who, accord-ing to some reports, even grudged Ivanov his success as secret-service agent. The

Kremlin’s intrigues might be another fac-tor that played against Ivanov’s candidacy; it is known that Sergei Borisovich has very uneasy relationship with another Putin’s fa-vorite, Igor Sechin. In the context of the idea that everything going on in the Kremlin is in control of the largest financial-industrial groups and oligarchs, who determine the future image of the State, the choice in favor of Medvedev could be aimed at changing Russia’s image in the West, which is becom-ing increasingly confrontational and more often characterized in terms of “authoritari-anism” and “dictatorship”. In those years, the ruling elite in Russia was, apparently, not yet ready to deal with the West and the internal opposition in a more determined and defiant manner, but was actually in-clined to “appointing” to presidency yet another security officer who would be even more anti-American than Vladimir Putin is. What might also play against Ivanov was his – very atypical for modern Russia – lack of connections with big business; having his sons employed in senior positions at major banks, Sergei Borisovich looks almost as-cetic against the background of other mem-bers of the Russian elite. This fact, combined with his KGB experience that far exceeds that of Putin, and his known hostility to the West, makes Ivanov a pretty demonic figure.

One way or another, but Dmitry Medve-dev becomes President, while Sergei Ivanov receives a modest position of deputy prime minister in charge of the defense industry, transport and communications. However, while the relationship between Ivanov and Putin saw some periods of cooling in the past, they had become much warmer even before the known events in Ukraine. After his second return to the Kremlin as presi-dent, Putin, frightened and enraged by mas-sive protests on Bolotnaya Square, starts the tightening of the domestic policy stance. A


Soviet Politburo-styled administration was set up to work in parallel to Medvedev’s Cabinet. This small circle of people, while formally holding not very high-level official positions, begin to determine Russia’s poli-cy in a much greater extent than the formal Cabinet ministers and the “puppet” prime minister. Medvedev’s “thaw” ends almost before it began.

With the growth of nationalist and anti-Western sentiments in Russia, the role of security service who found themselves in the shadow for some time has risen sharp-ly, and Ivanov returns to the stage in 2011. Having quickly recovered lost ground, Sergey Borisovich receives the key posi-tion of the head of the Russian Presiden-tial Administration – arguably the second most powerful person in the State hier-archy after the president. Putin launched his anti-corruption campaign, that was masterminded to settle feuds with Medve-dev and the Prime Minister’s associates so to make them rapidly lose their authority and influence, and thus weaken the liberal camp further still. In particular, it was Iva-nov who was mentioned by the Media as the key driving force that led to the firing of De-fense Minister Serdyukov.

By making numerous statements of loyalty to Putin’s policy course and to the president personally, Ivanov clearly implies that he has leadership ambition himself. Assessing the outlook for Ivanov, it should be noted that Sergei Borisovich has ap-proximated an almost caricatured version of Putin. Non-charismatic, but harsh and overbearing, an advocate of international

and domestic policy tightening and, unlike Putin, free from the ambition-restraining oligarchic financial “leash”, Ivanov can make all opponents of the sitting president, both in and outside Russia, remember Putin’s era almost nostalgically. The likelihood of such successor choice is high enough, meaning Putin would be replaced by someone very similar. This would suit the book of both the conservatives and nationalists, but not the Russian Opposition and the West, where there is strong desire to forgive Russia ev-erything in exchange for at least an illusory liberalization of the regime. Proceeding from this premise, it’s all the more likely that there will be another Medvedev-style reshuffle, with the advent of a controllable figure – externally moderately pro-Western and liberalistic – who would occasionally “beat the drum” about democratic values and human rights to the delight of the Op-position and the international community. Unaccustomed to protracted confrontation and geopolitical crises, the West, and most particularly the EU can – and even strives to – get on the same hook again. However, the complexity of forecasting the moves of the very closed Kremlin’s camarilla, which in many respects resembles a medieval re-ligious order, leaves room for every kind of scenarios. So it is quite possible that, in 2018, the world will find itself face-to-face with an aggressive ultraconservative nuclear power – led not by Lieutenant Colonel but Colonel-General of the former Soviet KGB, whose imperial ambitions this time around will not be restricted even by billion worth accounts of the Russian oligarchs.


n recent months, many analysts have noted the rapidly growing influence and the rise of a group of Putin’s “courtiers” broadly

reckoned among the “Hawks.” The rea-sons are obvious; the “party of peace” that used to rely on economic and po-litical ties with the West has been giving ground as those ties are getting loose. As well as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the now weakened “Doves” group is sup-posed to include Naryshkin, Dvorkovich, Nabiullina and Siluanov, i.e. primarily members of the economic block, not the security block of the Russian government. The “Hawks” – who won dominance after the beginning of standoff with the West over Ukraine – are, indeed, almost all the securocrats from Putin’s inner circle, which, in fact, has remained, with only minor reconfigurations, as it was nearly two decades back. The key figures of this circle are the head of Putin’s Administra-tion, Sergei Ivanov, Deputy Prime Min-ister in charge of the defense industry, Dmitry Rogozin, and, of course, Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoygu. The lat-ter deserves a bit of separate attention in relation to reports in some Media sources claiming that Sergei Shoygu has been se-lected to be potential heir to the Russian “throne”.

There are several theories explain-ing the actual structure of the Russian elite and the degree of mutual influence

between Putin and people who surround him. Most analysts and researchers would agree that the Kremlin’s “court-iers” have very limited abilities when it comes to identifying ultimate goals or making key decisions, which are all the sole discretion of the Russian leader, which makes them unpredictable to a substantial degree. However there is a dif-ferent opinion that gives Putin a far more modest role than is generally believed. This theory suggests, first, that Putin is es-sentially nothing more than just a picture, kind of an “avatar” for a population long-ing for a “strong-arm” policy, and, second, that, as a matter of fact, he is totally de-pendent upon and controlled by higher echelons of the Establishment. If rumors about the choice of Shoygu as potential successor are confirmed, there will be a very strong corroboration for the “pseu-do-dictator” theory. Indeed, there is hard-ly another high profiled political figure in Russia who invariably shows himself to be a loyal servant notoriously devoid of per-sonal initiative.

The potential candidate for the role of the head of the Russian State was born in 1955 in Tuva – the territory, which became part of Russia as recently as in 1944. Having worked in the construc-tion industry for some time, where he advanced from low levels to an executive in charge of several construction com-panies in Tuva ASSR, Sergei Shoygu be-gan a successful career, which is hardly

Sergei Shoygu – successor or puppet?

I


surprising given the status of his father, Kuzhuget Shoygu, as chairman of the Tuva Regional Branch of the Commu-nist Party of the USSR. If one knows about the friendship between Shoygu Sr. and Boris Yeltsin, the then chairman of the Sverdlovsk Regional Branch of the CPSU, the further dizzying climb up the career ladder is easily understandable. After the devastating Spitak earthquake, a unified crisis-relief movement began to be built up in the Soviet Union dur-ing years when it was already in decline as world power. In the 1990s, grass-roots rescue teams in Russia were consolidated in what is now a federal ministry, pre-ceded by the RSFSR State Committee for Emergency Situations. Patronized by the rising Yeltsin, Sergei Shoygu, then a stu-dent of Moscow’s Higher Party School, was promoted to the chief of that emerg-ing agency, which was reorganized into a federal ministry in 1994.

From the very beginning, the emer-gent agency in charge of crisis relief had some features characteristic for a “quasi-security” organization. Yeltsin had not yet dealt with the Soviet Union, nor did he have own security forces at the time. So he sought to create kind of personal “Cardi-nal guards” that would have relation nei-ther to the Soviet Ministry of Defense nor the KGB, nor their respective successor organizations. Sergei Shoygu did the job with excellence; he effectively established a parallel military force with own armor and aircraft units, many of which were on a par with those of the airborne and air assault forces. This military force, which was rather unique to Russia, was well equipped, far better than most of MoD’s forces. The Yeltsin’s “Personal Guard” still continues to exist today in somewhat re-duced form, although grounds for presi-

dent’s standoff with security forces and secret services effectively ceased to exist after Putin’s “enthronement”.

Shoygu remained in charge of Rus-sia’s emergencies ministry during 18 years up to 2012. Reserved and tight-lipped, not only has Sergei Shoygu been able to become a political longman among the Russian political elite, but also preserve much of the remarkable popular respect and confidence in him as “chief rescuer”, of which few of Yeltsin’s administration officials can boast. However, Shoygu’s duties as minister for emergency situa-tions were not limited to crisis relief op-erations alone. Faithful “royal servant”, regardless of the identity of “the king,” he was dealing with the Ossetian-Ingush conflict settlement in 1992, was oversee-ing Yeltsin’s election campaign in 1996, and, in 2000, he came to lead the Unity party, which eventually became the Unit-ed Russia party after having absorbed sev-eral other political forces.

In 2012, Shoygu, apparently prepar-ing himself for “honorable exile” in the position of Moscow Oblast Governor, returned again to the “major leagues” of Russian politics after he was replaced by Puchkov as minister for emergencies and appointed to lead the ministry of defense, replacing odious Serdyukov. In his enthu-siasm to crack down on the disgraced ex-minister’s legacy, Sergei Shoygu immedi-ately closed many of Serdyukov’s reform programs and launched an assault both on the structures involved in corruption scandals, such as Oboronservice, for ex-ample, and on those that were transferred from control of the corrupt reformer to that of Dmitry Rogozin (“Rosoboronza-kaz”). Shoygu’s strive to strengthen the defense department manifested itself in MoD’s attempts to absorb the Ministry of


Emergency Situations (Shoygu’s former creation where he has lost none of his in-fluence), which only solidifies the percep-tion of the crisis relief agency as a parallel security organization.

This all speaks of Shoygu’s strive to muster his political weight. However, he remains, as before, to be a faithful execu-tor of the ruler’s will, while not claim-ing discretion in decision-making. The probability of his appointment as Putin’s successor is hard to assess now by virtue of the complexity of structural analysis of the Russian political elite as a whole. However, we can safely predict that, if and when such a decision is taken, we will see a substantial increase in public activ-ity and Media presence of this usually tight-lipped, low-profile politician. Public confidence will need to be converted into approval ratings. The key consequence of the potential ascent of Shoygu to the top of the political Olympus will be a better understanding of how the Russian elite is

structured and how it functions. Indeed, if a faithful watchdog of the current Russian regime such as Sergei Shoygu is elected to the president’s office, this might be identified as yet another proof of what many have long suspected – that Putin’s absolutism is nothing less than just a political simulacrum invented by a certain group of national security and financial-industrial heavyweights who hired Putin to play the role of a puppet “dictator”. On the one hand, this could be considered to be a beacon of hope for Ukraine, because, if this is the case, the actions of the neighboring state are dic-tated by rational calculations of interest groups, rather than by the vapors of a disoriented mind of a certain KGB man. However, this also implies a more sys-tematic, well-thought-out and calculated nature of the Russian aggression, whose roots should be sought in the construc-tion of the Kremlin’s elites and in their collective, group thinking.


n medieval Europe, royal and aristocratic households usually employed licensed fools or jesters who served not only to amuse their mas-

ter or mistress and their guests but to criti-cize them, often by using jests or behaviors that were otherwise regarded inappropri-ate in official communications among the nobility. The fools gradually disappeared from the historical stage during the En-lightenment era, but in countries of the for-mer Soviet Union, many of which retained some features characteristic for feudalism, fools continue to exist, albeit in a somewhat modernized incarnation. Indeed, Putin’s Russia is no exception, where licensed fools are present widely in media coverage. The most known clown of Yeltsin’s era, the flam-boyant Vladimir Zhirinovsky still emerges sometimes in media coverage with his ex-travagant statements, but his finest hour has long passed. He became boring to the public at home and abroad, and his role of the number one court jester smoothly transferred to another person – Deputy Prime Minister and ex-leader of the Rodi-na (Motherland) Party, Dmitry Rogozin.

In the recent past, Rogozin was a fairly serious potential threat to the Russian gov-ernment, being the leader of a highly influ-ential and increasingly popular nationalist opposition party. The history of the trans-formation of Dmitry Olegovich from an ambitious nationalist politician into a radi-cal jester perfectly illustrates the Kremlin’s

strategy of getting rid of dangerous com-petitors by exchanging their political capi-tal for a small “piece of the state’s pie”. As well as jester’s role, Rogozin now performs far more serious functions in Russia’s politi-cal community, which are less known to the general public.

Dmitry Rogozin was born in Moscow on 21 December 1963. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1986 with a degree in journalism. Having graduated with honors from the Economics Branch of the University of Marxism-Leninism at-tached to the Moscow Committee of the CPSU in 1988, Rogozin went to work in the Committee of Youth Organizations of the USSR. After work in several short-lived political and business projects in the early 1990s, Rogozin, in March 1993, joined the emergent people’s patriotic movement “The Congress of Russian Communities” (CRC) party led by General Alexander Lebed. The movement was set up to con-solidate the Russian ethnic communities and socio-political organizations in na-tional autonomies in Russia, countries of the former Soviet Union and some foreign countries. Rogozin run for State Duma as a CRC party-list candidate, but the CRC failed to clear the five percent hurdle re-quired for parties to qualify for State Duma seats. However, two years later, Rogozin was able to make it into the legislature after he garnered 38% of voter support in a single-seat constituency in Voronezh province. His work as State Duma deputy

Dmitry Rogozin – radicalnationalist or court jester?

