The Russian president binds those who owe him seats, riches of all kinds, accounts abroad, in exchange for an absolute fidelity that consists in making his thoughts pass for his own. Disagreements or cracks in his belief are not allowed: under penalty of revenge
The political and personal history of
Vladimir Putin full of close circles broken. The only constant that still seems to be intact in recent months is the so-called vertical of power, a definition that ironically belongs to the last sacrificed on the altar of the war in Ukraine, that Vladislav Surkov who was his prince advisor and main inspirer of his political doctrine , now disgraced and as it seems put under arrest.
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The Russian president he still manages to tie those who owe him seats, large earnings, riches of all kinds, real estate, foreign accounts to himself and to his destiny, in exchange for an absolute fidelity that consists in making his thoughts pass for his own. But it was this last unwritten condition that imposed on the Russian leader the first break with the Siloviki, the men of the apparatus who make up his private legion. Perhaps, the one that could have the most important consequences, in the still distant future. The first purged of the so-called special military operation were the heads of the operational intelligence department of the FSB General Sergey Beseda along with his deputy. They were the Russians in Ukraine, the ones who had to prepare a field of roses and flowers for the Red Army tanks. They have failed, and with Putin every failure must have a culprit, even if only guilty of having told him what he wanted to hear. This first group also includes the ex-loyal Surkov, who had distanced himself from Putin in 2020, accused of embezzling money destined for Ukrainian friends.
The others purged
Anatolij Chubais, the man of the great privatizations of the beginning of the century, belonged to Putin’s first magic circle, that of the friends of St. Petersburg with whom he began his rise, the one to which the president has always shown himself most attached. It is no coincidence, perhaps, that the elderly chief of the Russian economy was allowed to flee. At least as a name, he was one of the few who still mattered, even though he had recently become assistant to the president for international relations on sustainable development, an out-of-place and fairly secondary position. The list of silent dissenters can count on prominent figures such as Sergey Lavrov, betrayed by the now unstoppable facial tic when he has to answer uncomfortable questions in public, or Elvira Nabiullina, Central Bank governor often dressed in black and without the usual pins, and almost all the ministers of the economic bloc aware of the difficulties caused by the sanctions. The oligarchs, so much thunder that it did not rain. In the end, only Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska raised their voices shyly, caught between the fire of sanctions and the anger of the Chief. With this sub-group, the accounts will be done in the end, they assure Moscow. Putin has always shown that he has a long memory. Perhaps the most important tear is that which has not yet been told. In his speech on Tuesday from the Vostochny cosmodrome, perhaps the most important since the one he read at dawn on February 24, Putin said in essence that the current negotiations between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations are doomed to failure.
The oligarch
The most attentive observers have not escaped the fact that those words also represent a motion of no confidence addressed to Roman Abramovich, his oligarch, the Ukrainian-born tycoon who has always been loyal to him from 1996 onwards, and who in recent months had tried to move independently, without hiding an implicit aversion to war. The implicit delegitimization of the former Chelsea owner also marks the definitive proof that Putin is experiencing the Ukrainian affair as a point of no return, beyond which there are no longer magical and inviolable circles around him. Later, only later, will it be possible to recompose alliances and affections. Quite often we have called these little personal rebellions cracks. But the truth is that it’s just about stretch marks in a power system that is giving proof of tightness.
Starting with the Duma, whose latest measures, such as the censorship law, were approved with a majority of 411 to zero. The only MP who ventured a statement on the soldiers sent to die was that of Senator Liudmila Narusova, widow of Anatolij Sobchak, the mayor of St. Petersburg who was Putin’s true political patron. With that surname, she is perhaps the only one who can afford to disagree. The other defections concern the intermediate level of power, the so-called second circle, with the self-dismissal of officials of public bodies such as Aeroflot, from which the director and his deputy Andrei Panov left (or were invited to leave). , which once sheltered abroad called on Russian businessmen to sabotage transactions that help the military or propaganda. Sergey Mitrokhin, a lower-level deputy in the Moscow City Council dared to talk about the bombing of Ukrainian cities and civilian casualties, but was immediately denounced by two colleagues from the Communist Party who asked the Prosecutor’s Office to open an investigation on possible discrediting of the armed forces . Putin’s Russia is certainly not the Soviet Union of the Iron Curtain. Not yet, at least. But the practice of denunciations of Stalinist memory, as demonstrated by the pupils of the schools who denounced their teachers against the war, is making a comeback. And this too must be considered a sign of the Kremlin’s strength, certainly not of weakness.
April 13, 2022 (change April 13, 2022 | 19:54)
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