I


was focused on matters consistent with the nationalistic ideology professed by him. So he became deputy chairman of the Committee on Nationalities’ Affairs. As time went by, the young politician was climbing up the career ladder; Rogozin was awarded a status as special envoy of the Russian president, in which capacity he conducted successful negotiations with the EU and Lithuania addressing the nor-mal functioning of the Kaliningrad region, which become an isolated Russian exclave surrounded by the united Europe as a re-sult of the most recent wave of enlarge-ment of the EU. After a brief work in yet another short-lived political project – the People’s Party - Rogozin is poised to join the United Russia Party, which was about to become finally shaped as the party in power. There were even some media re-ports that Dmitry Rogozin might be ap-pointed as General Council chairman of the United Russia Party.

It seemed that Rogozin was a step away from entering an elite club that was being shaped under the guise of his party for con-solidating the new nobility of Putin’s Rus-sia. But suddenly the prospects of the young zealous politician dramatically darken. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, Rogozin’s political rival, bars his entry into the presi-dential party leadership. Offended, but not broken, Rogozin decides to go the other way round.

In September 2003, Rogozin creates and heads an electoral bloc (which was later transformed into a party) named Rodina (Motherland), and, as soon as in December, he is re-elected as Duma deputy with a re-cord high voter support of 79%. His electoral bloc, with moderately nationalist program, garners 9.1% of votes and gets into parlia-ment. Soon afterwards Dmitry Rogozin be-comes deputy Speaker of the State Duma.

The following year, during a presidential campaign, he makes another effective move to strengthen his position. Having denied support for co-chairman of Rodina, Sergei Glazyev, who fielded himself as the Duma candidate without previous approval of the Rodina faction, Rogozin requests the party to support Putin moderately. This decision proved to be right, and, by the summer of 2004, Rogozin, having beat Glazyev in the intraparty strife, becomes sole leader of Ro-dina.

It seems that the career of the moder-ate “puppet” nationalist opposition member came back to the rising track, but Rogozin once again trips over a political “hurdle” put for him by his longtime foe Luzhkov.

In December 2005, Rogozin’s and his party’s nationalism became particularly evi-dent in a propaganda video released on the eve of elections to the Moscow City Duma. The apparently xenophobic video called “Clear Moscow of Rubbish” was a welcome opportunity for Luzhkov to launch a broad-side against his long-time rival, which he did not miss. Under the weight of criticism and accusations of extremism and xeno-phobia, Rodina is removed from regional legislative elections and comes under hard pressure from the authorities. Rogozin, who himself was starring in the controversial video, faces a choice of either resigning as chairman or having his party disbanded al-together. Having chosen the former option, Dmitry Rogozin abandons Rodina. Since the Kremlin is interested in the existence, if not more or less commensurate strengthen-ing of the controllable systemic opposition, the now disfavored Rodina, after a dramatic transformation, a merger with other po-litical forces and a change of its ideological concept, becomes Fair Russia Party with Sergei Mironov as its leader. The ideological platform, free of nationalism and xenopho-


bia, basically remains the same, implying support for Vladimir Putin’s policy course.

A year later, Dmitry Rogozin, in an at-tempt to return to big politics, sets up a new political party named “Great Russia”. How-ever, the government’s denial of the party’s registration puts an end to his ambitious plans once again as the Kremlin seriously decided to distance itself from the political forces professing radical ideologies. Time for mobilizing the nationalist electorate has not come yet, and Rogozin’s political future hangs in a limbo. However, as soon as in the crisis year 2008, Russia and the world are facing major challenges that will make sup-porters of radical views in demand by Rus-sia’s political elites.

In January 2008, Dmitry Rogozin, to surprise of many, is appointed as Russia’s permanent envoy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels. This ap-pointment is being widely discussed by the Russian political elite, and, given the na-tionalist and anti-Western views pursued by Rogozin, clearly implies an impending geopolitical confrontation. The long ex-pected worsening of relations between the West and Russia takes place in February, after independence of the Serbian Autono-mous Province of Kosovo and Metohija was proclaimed and recognized by the USA and many EU countries. Vladimir Putin, both then and now, made it clear that he consid-ers the event as a precedent that opened the way to the forced redrawing of borders of sovereign states without regard to interna-tional criticism. Speaking at the Moscow CIS summit in February, Putin said: “The Kosovo precedent is a terrible precedent. Essentially it is blowing up the whole system of international relations which has evolved over the past not even decades but centu-ries. Undoubtedly, it might provoke a whole chain of unpredictable consequences”. The

“unpredictable consequences” began to tell as soon as in August, resulting in the fast-moving Russian-Georgian war. In April 2009, Rogozin is awarded the highest dip-lomatic rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary for his competent (as the Russian leader saw them to be) diplo-matic efforts during that conflict. Rogozin’s role remains largely demonstrational thus far; the notorious nationalist and chauvin-ist representing Russia in NATO looks like an apparent diplomatic travesty. However, a few years later, the internal political situa-tion in Russia makes Rogozin even more in demand than ever before.

After the anti-Kremlin Bolotnaya pro-tests, Putin, scared by the emergent explo-sive mixture of the disaffected middle-class, intellectuals and nationalists, understands the need to secure the loyalty of the latter as the only societal group potentially dan-gerous to the regime. The eventual turn to neo-conservatism and “spiritual bonds” is taking place in concert with the rising of the people who could potentially serve as “gap bridgers” between the Kremlin and the chauvinistic citizens. Rogozin becomes one of those gap bridgers. Well aware of the increased significance of the defense industry in the new geopolitical environment, Putin charges Rogozin to oversee the arms industry. Though this ap-pointment looks as more formal than not, the more so as Rogozin’s influence in the defense sector is very limited by the presi-dent of the Rostech Corporation, Sergei Chemezov, and Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, who both are orbiting much closer to the center of Russian power. Still Rogozin enjoys some weight advantage, most nota-bly the ability to lobby for the interests of Viktor Livanov, the CEO of JSC “Ilyushin Aviation Complex”, of whom Rogozin is a relative. After Livanov’s death in Novem-


ber 2014, the JSC received the go-ahead to launch aircraft projects on the IL-112B mili-tary transport and IL-114 passenger carrier.

Rogozin’s limited abilities within the political bureaucracy fit well into the over-all Russian power architecture after the tightening of the regime in 2011, where of-ficial positions, modest as they are, in no way reflect the broader influence of Putin’s inner circle of the so-called “Politburo 2.0”. It is undoubtedly that Rogozin today is not member of the small group of the president’s most influential friends. It is inevitable that his first function (in addi-tion to serving as a political jester) – that of gap bridging between the Kremlin and the nationalists – will help him con-solidate his political influence. Against the backdrop of worsening economic situation and euphoria over the annexa-tion of Crimea, it is inevitable that Putin will have to pay more and more attention to the nationalists as the most passionate societal group ready for radical actions. The loss of loyalty by that societal group would make the probability of a coup at-tempt much more realistic than massive protests by “toothless” liberal opposition parties would do. That said, Rogozin’s role is likely to grow and potentially can be converted into a commensurate growth of his political influence. However, in the current configuration of the Russian power

architecture, the likelihood seems low that Rogozin would be promoted further up to being appointed to the successor’s role. But in case Putin’s approval rating would plummet some day in the future, it is Rogozin who can play an unexpected role. More specifically, Rogozin, not united by ties of long-time friendship with the presi-dent as the people from his inner circle, can bolster his position dramatically by relying on the nationalists for support. For example, he could win back his status as an influential parliamentary actor which he lost in 2005 due to a lack of political experience. This time around, neither the lack of inexperience nor counteraction on the part of the now marginalized Yuri Lu-zhkov will prevent Rogozin’s Rodina Party to regain lost ground – particularly by sur-passing Mironov’s Fair Russia Party whom Rogozin repeatedly accused of raider at-tacks on his own political force. Anyway, Rogozin’s political future is to a consider-able degree contingent on larger prospects of Russia’s health and on how far devastat-ing the effects of the emerging crisis would be for the architecture of the country’s rul-ing elite. As things stand now, the fact that Rogozin has been relatively successful in the politics’ arena while not being in the same camp with marginalized politicians such as Dugin or Prokhanov, still gives hope for his rationality and good sense.


here is a widespread opin-ion among the domestic and foreign expert communities that some of Russia’s interna-tional policy aspects regard-

ing Ukraine are characterized by a certain degree of inconsistency and irrationality. All too often it is tempting to interpret this inconsistency as a sign of a lack of logic, even mental insanity of Russian President, Vladimir Putin.

“Putin has lost touch with reality”, “Pu-tin went crazy” cry headlines of even most respected media outlets, in articles seeking to explain, in simple, clear terms, the ac-tions of the Russian leader. On closer exam-ination, however, this approach comes into conflict with everything we know about Vladimir Putin – a smart and treacherous man who obviously has an excellent com-mand of his emotions, an expert engineer of Machiavellian intrigues rather than an obsessed madman and adventurer.

Still there are contradictions observed in policy. An explanation of these contradic-tions could be helped by understanding the personality of one of Putin’s “courtiers”, who has recently been called for to oversee the Ukrainian vector of Russia’s international policy. Here we are talking about Vladislav Surkov – a man whom many called and con-tinue to call the “Gray Cardinal”, “the chief puppeteer of the political process”, and the supreme ideologue of the Kremlin court.

Very interesting is the fact that the architect of the Kremlin’s modern ide-

ologemes, without whom the concept of the “Russian World” would definitely not exist in its current shape and dimensions, a man who calls himself to be “Russian by political views” is actually not Russian by ethnic ori-gin. Vladislav Surkov was born on 21 Sep-tember 1964 in Duba-yurt, the Chechen-In-gush Autonomous Republic. His birthname was Aslanbek Dudayev. Moreover, even the true birthplace of Surkov is uncertain, given that the Russian presidential website says he was born in Solntsevo village of Lipetsk Oblast. Anyway, Surkov spent the first five years of his life in Chechnya.

After moving to Moscow Surkov was not much successful with getting higher edu-cation for some time. Having studied several years at Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys, he dropped out in favor of Moscow Institute of Culture, where he was accepted for a five-year program in theater direction (the skills he got there were certainly not redundant, given the accomplishments he achieved in his subsequent work in the ideology sector), but spent only three years there.

Surkov served from 1983 to 1985 in a Soviet artillery regiment of the Southern Group of Forces in Hungary, according to his official biography. But, in 2006, then-Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in an interview that Surkov did military service in a SWAT unit at the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff. This fact, which was certainly taken into account by Surkov’s future patrons, assisted in his ascent to the upper echelons of Russian

T

Vladislav Surkov –the Kremlin’s “Gray Cardinal”


power, deeply rooted in the national secu-rity establishment.

Having completed his regular service, Surkov left the public service for a while. In 1987 he went into an emergent business sec-tor, becoming the head of the advertising department at the Center of inter-industrial R&D programs (a firm set up by Mikhail Khodorkovsky within the structure of a Komsomol district committee). In the fol-lowing years, Surkov held various managerial positions in Khodorkovsky’s Menatep Group, up until the middle 1990s, when he termi-nated business with the oligarch to become the head of PR at what is now “First Chan-nel” (preceded by JSC “Russian Public Tele-vision”) in Ostankino. Finally, in the twilight of the Yeltsin era in 1999, Surkov returns to public service as a deputy head of Kremlin administration. Leaving this office in 2011, Surkov told Interfax that he was among those who “helped Boris Yeltsin to secure a peaceful transfer of power” and, in the following years, “among those who helped President Putin stabilize the political system”. At the time when Putin comes to power, Surkov starts his career as the chief ideologue of the Krem-lin court, creating pro-Putin youth projects “Walking Together” (2000), and “Nashi” (2005). In later years, he becomes one of the founding fathers of the United Russia Party and coordinates public relations with Putin’s regime. Surkov had a range of responsibilities that, at different times, included the Media, statistics, work with religious organizations, and a commission on TV broadcasting. In the hierarchy of power, Surkov has a formal status that is invariably far lower than his actual status in Russian politics is. Surkov is shying away from publicity, as befits a true “gray cardinal”.

Surkov is probably best known as the author of the ideology dubbed “sovereign democracy” (or, sometimes, “managed de-

mocracy”) – the key ideologeme that un-derlaid the presidential and parliamentary election campaigns of 2007-2008. “Sover-eign democracy” (which draw mixed opin-ions both within and outside of Russia), as other “democracies” with adjectives such as “people’s”, “managed”, and even “Islamic”, is certainly not a democracy proper. This con-cept effectively envisaged as its end goal the transition from oligarchic feudal fragmenta-tion system of Yeltsin’s era to a neo-conser-vative Putin’s “absolute monarchy” – with a hand-picked legislature, massive chauvin-istic state propaganda, limited freedom of speech and repressions against members of the media and the Opposition. Against this background, noteworthy are statements made by Surkov with regard to the massive anti-Putin protest rallies of 2011, in which he referred to the protesters as “the best part of our society,” whose opinion needs to be reckoned with etc. Such assessments of opponents of the system, of which Surkov was the factual creator, helped him acquire a reputation of being an almost liberal, and thus, once again demonstrate the highest level of political hypocrisy.

However, in Ukraine’s context, what is of a far greater importance was a turn of Russia’s international policy towards the res-toration of an independent “power center” and the transition to an active geopolitical confrontation with the West. Ultimately, the fruits of policy course are now reaped both by Ukraine and Russia itself.

As a matter of fact, Surkov was put in charge of policy for Ukraine in the sum-mer of 2013 at the latest, although he had previous experience dealing with individual projects relating to Ukraine. Particularly in 2004, Surkov, assisted by Dmitry Medvedev, was handling the presidential campaign in Ukraine, and, according to some reports, he was engaged in financing electoral success


of Yanukovych in 2009-10. But it is exactly in the summer of 2013 when Surkov became an unofficial “charge d’affaires for Ukraine”, and he was allegedly the one who made de-cision on transition to a new, tougher policy on Ukraine. This policy manifested in the launch of a hostile campaign that included inter alia trade wars and blockades in order to make Viktor Yanukovych abandon Kuch-ma’s “multi-directional” policy course in fa-vor of a policy of Eurasian integration and to fasten Ukraine tightly on Russia’s geo-political orbit. Surkov was responsible for the formation of a positive image of Russia in the Ukrainian Media, and he personally worked with pro-Russian political figures such as Viktor Medvedchuk, for example.

Surkov repeatedly met with Yanu-kovych in the midst of Euromaidan and, according to some reports, continued with visits to Kiev after the change of govern-ment in Ukraine. The role played by Surkov in the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the incitement of separatist rebellion in the East of Ukraine should never be un-derestimated; despite the obviously authori-tarian nature of Putin’s regime, Surkov was apparently given a considerable degree of discretion in determining the means and methods by which to achieve Putin’s ob-jectives in Ukraine. However, it is after the beginning of active operations and direct Russian aggression against the Ukrainian State when Surkov’s certain personal traits and characteristics manifested themselves, which makes his decisions hard to predict and turns the “Gray Cardinal of the Krem-lin” into a very dangerous opponent.

Back at the time when Surkov was working with Khodorkovsky, many of the former’s colleagues noted some distin-guishable features in the personality of the would-be Putin’s companion-in-arms, among them petrified coldness and even

temperedness; impassive, even tone; the absence of external emotion – i.e. the quali-ties he shares with the Russian president’s character. But, while in the case of the master of the Kremlin, these personal characteristics are real, not pretended, the situation is more complicated with Surkov. Vladislav Yuryev-ich has repeatedly shown himself as an out-standing actor who can easily set himself to the right frame of mind and find a common ground with anyone, be it a “Red Director” of the 1990s or one of Putin’s cohort of national security officers of the 2000s.

Surkov is also renowned for his creative works that range from the lyrics for an al-bum of the [popular Russian gothic rock band] Agatha Christie’s ex-lead singer, Vad-im Samoilov, to several novels published under the pseudonym Nathan Dubovitskij, which all won positive critics reviews and deal with high-level corruption in govern-ment and Media among other things. In a critics review on one of Surkov’s novels, Novaya Gazeta wrote: “It’s foolish not to en-joy the undeniable gift of a man who prob-ably chose the wrong profession.” However, Surkov personally – who for a long time denied his authorship of one of the nov-els and even released a slashing review on it – would probably not agree with such an opinion. After all, he is as much gifted in geopolitics as he is in the creative field.

One can argue the root causes that led to the secession of the two self-styled re-publics from the rest of Ukraine, but their very existence and confrontation with the Ukrainian government were quickly brought under control by Surkov. His the-ater direction skills came into their own, and Surkov aggressively set to work pro-ducing a new drama project named “New Russia”. The first wave of local marginal “functionaries” and odious radicals from Russia such as Strelkov-Girkin (sponsored


financially by the “Orthodox oligarch” Malofeev, according to some sources) was mopped up; some just left the stage of the Surkov’s “theater” (Boroday, Pushilin, Bolo-tov, Girkin) while others have been ousted to the sidelines (Gubarev as well as Khoda-kovsky, who is regarded to be a crony and an “agent of influence” of Rinat Akhmetov). To replace them, new puppets came – those who are devoid of radical idealism (which isn’t applicable in this far-sighted geopo-litical game) or were made responsible for overseeing military and humanitarian aid supplies. Their subsequent moves, actions and statements – inconsistent, as it would immediately seem, to their earlier radical outbursts and slogans, and misinterpreted as being illogical and adventurous – are easily understandable, given the personality of Surkov as a mouthpiece of some kind of a consensus between the primeval, great-power chauvinistic policy adopted by Putin (and, perhaps, sincerely professed by him) and the financial interests of the Russian oligarchy, firmly embedded in the global economy and uninterested in exchanging their wealth for illusionary “greatness” and imperial revanchism.

It is the need for Surkov to balance out between different “Kremlin’s tow-ers” – Putin and the financial elite – which is reflected on the half-hearted support for the DNR and LNR rebels, rejection of more ambitious plans for dismemberment of Ukraine, and the explicit strategy of ar-resting the ongoing conflict by freezing it within the borders of the two Eastern regions. This strategy obviously has found support in Kiev, and this support is due not only to certain economic and political fac-tors, but also to Surkov’s unsurpassed gift to persuade and gain people’s trust. However, we well know whose shadow looms behind Vladislav Yuryevich. While details of the

Russian leader’s intentions are known only to him, then their underlying strategy – that of having Ukraine under full control or de-structed – does not leave room for doubt.

It could well be the case that the events in recent days – “soldier riots”, aggressive protests by right-wing radicals outside the Parliament building etc – are the first har-bingers of this “creative policy” of destabiliz-ing Ukraine further still. Such being the case, one can try and forecast at least the overall vector of Surkov’s future projects. The wave of the Russia-backed idea-driven separatism has rushed back, leaving behind only local success on a small part of the Ukrainian ter-ritory. But winter is looming, and with it a predicted rapid deterioration of the socio-economic situation, especially in industrial regions, and rising anti-government senti-ments. And it’s almost certain that Surkov will not miss such a fertile opportunity for another “spring”. This time around, it will probably be almost devoid of pro-Russian ideological coloring, and will be in the na-ture of a social, anti-oligarchic protest.

Also, one should not rule out the possi-bility that regional separatism may be insti-gated also in the Western regions (the emer-gent Ukrainian Galician Party may be the first germ of potential threats), most particu-larly in areas densely populated by Romanian and Hungarian ethic communities, and that radical anti-government sentiment may grow in the already loosely controlled volunteer forces. After all, the key strategy remains as it was before. For translating this strategy into reality, Vladislav Surkov – with his combined cold-blooded rationality and hypocrisy, ex-perience as a SWAT and GRU officer, a “shark of capitalism” in the tumultuous 1990s, an author and a major political functionary, and his ability to think creatively and innovative-ly – is a perfect weapon, the weapon which Ukraine must be able to effectively counter.


n September 2014, Bloom-berg released a ranking of people who matter most in global finance. There is one Russian citizen – president

of Rosneft, Igor Sechin – on this Most In-fluential 50 list. Incidentally, Sechin is also the only Russian to be on TIME list of the world’s most influential people.

In recent years, influence of the man – with reference to whom the Western me-dia wrote “We say Sechin and mean Pu-tin” – has grown substantially, and Igor Ivanovich himself, who previously shared the “Gray Cardinal of the Kremlin” title with Vladislav Surkov and was reputed to be a “nonpublic” politician, surprisingly have become a public figure. Sechin – one of the most probable candidates to succeed Putin as Russia’s president – is widely believed to be Russia’s second most powerful person af-ter President Putin. In this context, it would be interesting to consider Igor Ivanovich as kind of a sample, a matrix of the qualities deemed indispensable for a successful polit-ical career in Putin’s Russia. In biography of Sechin, there are two components that are common to almost all of Putin’s closest al-lies. One is relationship with the secret ser-vices and the other is earlier experience of market activity and doing business in Soviet international trade organizations.

A fellow townsman of Putin, Igor Sechin was born in Leningrad on Septem-ber 7, 1960, in a family of factory workers. Two years prior to graduation from Lenin-

grad State University in 1984 as a linguist fluent in Portuguese, Sechin was sent to work in the civil war-ridden former Portu-guese colony of Mozambique, whose gov-ernment was supported and assisted by the Soviet Union. At that time, trips of that kind were hardly possible, other than under the KGB’s auspices, although official documents confirming Sechin’s relations to the Levia-than KGB are nowhere to be found.

After returning from Africa two years later, Sechin completed his university pro-gram and graduated with a degree in French and Portuguese Linguistics in 1984. After-wards he was in the army doing his regular service at a desert station in Turkmenistan, which hosted an international air defense training center that provided training to military men from African countries. Sechin was then sent on a mission to An-gola, also torn by internecine war. When in Angola, he was dealing with a wide range of military matters, including in the capacity of an adviser to commander of the Angolan Navy.

Upon returning from Africa, Sechin worked in organizations incorporated with the specialized export/import cor-poration “Technoexport” that served as an intermediary supplier of production equipment and other technologies for in-dustries set up with Soviet assistance. In the following years, he worked in the Lenin-grad State University’s department dealing with professor and student training pro-grams in foreign countries. It is there where

I

Loyal Putin’s man Igor Sechin –oil tycoon and Russian Richelieu


Igor Ivanovich made the life-changing ac-quaintance with Assistant Vice-Rector for International Relations – Vladimir Putin.

For some time, the paths of the two would-be Kremlin Titans diverged when Sechin transferred to work in the munici-pal government of Leningrad, where he was responsible for bolstering fraternal relations between Leningrad and one of its twin cit-ies, Rio de Janeiro. But in 1991, the two men meet again at the office of St. Peters-burg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, where Sechin became a chief of staff of the first deputy mayor, Vladimir Putin. From that time on, careers of Putin and Sechin have been fol-lowing parallel tracks.

Prior to 1996, Sechin held various po-sitions in the Putin-led Committee on In-ternational Trade Relations at St. Peters-burg mayor’s office. After Sobchak suffered a defeat in gubernatorial elections, Sechin followed his friend and patron from St. Pe-tersburg to the metropolitan city. As Putin wrote later in his book “From the First Per-son”, “When I went to work in Moscow, he asked to come along, so I brought him with me.” Uncertain about where Putin’s trip to the upper echelons of the Russian power would end, Sechin followed him without any extra persuasion, revealing a personal quality noted by many of his colleagues way back from the time he served on the Ango-lan mission – loyalty. It is personal loyalty and devotion, so much valued by the fu-ture Russian leader, that determined the future of Sechin – not only as an influen-tial political longman and member of the new informal “politburo”, but also as chief of kind of the Kremlin’s “shadow person-nel department” responsible for hiring and checking the backgrounds of the people demanded by the regime. It is Sechin who was put in charge of performing some sort of sensitive missions involving the conduct-

ing of liaison between Putin and the people with whom the Russian president cannot communicate publicly for some or other reason. The range of competencies assigned to Igor Ivanovich, according to some sourc-es, includes, inter alia, work on people and entities unwanted by the regime, by way of releasing relevant instructions for the Inte-rior Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Of-fice and the Accounting Chamber. In fact, Sechin continues to perform the role of “Vi-zier” under “Sultan” Putin. As befits a “Gray Cardinal”, and like other senior Russian “dignitaries”, Sechin enjoys an enormous amount of power which is incommensu-rate with their modest official positions in Kremlin’s administration. The absence of titles and eye-catching external signs of power is what distinguishes Putin’s clos-est associates, being probably a manifes-tation of professional habits common to “cloak and dagger” agents.

When Putin began his second term in 2004, Sechin retains his post as head of Kremlin’s administration. But this time around, long-term loyalty begins to bring financial rewards; Igor Sechin becomes member of the Board of Directors of state oil company Rosneft and, a month later, presides over it. Being at that time Rus-sia’s sixths biggest oil company in terms of oil production, the Sechin-led Rosneft launches an aggressive merger campaign, rapidly swallowing up the assets of com-petitors, among them the now extinct Yukos of Khodorkovsky (who pointed to Sechin as the man who orchestrated a ha-rassment campaign against him) and its main competitor, TNK-BP, which merged into Rosneft in March 2013. The monopo-lization of the oil market, which made Sechin into an oligarch, is part of Putin’s broader strategy aimed at consolidation of the key sectors of the economy, the de-


facto nationalization of strategic industries and the creation of powerful state corpo-rations within a state-directed capitalism system being currently established in Rus-sia. As a matter of fact, Sechin is much of an architect of the grand redistribution of capital and the replacement of the Yeltsin’s oligarchy with new-type tycoons devoted to Putin personally – a new class of oligarchs referred to as “silogarchs”, who are one foot in the business, and the other in the world of secret services. Loyalty and modesty are paying dividends; according to Forbes, Sechin earned some $50 million in net in-come in 2013 alone. Truly, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Not too long ago, the media in Rus-sia and abroad were discussing the pros-pects for a confrontation between the two main contenders to succeed Putin as Rus-sia’s president – Igor Sechin and Dmitry Medvedev – and between their respective clans. The confrontation between the clans led by Sechin and Medvedev, broadly re-ferred to as “conservative-statists” and “systemic liberals” respectively, effectively determined the entire political agenda after Putin’s “second coming” to power. Sechin, after he defected to business in-terests, seemed to have lost some of his administrative power, while his increased publicity seemed to tell of his intention to unburden himself of the image as “Gray

Cardinal”. However, the rapidly changing geopolitical situation in 2014 dealt a dev-astating blow to administrative capacities of Dmitry Medvedev, who, in fact, was left without ‘men of his own’ in the security establishment and regional governments, and lost much of his political weight. As Russia’s confrontation with the West began to grow, Medvedev, being the leader of the pro-Western lobby in the Kremlin, lost his informal influence, thus having eventu-ally degraded to being a purely “technical” prime minister. At the same time, Sechin retains his role as “the Adjutant of his Excellency”, which, combined with per-sonal loyalty to Putin, makes him almost invincible politically. But the probabil-ity of this powerful and mysterious man (whom the Financial Times once called “Russian Richelieu”) becoming the Mas-ter of the Kremlin in low, contradicting the very essence of Sechin’s personality. It is far more likely that Sechin, whose loyalty and devotion to his master are un-questionable, would prefer to remain to be the faithful shadow of a hypothetical new leader of Russia. After all, no matter who will lead the Russian government after Pu-tin, he, too, will not be able to do without an expert in court intrigues, a man capable of dealing with most complex and difficult challenges effectively and efficiently, while remaining in shadow of his patron.


ergei Chemezov has been perhaps the least visible pub-lic personality among his counterparts in Putin’s inner circle. However, as is the case

with other members of the Kremlin “nobil-ity”, publicity in this case is the inverse of factual political weight and influence. The role played by Chemezov in the Russian government has been increasingly impor-tant recently. The president of the Rostech corporation is emerging as one of the most powerful personalities in Putin’s Russia, along with members of the security estab-lishment.

The career of Sergei Chemezov could, to a substantial degree, be called classical for the current Russian elite. But there are some features that distinguish Rostech’ president from other Putin’s allies. This is, most no-tably, his longer and stronger engagement with market and business interests than with security sector organizations and se-cret services, which is not common to other members of Putin’s entourage. Moreover, Chemezov was engaged with these interests long before market economy began to de-velop in the Soviet Union.

An age mate of the current master of the Kremlin, Sergei Chemezov was born in 1952 in the city of Cheremkhovo of Irkutsk province. Upon graduating from Irkutsk Institute of National Economy, he worked for some time as an engineer and research associate at the Scientific and Research Institute of Nonferrous Metals. In 1980,

Chemezov transitioned to work in “Luch” Research-Industrial Association, and three years later he received an appointment as the head of the Luch representative office in Eastern Germany, which turned to be cru-cial for his further career. It is in the GDR where the would-be ‘armaments baron’ was able to meet and, later, develop and share a friendship with one of his future colleagues and associates, Andrei Bely-aninov, an officer at the First Chief Direc-torate of the KGB, as well as with another young KGB officer – Vladimir Putin.

It should be noted here that Chemezov has never had any official relation with secret services. However, reports of his connec-tion with the KGB are repeatedly circulated in the media, and Vladimir Abramov – for-mer CEO of the export/import company “Sovintersport”, of which Chemezov was vice CEO from 1988 to 1996 – in a press in-terview, referred to Sergei Viktorovich as an FSB general. Whatever might be the formal status of Chemezov in the hierarchy of the KGB or its successor agencies, it is worth noting that international trade organization were traditionally used and continue to be used as a front for “official” FSB residencies and other secret service agencies.

Having abandoned Sovintersport in 1996, Chemezov, aided by patronage of Vladimir Putin (then deputy head of the directorate for presidential affairs) tran-sitioned to work in Administration of the President where he received the position of chief of the external economic relations de-

S

Sergei Chemezov. Putin’s armaments baron


partment, and continued in this office until 1999, when Vladimir Putin became Prime Minister. Although the abilities of the fu-ture Russian leader in promoting his cro-nies to top political positions still remained quite modest, Chemezov was among those of Putin’s oldest and closest associates who gained immediate profit from the in-creased influence of their patron. In 1999, Chemezov was promoted to the office of CEO of the State Unitary Enterprise “State Company Promeksport” - one of the three state-owned companies that dealt with the export of defense articles at that time. An-drei Belyaninov, Chemezov’s longtime col-league from the KGB, became a deputy of Chemezov.

Promeksport, which was dealing with the export of replacement parts for ret-rofit of already operating equipment, was ranked lower in the hierarchy of the Rus-sian economy than Rosvooruzhenie (con-trolled by President Yeltsin’s “family” at that time) was. A year later, when Boris Yeltsin resigned from the presidential post, Putin firmly consolidated the country’s scattered defense export capabilities into what is now Rosoboronexport. CEO of Rosvooruzhenie, Alexei Ogarev, a placeman of the still influ-ential “family” of the ex-president, surpris-ingly lost his post as a result of byzantine intrigue. At the same time, Belyaninov be-came CEO of “Rosoboronexport” and Che-mezov became his senior deputy. The two old cronies denied being competitors, hav-ing become a strong, effective tandem team. According to some analysts, Chemezov was even more influential than Belyaninov was at the time, which is indirectly confirmed by several appointments of top managers for the emergent company, who were invited by the senior deputy CEO personally.

Several arms dealers continued to oper-ate on the market independently of Roso-

boronexport, and a few more years passed before the country’s defense export capa-bilities were consolidated under control of Chemezov. In 2004, Belyaninov was pro-moted to the post of director of the Federal Service for the Defense Procurement Order at the Ministry of Defense. So Chemezov became the sole ‘master’ of Rosoboronex-port and Russia’s top official ‘arms dealer’. From that time on, Chemezov’s career has been raising exponentially.

The results of Chemezov’s work in the area of defense export promotion are really impressive. While in 2000 Russia exported USD 3.68B worth of defense products, then the total amount of government procure-ment orders placed with the domestic de-fense industries grew to USD 50B by July 2014. In addition to its traditional markets in India and China, Russia expanded its market reach to include South-East Asia (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia) and Latin America, and became more aggressive on arms markets in the Arab World. The be-coming more powerful Chemezov gradu-ally went beyond the role as an arms dealer assigned to him, expanding his interests into other sectors of the economy to include non-military machine-building (Motovi-likha Factories, AvtoVAZ) and metallurgy (VSMP, the biggest producer of titanium in the world).

Chemezov behaves towards the indus-tries entrusted to his care in a manner that is common to an average state property manager in Putin’s Russia, but where his other interests lie he performs like a typi-cal oligarch seeking to extend his influence over more markets and more market share. This combination of an enterprising busi-nessman and a government official, rolled into one, is much typical to the modern Russian elite, and, as a whole, is common to a symbiotic system of feudal oligarchic


capitalism and militarized autocracy that Putin has established. The impressive suc-cesses achieved by Chemezov, in addition to friendship with the Russian “tsar”, could be attributed to his great experience among other things; prior to his presidency of Ros-tech, Chemezov was engaged with interna-tional trade and transactions back in years when the future Russian oligarchs did not even think of any free-market operations.

However, a significant factor in the case of Chemezov was a dramatic aggrava-tion of the geopolitical situation. Back in the middle of the last decade, the politi-cal significance of the arms export sector became particularly apparent as Russia and the USA were entering a new spiral of global confrontation. However, after the annexation of the Crimea and the start of the ongoing war in Ukraine, one more factor added to others. Western sanctions, combined with plummeting oil prices, for

the first time shook the position of the fuel and energy sector as a major source of out-side revenue for Russia. This has made the Russian government refocus its attention to other export-driven sectors, which are not so numerous in a backward economy like petrostate Russia. In this respect, the export of armaments appears to hold most promise as a source of outside revenue. The recently announced ambitious pro-gram on the modernization of the Izhevsk Mechanical Plant, which includes the dis-bursement of over RUR 4B worth of in-vestment for the Rostech-run Kalashnikov corporation, is one of the first signs of the continuing militarization of the economy and reliance on the arms export sector as a sustainable source of revenue for gov-ernment. As the Russia vs West confron-tation is dragging on, the influence of the Chemezov-led group will keep steadily growing.


espite a notable tendency to tightening of Putin’s regime following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there have been faint signs of a pickup in the

ranks of the Russian anti-Kremlin opposition. As the seemingly long discarded key figures of the Yeltsin regime such as Boris Nemtsov are returning to the foreground of the Russian political landscape, there is some sort of un-rest emerging among the ranks of the ruling elite, caused by the first ever serious drying-up of financial flows since Putin’s coming to power, which may potentially be conducive to the emergence of a latent internal opposition to Putin’s regime. In view of this, it would be helpful to review briefly the key actors across the spectrum of the current Russian opposi-tion and to identify the immediate key threats to Putin’s absolute power.

Mikhail KhodorkovskyIt’s not a stretch to call Khodorkovsky

the patriarch of the modern Russian op-position. It was long before his release from prison that Mikhail Khodorkovsky became kind of an icon for many Russians who are antagonistic to the current regime. The most renowned “prisoner of conscience”, Khodor-kovsky was even sometimes referred to as “another Solzhenitsyn”. Unlike most of his counterparts in the opposition movement, Khodorkovsky could rightfully claim to be not just a prominent political man but sort of a messiah, a moral authority, an idealist thinker and a “conscience of the nation” of

some kind. However, one should not perceive this pragmatist and practical politician to be an ivory-tower dreamer, nor expect any dra-matic changes in the Russian political climate in the hypothetical case of Khodorkovsky coming to power. After all, Khodorkovsky still remains to be a part of the Russian po-litical and economic culture of the 1990s from which he came out.

Born in 1963 in Moscow, Khodorkovsky almost immediately after graduating from Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology started several businesses dur-ing the period of perestroika in the late 1980s. In 1987, after the CPSU decision on the es-tablishment of R&D centers for the creative youth, Khodorkovsky, assisted by his fellow Komsomol functionaries, created Center for Scientific and Technical Creativity of the Youth (NTTM) under the auspices of Frunze district committee of Komsomol. In addition to importing and reselling computers, the ‘scientific’ center was involved in trading a wide range of other products, including fake alcohol – a very lucrative business by Soviet standards. Khodorkovsky also benefited from a loophole granted to Komsomol organiza-tions that enabled them to convert purely administrative currency units into cash. The cash reserves he accumulated through this practice enabled him to take advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Simultane-ously with this he received his second degree in finances from Moscow Institute of National Economy in 1988. This is where he developed friendship with another Komsomol leader,

D

Anti-Kremlin Opposition:Between Triumph and Decline


Alexey Golubovich who helped him greatly in his further success, since Golubovish’s par-ents hold top positions in Gosbank, the State Bank of the USSR, which eventually allowed Khodorkovsky to found the Bank Menatep.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Khodorkovsky and his partners established connections in the new government that en-abled them to enrich themselves on rigged investments tenders and large-scale privati-zation of Russian state-owned assets. By the mid-1990s, Khodorkovsky became owner of a number of businesses operating in the prima-ry and secondary sectors. But Menatep was still searching for ‘gold mine’. The collapse of the economy and a lack of budgetary funding for social security programs, coupled with the need to finance the ongoing war in Chechnya forced the Russian government to rely on pri-vate banks for loans. The Russian government adopted a loans-for-share scheme whereby some of the largest state industrial assets were leased (in effect privatized) through auctions for money lent by commercial banks to the government. The auctions were rigged and lacked competition, being largely controlled by favored insiders with political connections, or were used for the benefit of the commer-cial banks themselves. As neither the loans nor the leased enterprises were returned in time, this effectively became a form of sell-ing for a very low price. Through this scheme, Khodorkovsky became owner of Yukos – the second largest Russian oil company in terms of production and the first in terms of proven reserves.

Having lost Bank Menatep as a result of the 1998 financial crisis, and left without the support of Western creditors due to a series of failed operations on equity market, Khodor-kovsky became one of the first among the new Russian business elite to understand the value of international investments for doing busi-ness in a global market environment. Khodor-

kovsky-led Yukos began to gain weight as new vistas were opening before it. But the ruthless roller of Putin’s state capitalism was already looming on the horizon, clearing the market-place of more or less powerful competitors that could stand in the way of Rosneft run by Sechin – one of Putin’s favorites and closest allies.

Arguments of those saying that Khodor-kovsky was sentenced to what he rightfully deserved are on the surface not unfounded. Indeed, Khodorkovsky was involved in a vari-ety of frauds and scams, and he made his for-tune by means that cannot be regarded per-fectly ‘clean’ from the perspective of the letter of the law. If this is the case, however, then it becomes clear upon closer consideration that the whole process of the “wild privatization” of the 1990s should be subjected to a strict audit. This process was conducted to a sub-stantial degree under conditions of collapse and disintegration of the legal environment, its results being regarded as highly controver-sial by the Russian public to date. At the same time, as stated by Putin on several occurrenc-es, the results of privatization are not subject to revision. There is nothing to be surprised: the Russian leader and his entourage them-selves, to a large extent, owe their wealth and influence to primitive capitalism of the Yeltsin era, and so it seems only reasonable that they would prefer that these “dark times” be left in the past.

Therefore, it turns out that Khodorkovsky was just selected to be a ‘scapegoat’. By elimi-nating him from the political and economic agenda Putin killed two birds with one stone – rid himself, and Sechin, of a potentially dangerous rival, and ‘tossed a bone’ to the oli-garch-hostile Russian people. Rumors about an allegedly impending “oligarchic coup” led by Khodorkovsky belong more in the realm of conspiracy than reality. It seemed that a pris-on term for the corrupt tycoon would suit all


interests, and would not cause protests even among the ranks of the opposition who were not yet tired of Putin’s endless rule. However, the further fate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, like the fates of Nelson Mandela, Jawaharlar Ne-hru and many others, revealed a typical error of many autocrats who do not have a sense of proportion when it comes to punishment of the people deemed undesirable by the re-gime – an error which could be an interesting example of kind of a “whitening effect” that a long imprisonment term can have, turning criminals into martyrs and harmless human rights advocates into dangerous dissidents.

Over the years in confinement, Mikhail Khodorkovsky became a guru both for the Russians who are antagonistic to the cur-rent regime and for all who are not indif-ferent to ‘lofty matters’ of human rights, and who resent protests if these are politi-cally motivated. After release from prison and subsequent emigration from Russia, Khodorkovsky resumed political activities by making a series of high-profile state-ments that he would be ready to lead Rus-sia if called upon, in order to “overcome the crisis and to carry out constitutional reform, the essence of which would be to redistribute presidential powers in favor of the judiciary, parliament and civil so-ciety”. To date, as Putin strengthened his grip over the mass media, this, coupled with the overall sentiment of the Russian elector-ate, rule out the possibility that the scope of Khodorkovsky’s popularity might extend into the broader masses of the population. Still changes are possible, indeed, in case there are certain tectonic shifts among the top Russian establishment.

For all his rhetorics about being com-mitted to liberal values, nothing in his life indicates this, rather his life indicates the op-posite – that Khodorkovsky is not too much dissimilar from the current Russian leader in

terms of what the Bolsheviks referred to as “class origin”. Some of his utterances – par-ticularly the ones stating his respect for Putin and ruling out the possibility of sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula being returned to Ukraine some day – indirectly reveal his intention to take over control of the over-centralized Russian government machine, rather than a desire to change the structure of state power in the Russian Federation. It is the Russian government machine that ensures prosperity and security of the people like Khodorkovsky – the first-wave oligarchs who were lucky enough not to fall into disgrace of the Kremlin tsar. “I see Putin as my political opponent, that’s all. We got into a fight and he turned out to be stronger,” Khodorkovsky said in The Sunday Times interview in October 2014. These words describe him better than lengthy tirades – so typical for Russian intel-lectuals – about the fate of Russia or the impe-rial syndrome. Indeed, it may be the case that Khodorkovsky will, sooner or later, find him-self at the top of the Russian political Olym-pus. The most likely scenario for this situation to occur would involve something like an ex-tended variant of the Putin-Medvedev-style reshuffle that would not affect the structural organization of government in modern Rus-sia. It is unlikely that Khodorkovsky would be so bold as to dismantle the oligarchic system of government that proved to be so effective and efficient; it is more likely that he would confine himself to cleaning up the Kremlin from Putin’s allies and replacing them with men of his own.

The possibility of kind of the “Obama effect” – or, in a broader sense, something similar to the Mandela or Gorbachev “effects” – might, to some extent, help to ease the in-ternational tension in the event of Khodor-kovsky coming to power, which would be cer-tainly welcomed with a sigh of relief both in Ukraine and the international arena.


Alexei NavalnyIn his fight for the title of the Russian

opposition leader, Khodorkovsky, surpris-ingly, met competition from young Muscovite Alexei Navalny, who selected corruption to be the central target for criticism of the most vul-nerable element of Putin’s myth about a “great and just state”. Having selected the right target for a powerful information attack, Navalny, by virtue of lacking political experience, then lost his way between the nationalist and liberal platforms, and failed to become a true “popular cult-hero”. He has achieved only limited success with the help of populism and the mass media buzzing. Another factor was a balanced and cautious policy of the rul-ing regime, who did not want the emergence of a “second Khodorkovsky” and thus chose to stop short of convicting Navalny to prison.

Navalny was born in 1976 in Butyn military garrison outside Moscow. Having re-ceived university degrees in law and finance, he was engaged in a series of low-profile busi-ness projects and law practice, and assisted in several counter-corruption initiatives be-fore he gained nation-wide prominence as author of internet mem about “the party of crooks and thieves”. In 2000, Navalny joined the ranks of the “Yabloko” party, and for some time he was on the federal political council of this liberal political force. However, in 2007, he was expelled on charges of being engaged in “nationalistic activities.” He then tried to create a party of national democratic inspira-tion, in an attempt to occupy a niche at the junction of liberalism, conservatism and mar-ginalized nationalism. Nationalism became what Navalny referred to as “key, pivotal idea” underlying programming guidelines of the Narod (or ‘Nation’) movement that he found-ed. Alexey, who was regular participant in ral-lies of the self-styled “Russian March” move-ment, numbered himself among “ordinary Russian nationalists.” Later on he persistently

tried to convey to the public the ideas of mod-erate nationalism, but was not too successful in this endeavor. As a matter of fact, he sought to rely for support on several ideological con-structions that mismatched with each other, but did not succeed in any of the camps, and remained renowned in the public eye primar-ily as an anti-corruption crusader.

In a February 2011 radio interview, Na-valny for the first time described Russia’s rul-ing party, United Russia, as a “party of crooks and thieves.” Soon afterwards, defense lawyer Shota Gorgadze threatened to take him to court for inflicting an insult on individual members of the United Russia party. Navalny responded by conducting an online poll via his blog hosted on the LiveJournal web site. Almost all of the 40,000 visitors to the blog post agreed with this statement. The story continued after a radio debate between Na-valny and United Russia deputy Yevgeny Fy-odorov, where an overwhelming majority of the audience once again sided with Navalny.

As Navalny went on, he was seeking to convert his media prominence into political capital by taking part in “white-ribbon” ral-lies. That was the time when the authorities launched first counter-attacks against Na-valny, conducted in the form of 15-day ar-rest sentences, which attracted huge media speculation both in and outside of Russia. This caused the authorities to act in a more cautious manner, in an attempt to defeat Na-valny with his own weapon. So they brought a storm of lawsuits against Navalny, accusing him of involvement in corrupt activities – ex-actly the same thing of which Navalny used to accuse the authorities. This, coupled with the vagueness of Navalny’s political stance, brought its results: his popularity has never assumed national proportions. Another huge factor in this was the impossibility for Naval-ny to outreach the pro-government electorate who has little access to the Internet and has


been severely influenced by propaganda from television outlets which are almost all con-trolled by members of Putin’s regime. Political persecution did bring a lot of trouble for Na-valny, but, in fact, amounted to no more than “warning shots” on a Jonny-come-lately who crossed the line.

This all makes it impossible for Navalny to ascend to power even in case the opposi-tion forces win a triumph in Russia. However, his attempts to synthesize two rivaling oppo-sition ideilogies – the nationalist and the lib-eral ones – would virtually guarantee him po-litical dividends in case any of them prevails.

Boris NemtsovBoris Nemtsov has increased his media

presence following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when he launched a campaign of se-vere criticism on Putin’s regime, and got some prospect of gaining a fresh lease of political life in Russia. A descendant of pre-Putin elite, Nemtsov now stands on a classic lib-eral platform, albeit in the 1990s he was the first of high-profile politicians in post-Soviet Russia to be accused of being authoritarian.

Born in 1959 in Sochi, Nemtsov graduat-ed from Gorky State University with a degree in Radio Physics, and, until 1990, he worked as research fellow at Gorky Radio-Physics Re-search Institute, dealing with projects in plas-ma physics, acoustics, and hydrodynamics. Academician V. Ginsburg, in 1997, described Nemtsov as “a truly gifted physicist.” Nemtsov wrote several scientific papers and, in 1985, earned a Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics, but eventually decided to go into politics.

In 1990, Nemtsov won a seat in the Su-preme Soviet of the RSFSR representing Gorky. During the Russian presidential cam-paign in 1991, he was empowered by Boris Yeltsin to act as his proxy in Nizhny Novgorod region. Immediately after his election as Pres-ident, Yeltsin appointed Nemtsov as governor

of Nizhny Novgorod, a position in which he continued until 1997.

As for Nemtsov’s performance in the Governor’s Office, assessments are mixed. De-spite a number of apparent successes, which were especially visible against the background of an extremely grave socioeconomic situation in Russia as a whole, Nemtsov was repeatedly accused of being a “regional autocrat” who al-legedly established a liberal-populist dictator-ship in the particular region assigned to his responsibility. He created an alliance of local bureaucrats, members of military and secu-rity establishments and businessmen, which was effectively a caricature replica of the re-gime that was subsequently built in Russia by Vladimir Putin. Despite his effort to make opposition forces cut off from influence on the local government, Nemtsov as governor was frequently criticized for “developing and testing technologies of managed democracy”. At the same time, some observers pointed to the rapid growth of regional mass media in Nizhny Novgorod in the 1990s, and the region itself was described as a “journalistic paradise” by Danila Galperovich of the BBC Russian Service. Nemtsov is also renowned for his successes in implementing free-market reforms which made him popular among the public, even despite a few minor corruption issues.

In 1997, Nemtsov ascended to the fed-eral government level, having been appointed Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the mu-nicipal housing and utilities sector, and poli-cies in construction and monopoly, in addi-tion to several other areas. Opinion polls in those years gave Nemtsov 23% support as a potential presidential candidate. However, he lost influence among the federal govern-ment within just a few years, due to inad-equate staffing decisions for one thing, and, secondly, because the public came to closely associate him with the “team of reformers”


led by another deputy prime minister, Ana-toly Chubais, who gained a notorious reputa-tion among the broad masses of the Russian people as being allegedly responsible for the crash of the energy sector in particular and the economic collapse of the 1990s in general. Another misfortune came upon Nemtsov, in the form of a State Duma resolution describ-ing him as “irresponsible and incompetent” politician and demanding that Yeltson re-move him from his government post. Being appointed to and dismissed from vice-prime ministerial positions several times, Nemtsov gradually lost his electoral potential. After the 1998 Russian stock-market meltdown and ensuing economic crisis, part of the moral responsibility for which Nemtsov had had to share with other politicians of the Yeltsin era, Nemtsov had retreated into the political back-ground, with a popularity rating fluctuating at around one point.

After retiring from government, Nemtsov was an important actor in several political projects, the most durable of which was the Union of Rightist Forces. A supporter of Putin in the early 2000s, Nemtsov eventual-ly has become a vocal critic of Putin’s regime, always engaging in invariably harsh disputes with members of the Putin-backed elite. This, however, has not helped him regain populari-ty, and his several election campaigns for seats in federal and local legislatures were complete failures. As things stand now, Nemtsov re-mains in the political background along with other members of the “old elite”, and therefore does not pose any threat to the current re-gime. The economic turmoil of the 1990s will long remain associated in memory of many Russians with Nemtsov, despite his successful performance as governor. At the same time, an active, uncompromising stance is what may allow Nemtsov to play a more visible role in the event of change of government in Russia.

Alexei KudrinA rare specimen of Russian political

technocrat, Alexei Kudrin is equally respected among the liberal and conservative camps. The name of the man who served as finance minister for long eleven years, whom Putin, on numerous occurrences, called his friend, has been frequently mentioned by leaders of the Russian Opposition as a potential candi-date for Prime Minister’s office in a post-Putin government. Alexei Kudrin owes much of his renown to his successful performance in the area of fiscal management. Had it not been for his grown political ambitions and vehement disagreement with Putin’s policies of increasing defense spending without also reforming the economy, Kudrin would prob-ably have continued in the finance minister’s position to date.

Born in 1960 in Dobele, Latvia, Kudrin graduated from Leningrad State University with a degree in economics. He worked as a research fellow in theoretical economy in different research institutions of the USSR Academy of Sciences until 1990, when he was elected vice chairman of the Committee for Economic Reforms at Leningrad City Coun-cil. Having changed several positions in St. Petersburg City Hall under Anatoly Sobchak as mayor, Kudrin, in 1993, became his deputy. It was in this positions that he came to meet Vladimir Putin.

After Sobchak failed to win St. Petersburg mayoral elections in 1996, Kudrin resigned from office, as did many other members of the Sobchak-led team. In 1999, Kudrin was connected, along with Putin, to a criminal investigation into financial transactions of the company Twentieth Trust. The investigation was terminated after Putin was inaugurated as President of Russia.

Having served for some time in the Ad-ministration of the Russian President, and, later, in other high-profile positions, Kudrin


became minister of finance shortly after Pu-tin’s election as president. Kudrin’s perfor-mance in this position showed that he was the right choice, despite the fact that his ap-pointment was apparently aided by patronage of Putin.

Over the decade of Kudrin’s tenure as fi-nance minister, Russia saw a comprehensive, large-scale fiscal reform, which resulted in a substantial reduction of fiscal pressure on businesses of all scales. Having come to the post at a time when Russia’s external debt ex-ceeded 100% of the GDP, Kudrin left the of-fice with the nation’s external debt decreased to one of the lowest levels in Europe. Another great achievement of Kudrin’s tenure was the creation of the Stabilization Fund of the Russian Federation. This was conceived as a reserve fund where to accumulate surplus in-come from oil exports, and the Stabilization Fund is widely believed to have enabled Rus-sia to come out from the 2008-2009 financial crisis with far lesser losses than expected.

The career of Kudrin, who retained his position in the Medvedev-led Cabinet, be-gan to decline after Putin decided to return to the “throne”. By some accounts, Kudrin claimed the position of prime-minister in a new Cabinet, but this was eventually given to Dmitri Medvedev by Putin. Kudrin refused to work in a future Cabinet led by Medvedev. So Kudrin submitted a resignation, citing his disagreement with the swelling defense bud-get and the dominance of the primary sector of the economy over secondary sectors. This explanation seems doubtful, however, since relevant trends emerged back during Putin’s first term as president.

Having resigned from the Cabinet, Ku-drin founded and became chair of the Com-mittee on Civic Initiatives – an advisory or-ganization uniting experts from different sectors, industries, culture and science, to work on law and policy initiatives for the ben-

efit of national development. Alexei Kudrin spoke out many times in support of slogans put forward by massive anti-Kremlin rallies on Bolotnaya Square, which – coupled with his excellent performance in a federal min-isterial position, and persistent criticism of the Russian government’s economic policy – made him trusted among the non-systemic Russian opposition parties. However, it would be an exaggeration to subsume Kudrin into the non-systemic opposition, since it’s seems very unlikely that he has really lost ties with the master of the Kremlin – his friend and close associate from the very beginning of his career.

It looks more likely that Kudrin has been reserved for the scapegoat role in case economic turmoil will occur. A positive im-age of the government will certainly improve if Medvedev, with his administrative potential being degraded almost to zero, is replaced with Kudrin. In such a scenario, Dmitry Med-vedev will be made responsible for all the failures and problems, and substituted for Ku-drin – an experienced and highly competent financier reputed as being a liberal opposi-tionist. By so doing Putin would solve several problems in one stroke; first, he would make the broad public pleased with the reshuffle by appointing a technocrat respected by all polit-ical forces to an important – at least externally – government position, and, secondly, would satisfy Kudrin’s ambition to become prime minister. Such a solution is also possible in case Putin will pick somebody as he did with Medvedev to make it look like government change. Under certain conditions, there is a possibility that Kudrin would be picked to play a role in the “New President” play, al-beit this scenario looks unlikely because of some specific traits of Kudrin’s personality. Kudrin is miles away from Putin in terms of fondness of populist statements, lengthy, pretentious monologues, and Great Power


rhetoric. Kudrin has repeatedly shown him-self to be an extremely rational policy prac-titioner, a man of calculation, rather than a skilled actor. This means that technical work in government positions is what meets best both his personal ambitions and the purposes being pursued by Putin as the national eco-nomic situation has progressively worsened.

NationalistsA motley group of politicians, ideo-

logues, political leaders and right-wing move-ments has been gradually gaining strength in post-Soviet Russia. Until recently, nationalists were all antagonistic to the government. But, at some point, Putin and his allies apparently realized the potential of the right-wing ideol-ogy as a unifying, mobilizing force, as well as the urgency of eliminating the threat to the regime posed by the most passionate part of the public. These trends have increased dra-matically following the annexation of the Crimea, stirring up a never-seen-before wave of nationalistic hysteria, accompanied by a visible ‘turn to the right’ of Putin’s rhetoric. Odious radicals like Alexander Dugin began to be recruited as consultants and advisers, while revanchist, anti-Western slogans – half-forgotten since Brezhnev’s era and seasoned with horror stories about the intrigues of the ubiquitous “fifth column” – have been pulled out of mothballs by government-controlled mass media. In pursuance of this strategy, the Russian president has publicly declared him-self “the principal Russian nationalist.”

There is no dispute that the Putin-led Russian government, being extremely pru-dent people who are not prone to emotions, are exploiting nationalism for tactical pur-poses in order to eliminate the “threat from the right”, and, simultaneously, to connive at the outbreak of massive nationalist sentiment, locking it up on the Kremlin. This sugges-tion is indirectly confirmed by the Kremlin’s

‘blind eye’ attitude toward rampancy of Islam in Chechnya, where Ramzan Kadyrov, with Moscow’s blessing, is pursuing the same kind of policy in miniature. As a matter of fact, even the aggression against Ukraine fits well into this ideological concept. The root cause of this gradual transformation, and of the abandon-ment of the liberal-democratic foundations of the nation state left behind by the Yeltsin era, is that Putin and the Russian ruling elite are unable to find a way out of the resource-based economy trap. High oil prices forestalled the need for Putin’s regime to address ideology is-sues for many years, as all problems could be solved immediately by money pouring, while the systemic defects of the economy had been ignored or driven home, and the requisite re-forms had been delayed or brushed aside as a threat to the ruling caste.

As a tactical move, an attempt to use na-tionalism as a weapon might extend the life of the current Russian political regime, but for the country as a whole - and perhaps for the whole world – Putin’s flirtation with national-ist forces could come at a cost. As a matter of fact, the growing nationalistic sentiment pro-voked by Putin himself will inevitably make him face a dangerous dilemma – either to be swept away by radicals, and into the ranks of what the regime’s propaganda refers to as “na-tional traitors”, or to continue with tightening of the domestic and foreign policies. Any of these ZugZwang choices could be catastroph-ic, at least for Russia and its neighbors.

Anybody but United RussiaAlexei Navalny’s campaign for people to

“vote for anyone but United Russia” on the eve of the 2011 State Duma elections partly characterizes the Russian opposition as a whole. As well as the so-called non-systemic opposition, i.e. the one that is unwilling to go for a dialogue with the authorities, there are also certain undercurrents in the very struc-


ture of the Russian government. These are the remains of the parliamentarianism in the form of the Russian Communist Party and Fair Russia deputy groups, who sometimes venture a timid criticisms of certain aspects of Putin’s policies, on the one hand, and, on the other, the government’s top economics of-ficials grouped around prime minister Dmi-try Medvedev, who are opposed to Putin’s policy course toward autocracy and isolation. As in many other authoritarian states, this internal “shadow” opposition to the regime poses much more serious threat to the regime than do the ‘toothless’ remnants of the lib-eral-democratic movement. However, being essentially a part of the government, this so-called systemic opposition is unlikely to show nonconformism as long as its financial needs are satisfied by the ruling elite.

The key challenge for the Russian oppo-sition is in its fragmentation and the “cult of the leader.” Liberals, “left wingers” and “right wingers” tried a few consolidation projects, some of which proved effective to a degree, but have never matured to an alliance. The attempted alliances such as the so-called Co-ordinating Opposition Council, created in the wake of the ‘white ribbon’ movement, or the National Assembly have all ended in a failure due to internal divisions. Other bottle-necks include the presence of persons who are closely associated in the public eye with the socioeconomic collapse of the 1990s, and the impossibility to divide individual Russian state interests from the interests of its ruling elite, which only contributes to success of its campaign for conviction of “enemies of the people.”

As a result, the current Russian govern-ment is stronger than ever, as it would imme-diately seem, while and opposition remains defeated, fragmented and demoralized. Pu-tin has been prudent enough to eliminate the potential ‘devil and the deep blue sea’

situation between the liberals and national-ists, effectively having ‘nationalized the na-tionalism’ and, thus, reduced the risk of a right-wing coup, at least for a time. However, the most important factor – the money – is running against Putin. As financial flows are drying out as a result of Western sanctions and falling oil prices, the imminent crisis will reveal serious deficiencies of the machine of government and divisions in the upper echelons of government, and there will be no propaganda capable of preventing an im-pending government crisis to occur. Income squeeze has the potential to cause powerful destructive processes both at the periphery of government quarter and within the “Po-litburo 2.0”.

One way or another, Putin and his al-lies are now standing at a crossroads of three roads, one towards “moving further to the right” and to a full-fledged nationalist dictatorship, second is towards the regime’s ousting from power as a result of an internal coup, and third towards a gradual evolution of the internal regime. The former two roads can potentially lead to catastrophic conse-quences with worldwide implications, while the latter amounts to a seemingly impos-sible scenario. However, history is replete with examples of powerful regimes that have been undermined and rapidly changed from within – often by those who seemed to be credible supporters of the “leader” and his policy course. It is quite possible that the triumph of the Russian opposition – which can occur in one form or another, and with the help of the actors that may not yet be known to the general public – is far closer than it seems today. But it is most probably that this triumph will be won as a result of a ‘clandestine’ operation, and will be more in the nature of a transition from absolut-ism to constitutional monarchy rather than a revolution.

Chapter II

VLADIMIR PUTIN’S PERSONALITY

Valentin Badrak

«Nobody faces the illimitable with impunity»Romain Rolland

ar too much has been writ-ten about Vladimir Putin. His artificially lionized per-sonality has become a gro-tesque covered with a touch

of pompous monumentality. Demonized by the Kremlin Court’s camarilla, ornamented carefully in the news space by the media servants, decorated in numerous books by household jinglers, Putin’s image has long moved into the virtual space. For the un-initiated world, he is a treacherous shaman, the one who is shaking the foundations; for thoughtful people he is a vaudeville actor pretending to be a ‘hard-boiled’ statesman. The gap between the reality and the illusory image demonstrated to the public is stun-ning, and the degree of personality split is unprecedented. The potential effect of his destructive behavior will be of enormous proportions.

A modern hero of information tech-nology, he has become a big thorn for the whole civilized world.

Awakening of demonsBiographers who, with a magnifying

glass, explored the dark corners of the Pu-tin’s past, say he has had many thrills in his life, so a thirst for revenge has harbored

in his heart from childhood up. Bright, self-fulfilled personalities make him sick, sometimes even causing fits of anger which he carefully keeps under control. That’s where the root cause of harassment of the truly talented Andrei Makarevich lies. The same is also true for Mikhail Khodorkovsky – an outstanding personal-ity that distinguishes favorably from that of Putin – an uncharismatic, unemotional and always posing leader. The surviving fragments of the Soviet calendar testify that Putin had never been a leader among his fellow teens, and the favor of beautiful ladies was unknown to him. One can find pictures where Putin, then an awkward, angular youth, is invariably a little bit away from the focus – a hidden introvert who early became accustomed to dwelling on the sidelines. This certainly tormented him, making him rush for comfort in the world of judo, and, later – in the work of a secret KGB missionary. When interviewed in 2000, former Aeroflot hostess Lyudmila Putin said that, when she first met Vladi-mir, he was very modestly, even poorly dressed, and looked very unprepossess-ing: “I wouldn’t have paid any attention to him on the street”. These words of his ex-wife are essentially a sentence from all

F

The Player with Marked Cards


the women. According to Irene Pietsch, a German friend of Madame Putin, who has written an account of their conversations, Lyudmila described him as a “vampire who sucked the juices out of me”. This in-formation, even if it’s a little bit distorted, well reflects the behavioral responses of Putin now as head of state.

A perverted, destructive perception of the world began to develop with Putin in his childhood and young adult years, when he experienced serious problems socializ-ing with peers, and this vision became so-lidified after he graduated from the KGB Andropov Institute (a Soviet institute for training recruits to espionage). Those who are well aware of the career of the leader of the new, aggressive Russia, point to a pretty interesting fact: Putin was denied job at the powerful First Chief Directorate of the KGB, and, instead, given a transfer to a lower-ranked position at Leningrad KGB office. Anyway, social awkwardness overshadowed the career of the now presi-dent. The inferiority complex haunted him everywhere he went. Putin’s counterpart Barack Obama involuntarily noticed some echoes of that form of communication with the world, when he, surprisingly, said of the Russian leader: “He’s got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom”. One can imagine what storm of anger and hatred this joke caused with the former secret agent who sees himself secretary general of the re-stored empire.

Social awkwardness and social exclu-sion were common to many destructive dictators, including Hitler and Stalin. Ac-cording to Joachim Fest, social contempt was for Hitler far more painful than social poverty, and when he fell into despair, he suffered not as much from a lack of order in this world, but more from the insufficient

role that destiny assigned to him. In other words, for personalities of this kind, unful-filled ambitions are always an irresistible stimulus.

Interestingly, it is also suggested by many doctors that Putin’s destructiveness has root in his difficult childhood. For ex-ample, a therapist at the Swiss Federation of Psychologists (FSP), an expert in foren-sic psychology, Doctor of Psychology Phil-ip Jaffé made it clear in September 2014 that “Putin experienced a serious trauma as a child, and some resulting emotions can now suddenly appear”. For example, according to the expert, “Putin symbolizes (almost to the point of a caricature) an al-pha male”. In this case, Jaffé, assuming that Putin struggles with feelings of inferiority, added to his analysis that “he is a socially unadapted (awkward) personality; he has problems developing relationships, search-ing for friends etc”.

In respect of the shaping of Putin’s view of the world, it is impossible to miss a very significant fact. Specifically, Vladimir was the third son in the family; his two elder brothers died before he was born. Here, again, analogies suggest themselves. Adolf Hitler was the fourth child in the family; the first three children died be-fore any of them had reached the age of three; of the two more children born af-ter Adolf ’s birth, only one sister lived into old age. Joseph Dzhugashvili also was the fourth child; none of the three children born before him survived. This nuance of the birth usually evokes an idea of “God’s chosen people”.

But in the end, it’s not due to being a creative personality that Putin earned his success, but because he just happened to be at hand – an eager beaver, conve-nient and predictable, a militarily disci-plined ‘cog in the machine’. Nobody knew


of him before his 40s. Moreover, facts of his biography indirectly suggest that, by that age, he began to be disappointed with his career; firstly, he refused to go to work to the central office of the Foreign Intelligence Service, then transitioned to work at St. Petersburg city hall, and even-tually submitted a letter of resignation. And it was only with personal patronage of Mayor Sobchak that Putin’s ascend up the carrier ladder began to gain momen-tum (albeit not without scandals). After Sobchak failed to win mayoral elections, Putin’s future, again, became uncertain for some time when he was 44. It is only a chain of coincidences that brought the hero of this story into relatively low-pro-file position of a deputy chief of direc-torate for presidential affairs. Just three years passed and he became the successor of the head of state. Here, again, analo-gies can be found. Erich Fromm wrote about Hitler that he was kind of climbing up the ladder of failures; a careless stu-dent who was expelled from high school, a failed entrant, an outcast excommuni-cated as member of his form, a failed art-ist – each failure wounded his narcissism deeper and deeper, humiliated him, and each failure made him immerse deeper into his world of fantasy. Much as Hitler spent years wandering Vienna in search of life’s goal, Putin carried cases of his boss Sobchak, angered at life and nurtur-ing plans of rising to power.

Inability to empathize with others and total emotional coldness have pre-determined Putin’s estrangement and his lack of attachment to anybody – an ex-planation of why he easily sends masses of people to war, manipulates the fates of thousands of people without giving much thought to life and death. During a visit to a middle school in Kurgan region on

1 September 2013, Putin left both the students and lecturers astonished when he drew the backside of a cat on a white digital board, telling students that it was something to remember his visit. The un-usual angle of the cat drawn by Putin was immediately interpreted by psychologists as revealing his misanthropy and detach-ment from someone else’s problems. His-tory knows many dictators who did not hesitate to drown whole peoples in blood just for the sake of their own megaproj-ects. Detachment from human problems was most apparent with dictators such as Napoleon, Stalin and Hitler. Profes-sor A.G. Gofman, a researcher of Stalin’s personality, was shocked at finding how cool the tyrant was to his own children and grandchildren. Hitler’s introversion was legendary. Mistreated as child by his stepfather, Saddam Hussein developed an anger that, in adulthood, eventually grew into uncompromising hostility to all others and an irresistible thirst for re-venge. Escape from reality into a world of fantasy and stereotypes is what makes the above mentioned men, including the sitting master of the Kremlin, alike. By 2015 Putin, imprisoned in his individual microcosm, had become very much like the Roman princeps Tiberius at the time when he escaped to the island of Capri. What makes them in common are suspi-cion toward the surrounding world, exac-erbation and unpredictability.

Dictators tend to have a relatively low level of general culture. As a mat-ter of fact, Putin is sorely lacking in the depth of knowledge. Particularly he is clearly not able to embrace and under-stand the ideologies of true heroes of the twentieth century and those of the cur-rent time, too. Albert Schweitzer, Erich Fromm, Viktor Frankl, Rollo May – his-


torical figures of this kind are infinitely far away from him, and spiritual leaders are incomprehensible. His compatriots such as Andrei Sakharov or Joseph Brodsky are terra incognita for him. His country-man and a Soviet outcast, Sakharov hated and condemned “substantiated denun-ciations”, while for the former Leningrad KGB officer, denunciations amounted to the sense and richness of life. Ivan the Terrible and Josef Stalin are much closer to him. The former boiled people alive in iron pots, while the latter killed millions in an innovative network of extermina-tion camps. What made Vladimir Putin choose those misanthropes to be his he-roes and new idols for the Russian audi-ence? (Here it is pertinent to recall that the Russians, in a recent nationwide poll, put Stalin at the top of the list of the great-est Russians ever). For one thing, they were uncharismatic personalities, just like Putin is. Those men are for Putin kind of proof that the greatest people are not necessarily the ones that are the greatest personalities. Secondly, they are all forg-ers who intimidated the people who sur-rounded them, and exported their fear further to the rest of the world. Like Pu-tin, those men were not warriors or strat-egists; Ivan the Terrible won not a single battle, while Stalin was so broken down after the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 that he did not regain his composure and make his first radio broadcast to a stunned na-tion until 3 July. It’s no coincidence that one of the most expert biographers of Stalin, Robert Tucker regarded him as a wrecker and saboteur, a true enemy of the people. Meanwhile, Putin perceives the role of the tyrant in a somewhat differ-ent light. Experts at the Carnegie Endow-ment, in a 2013 research, found out that

“Putin’s Kremlin has found the image of Stalin useful in his effort to solidify his au-thority”. In this context, Putin’s statement that the “collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century” seems pretty sensible. However, for an experienced KGB man like Putin, this idea is just a platform for a plan of personal fulfillment – a plan that legitimizes destruction and extermination of people, a plan that is being implement-ed in stages, each growing in the scope as the world lumps one bloody tragedy after another: Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea and now Donbass .... This list will certainly go on. To understand why one should make an insight into how this deformed person-ality was being shaped.

Putin has had persistent thirst for recognition since his childhood. This idea became the dominant factor in his life-organization where the focus of attention is invariably concentrated on his own self. For the sake of recognition, people of this kind are ready for anything ranging from minor fraud to enormous destruction. Putin is said to have plagiarized 16 pages of his PhD dissertation. However, this was the least serious of his misdemeanors. Hitler, for instance, wore an Iron Cross first class on his breast, which, as an in-vestigation revealed, he was never award-ed. The founder of the Third Reich was coaching himself using a method referred to by researchers as “education by quotes”; by the same token, Putin is lapping up se-lected dubious historical treatises. Stalin did not serve a day in the military be-cause of a messed up hand, but had no scruple to make himself a generalissimo. Furthermore, Stalin plagiarized almost the full text of his brochure “Foundations of Leninism” (where he for the first time presented himself as the first successor


of Lenin) from a work by F. Ksenofon-tov, whom he eventually eliminated. All the dictators seek to be perceived as great reformers and great thinkers. Saddam Hussein, for instance, had his genealogy fabricated to claim direct descent from Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, and he also did his own interpretation of the Koran. In the same vein, the hero of our story – “a man with a troubled past,” a Kremlin’s agent – sur-rounded himself with perfectly elaborated legends. But these were all just minor de-tails that eventually grew into great issues.

Thirst for recognition can become a potentially dangerous stimulus. For ex-ample, Saddam Hussein, for the sake of satisfying his desire of greatness, annexed

Kuwait and unleashed an eight-year war with Iran, plunging the country into ruin and starvation. Exactly the same motiva-tion underlies Putin’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, more specifically, the desire to demonstrate his power for the whole world to see, the power which, in fact, is non-existent. There is no doubt he would certainly have unleashed a linear fratricidal war, but did not do so out of fear that the rest of the world would unite to sweep his regime aside. Those men, who moved through life effectively with-out being constrained by anything at all, have eliminated millions. Stalin and Hit-ler are certainly at the top of this list. But what guarantee exists that this list will not be updated by Putin?


utin probably feels him-self a Titan when he pass-es through the helpfully opened huge, massive door to his presidential office.

It is noteworthy that the Russian president has been repeatedly accused of being acquisitive. He is particularly famous for his fondness of luxury Swiss watches (according to an investigation conducted by Russian anti-Kremlin par-ties in 2012, the President Putin’s ultra-expensive wristwatch collection is worth EUR 550,000). Moreover, malicious gos-sip has it that he owns 23 palaces and USD 40B worth of personal wealth. It is worth noting that Putin is said to be concerned most about attaining tangible symbols of power or their equivalents. When he, for the sake of popularity, makes flirta-tion with the Church, annexes Crimea or ‘flies with cranes’, his motivation emerg-es even more clearly than in his proud demonstration of chronometers, reveal-ing not so much his desire to stake out a place in history, but to make believe that he is approximating the divine and mystical, something incomprehensible for ‘ordinary people’. Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi – pronounced Putin (al-beit in his Russian mother tongue) with a touch of sacracy at the 2014 meeting of the Valdai Club. In a carefully word-ed manner, and ‘jumping over’ his own doubts, he is convincing his audience that he is the Number One, while well

knowing in his heart that he is only the Number Two. So he, on second thoughts, begins telling stories about the bear and the ‘master of the taiga’. In a language of self-perception, a wristwatch epitomizes time control and a graceful fixation of a touch to the eternal, just like numerous palaces epitomize space control. That is why Putin feels almost physical pain whenever he watches Lenin’s monuments falling down, and he will let the “stuffed corpse” remain in its mausoleum indefi-nitely. In Putin’s faith in artifacts, there is as much of incurable puerilism as there is in caligulas’ or neros’ who left behind countless adulterations of marble. His perception of reality is somewhere on the level in between petty-bourgeois narrow-minded worldview of Khrushchev and a bulldog’s mentality of Andropov. In this regard, Putin is not too much dissimilar in terms of being outdated, intellectually lightweight, conservative and hostile to the whole surrounding world. He seeks to be perceived as a threat (even to the whole world), because he sees this as a manifestation of the importance of his own self. Why? It’s simple – he knows no other expression of personality implant-ed into mass consciousness. French au-thor and journalist Bernard-Henri Levy aptly referred to Putin as “naked king”. In fact, King Putin has naked spiritually, that’s why his decisions are all shaped by a symbiosis of clever intrigue and pov-erty of intellect.

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Conscience split and resulting dominance of illusion over reality


Vindictive, lonely and senescent” are the most frequently used epithets referred to Putin’s person-ality. “A man with a nar-

row mindset typical for a secret service agent”, “a resentful man in an armored case” are the descriptions that are typi-cally met in this case. It is argued that, an outsider since childhood, he has all the way been racing for his chance.

Putin gets into a fighter jet because he cannot take a decision on the rescue of the “Kursk” submarine sailors. In the same token, he, many years later, goes to the Russian-occupied Crimea, ostensibly to demonstrate his triumph, but, in fact, to conceal discontent with isolation and inability to go in for an invasion of the exhausted Ukraine that was left almost bloodless by internal turmoil. Putin is not going to be too soft on the weaker ones, which incidentally is the key fea-ture of the operation on the annexation of Crimea.

It is true that the men of fixed ideas tend not to stop short of anything. Nero rejoiced at watching the burning Rome, happy at the thought that his name would be associated with the ashes of what used to be the Eternal City. Sad-dam’s invasion of Kuwait and destructive attacks on Kurds and Shiites left almost a hundred thousand dead. Putin, say the people who support him, has not ap-proached this line thus far. This might be

so, indeed. But Russia is not like Iraq or Serbia – Putin holds the ‘nuclear button’ in his hands. Some of those who inves-tigated a series of apartment bombings in Russian cities that killed dozens in 1999 discovered numerous inconsisten-cies in high-ranking official reports on a frustrated similar attack in the city of Ryazan. There are some clues indicat-ing that the FSB was directly engaged in preparations for the bombing attack. If this is so, then neither [then-FSB chief] Patrushev nor whoever else could carry out such a murderous plan without the knowledge of the master of the Kremlin.

Why Ryazan? According to Alex-ander Litvinenko, the author of a lot of incriminating materials against Putin, an apartment building in Ryazan was se-lected as target by the FSB because ele-ments of the Ryazan Airborne Division were being prepared to launch an offen-sive operation in Chechnya. “On the one hand, the attack was to become proof that there is terrorist threat coming out of Chechnya, and, on the other hand, to make soldiers of the Ryazan Division hate the Chechens on the eve of the operation, kindling in them a sense of revenge.” If this is true, then the selected method is fully in the nature of ‘cloak and dagger’ men”. By the way, the widow of Alexan-der Litvinenko, Marina, claims that the Russian FSB security service was behind the radioactive polonium-210 poisoning of her ex-husband in November 2006.

“

Bearings of the lonely KGB veteran


There is no mystery in the fact that the creation of an enemy is just a technol-ogy project, but the styles Putin uses for countering his enemies could shed light on many things. Putin is fighting with his foes using the methods that have long been proven by the KGB school, which are clandestine, stealthy, silent, hard-line and merciless. The Russian Ruler is constantly generating external enemies for the country. Reasons for this have long been found out and described – en-emies are concocted as a means to de-flect attention away from the domestic agenda and from the concerns of most of the Russians who are far from being wealthy, to put it mildly. The fight with enemies is also needful as a tool of own rising and assertion. Having strewn the road to Chechnya with corpses of Rus-sian soldiers and officers, the native of Leningrad is now trying to draw up the blueprints for new Crusade campaigns.

It would be really too naïve to be-lieve that Putin has scare of international isolation or severe economic sanctions. He personally is insensitive to pain. He cares less of people; people are his least concern when it comes to construction of the monument of his own self-pride. The Master of the Kremlin has chosen to rely for support on uniformed men, those who develop and produce murder weapons – those whom he believes to be best fit for his purposes. With a per-sonnel strength in excess of 200,000, the Russian FSB security service alone is big-ger than the whole military of Ukraine. There is even the term ‘Putinism’ go-ing around now to characterize a state where secret services have their tentacles deep in all branches of the government. A KGB veteran on the Russian throne, Putin has surrounded himself with KGB

generals – disciplined and loyal servants. Academics, the mass media, a horde of chroniclers, polling agencies, prostitute directors and TV series stars are all his servants. However, even these people feel uncomfortable where this strange small man tries to ‘overcome gravity’. Well, Hitler also called himself “artist”, “archi-tect”, “author” etc ...

Every time Putin communicates with his ‘servant messengers’ (to call them journalists would be deceptive) it often looks like he is communicating with his own self. Meetings [with the press] are usually held at the times when Putin is uncertain or apprehensive, as was the case on 4 March 2014 (after the annexa-tion of Crimea) and on April 17 (after the start of Russian undeclared invasion of mainland Ukraine). During his carefully dosed-out public appearances, Putin is clearly and visibly nervous, as could be seen from his body language uncharac-teristic for an experienced KGB agent, such as generous hand gestures, mouth covering with hand and intense facial expressions. The linguistics that he uses is equally noteworthy; Putin is speak-ing in terms of the revitalization of the empire and the impotence of the West to stop this historical process. It looks as if behind the scenes he imagines himself to be a ‘neo-tsar’ or a conqueror.

Just like Hitler and Stalin, Putin is simply not able to withstand the pres-sure of critical public opinion. Observers claim that the Russian leader got white angry when he saw white ribbons fas-tened to clothes of anti-Kremlin protest-ers, and left the scene immediately. Hit-ler, even while remaining all-powerful, was hiding – literally – in his “Eagle’s Nest” in Berhtehgadene. Stalin got chalk pale and beat a hasty retreat after being


subjected to a burst of harsh criticism from Trotsky.

It is well known that where there is an Ivan the Terrible there will, sooner or later, be a Malyuta Skuratov; each Joseph Stalin will easily find his own Lavrentiy Beria; Tigellins are always there where there are Neros; and Putin will rely for support on saboteurs like Girkin and a horde of Ramzan Kadyrov’s mercenar-ies. All is explained quite simply – people who have no chance for personal fulfill-ment under normal conditions of life would seek for a compensation while in ‘special’ conditions. Those ‘special’ con-ditions could be referred to as “the open-ing gateway” for lowly desires – self-assertion through abuses and killings or gaining unlimited power over others, with the right of impunity to any atroci-ties, granted to them by their leader.

At the beginning of his formation as a party leader, Hitler cleverly took ad-vantage of the fact that the political over-throw of Germany after the end of WW I was a severe humiliation for national dignity. He raised up the spirit of strug-gle, urging the Germans to break the in-

visible cage they were forced into. Hitler was able to grasp the nation’s increased sensitivity to infringements and its will-ingness to revive its power and fight for great Germany.

Putin’s rhetorics is permeated by the idea of the greatness and power of the Russian people, who would rub the po-litical undesirables “out in the outhouse” if this would be contributive to the coun-try’s global status. As keenly noted by Der Spiegel, the adoption of Russian anti-gay legislation is a follow-up to the idea of the superiority of the Russians: “Indeed, in such circumstances, it’s is impossible that this will not have reverberations among the active part of the population with a chauvinistic chip of the greatness of the Russians deeply embedded in their consciousness.” The great-power ambi-tions will be heightened by way of reject-ing or, if necessary, beating up the ren-egades, even if these are entire nations. Many remember a humiliating comment dropped by Putin about pit-workers, la-beling them as being alcoholic and trou-ble makers – a good demonstration of Putin’s overall attitude to human values.


inally and most important-ly – what should Ukraine and Ukrainians expect out of Putin?

Before answering this question, it should be explicitly emphasized that ‘exemption of punishment’ is the key potential issue for Putin. No arguments of logic will matter for a man who believes in his exclusivity just like did Napoleon, who regarded his knees twitching as a Sign from Above. No mechanisms of restraint will work where no constrains have existed for a long time and committed crimes went un-punished.

The world already knows one or two things about Putin, not only from lauda-tory articles by Alexander Rahr of Vladimir Usoltsev, but also from his deeds. The crazy wars in Chechnya and the streets of Grozny flown with blood, the “Nord-Ost” hostage siege, the Beslan school siege, the doomed submarine “Kursk”, the fatality of the war in Georgia and the ever increasing violence of the Russian riot police during the dispersal of peaceful demonstrations are just to name a few. Add to this the annexed Crimea and the bleeding Donbas. Putin’s name has al-ready begun to be identified with great trag-edies and great wars.

Putin pathologically craves the contin-uation of his dangerous game – a universal disguise of weakness. This man will cer-tainly not stop short of committing a crime just for the sake of being known as a high-powered leader, but only if he knows for

sure he would get away with it, as was the case with the wars in Chechnya and Geor-gia. There is some ‘stink’ in how this desire is being fulfilled. More specifically, experts in psychology point out regarding some of the most odious utterances such as “rub out in the outhouse”, “blow snot” or “diarrhea slinging” that Putin has introduced recent-ly, that he has subconscious motivation for humiliating his opponents. His intentions reflect a mixture of several purposes – to disguise his complexes and, at the same time, rejoice at humiliation of opponents. In this regard, Putin resembles Lenin – an-other misanthrope and the patriarch of the Soviet terror, known for his fondness for labeling opponents with epithets humiliat-ing them mercilessly. Basically the motiva-tion is the same – to get rid of fears and to hurt as hard as he can until he sees the pain. In this case, this desire of the current leader is so strong that it sometimes prevails over the need to respect the principles of diplo-macy in interstate communication. Suffice it to recall Putin’s visit to Ukraine as Prime Minister and his sardonic comments relat-ing to presidents Yushchenko and Saakash-vili who were meeting the same day in Kiev. But those are gravely mistaken who con-sider this to simply be an error of Putin. The paraphrased line from Pushkin (“The fight-ers reminisced about past days and the bat-tles they have lost together”, in place of the “battles they have fought together” in the poem by Pushkin), which he pronounced in front of TV cameras, was in effect a well

F

Putin and Ukraine:Will Erostratus be given a chance?


thought-out ‘set piece’ designed to humili-ate weaker opponents when they were down already. In this paraphrase, Putin apparent-ly referred to Yushchenko, who lost the fight for the Euro-Atlantic integration prospect for Ukraine, and Saakashvili who suffered a military setback from Putin’s army. In this context, one should also recall an anecdote where Yulia Tymoshenko, during her prime ministerial meeting with Vladimir Putin, sought to play along with him, poking fun at the then president Viktor Yushchenko. This bizarre antic is a perfect description of Putin – that’s him to a tee.

There is no doubt that Putin has been accustomed to speaking the language of force. Hence the carefully camouflaged in-tention to offer the friendship to Beijing, a friendship where Russia would be a junior, loyal brother. Just like Hitler didn’t give a shit about the League of Nations, Putin did the same in relation to confidence building and collective security in Europe. That’s why the number-one thing Kiev should expect out of Moscow is more ‘punches in the guts’ and ‘blows under the belt’. In the language of war this means asymmetrical warfare, in-cluding attacks on civilians, abuses and tor-tures. Putin’s men need to be knocked out of Ukraine – uncompromisingly, deliberately and continuously. The dialogue can only occur if it is supported by modern weapons and soldiers’ determination to win...

As things stand now, Putin is playing a contemporary Erostratus, “setting fire” to the reality that evolved for decades, without offering anything in return. He apparently understands that the genius’ gown is too big for him, but doesn’t want to come to terms with this reality. He is now one single step away from tremendous crimes of the same proportions as those committed by Stalin or Hitler. The pendulum in his mind has si-lently swung to the extreme.

Interestingly, handwriting experts have identified Putin as suffering from a clear-cut victim syndrome, meaning he has developed “a mentality of resentment” where a person always feels being offended, insulted and discriminated. As befits a de-structive personality, Putin’s authority feeds on the recognition of his greatness. He will tenaciously keep Ukraine in suspense, all, of course, under the guise of promoting the “great power status” for Russia. He has al-ready bared his fangs and hooked his claws, and he will continue to work for destruc-tion.

Moreover, Putin has become accus-tomed to flattery and cynicism. Ramzan Kadyrov, president of the Chechen Repub-lic, is probably the one who has excelled in the cynical ‘deification’ of the Russian presi-dent when, in 2008, he renamed the main street of Grozny – a city that was one time drowned in blood by the heir of the tradi-tions of NKVD – after Putin.

Seeking to improve his popular image, Putin has surrounded himself with legends on having achieved a mystic connection with God (he even wears a cross conse-crated in Jerusalem), and he probably really believes himself to be the God’s chosen one. Well, Ivan the Terrible prayed between kill-ings ... Hitler repeatedly stated that “Divine Providence wished” him to “carry out the German mission.” When Putin keeps si-lent, his yes-men are speaking on his behalf. “There are no longer opponents of Putin’s policy, and if there are, they are mentally ill and should be sent to prophylactic health examination. Putin is everywhere, Putin is everything. Putin is absolute. Putin is irre-placeable.” These words of Alexander Dugin are a reflection of virtual paranoia over Pu-tin – Putinism ...

And one more thing. For many it is inexplicable why masses of the Russian


people have developed an unimaginable level of intolerance and chauvinism that has made them thirst for killings and sa-dism – this being in the twenty-first cen-tury, on the eve of an era of spirituality! However, it’s only at first glance that this monstrous explosion of barbarism is alien to nature or time. It has always been the case throughout the history of civilization: once there is someone who favors sadistic, destructive behaviors, it’s certain he will find supporters from among those people who would never have a chance of looking into the face of success under otherwise circumstances. Suffice it to look at faces of the anti-Ukrainian movement ‘leaders’ in Crimea and the Donbas and you will see that this is exactly the case. Putin simply let go the vices, just like a lot of bloody dictators did before him. This technology was commonly used by members of the NKVD-KGB community, but not only by them. Otto Kiefer, an outstanding Ger-man researcher of ancient Rome, wrote on how the Romans developed the affection for atrocities thus: “men acquire delight in

cruelty, not only through the force of habit, but from the sadistic impulses which sleep more or less soundly in every man’s heart, and which when once aroused always craves for stronger stimulus and stronger satisfaction”. In no way does this make Pu-tin personally less responsible for the mas-sacre in the East of Ukraine in 2014-2015, but quite the reverse: it is evidence of his personal involvement in inciting deadly enmity between kindred peoples.

Putin has long become a national trage-dy of Russia. But the truth is that if he is giv-en a resounding rebuff, he will be forced to retreat, albeit slowly. There is only one thing Putin really fears: to become a pariah to the world, that is, to degrade from a potential hero to a person named ‘Nothing’. Therefore he must be fought with his own weapon, which is information. If every Russian will be knowledgeable about the true intentions of the man with an agenda and experiences of a KGB officer, his illusive expectations of keeping power and consolidating it further will crumble like a house of sand in a rain storm.

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