The Russian power players who could take down Putin
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Scroll down to watch our video for a closer look at Putin’s inner circle
Scroll down to watch our video for a closer look at Putin’s inner circle
Such remarks have appalled his natural supporters. Many liberal, anti-Putin Russians have gone into exile rather than support the invasion of Ukraine. But the inescapable truth is that just as Putin’s grip on power rests on men with guns, so do the means of loosening it. So what are the Russian factions best placed to seize power – and can Putin trust them?
The current minister of defence is the obvious winner from Saturday’s botched mutiny.
He controls the army, navy and air force – the most powerful of the “armed corporations” that Alex Gabuev of the Carnegie Eurasia Centre believes will hold the balance of power when Putin dies. He is also a brilliant political operator and survivor who has remained at the top of Russian government since before Putin came to power.
His longevity is partly down to a decision not to contest Putin’s ascent to power in 2000 – something Putin has warmly rewarded.
Yet a string of military disasters since have tarnished his brand. “If it was January of last year and you asked me who could replace Putin, I would have unquestionably said Shoigu,” says Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services. “Now, there is no way he can be king. But a kingmaker – that’s another question.”
That suits Putin, whose model of government requires underlings take the blame for anything that goes wrong.
But Shoigu’s victory in the power struggle with Prigozhin is proof that his political skills remain sharp, and that he retains access to Putin, the real currency of power in contemporary Russia.
One reason may be that tactical blunders on the battlefield may not necessarily be political blunders in the Kremlin. “Having an incompetent minister of defence is a feature, not a bug,” says Gabuev. “It is horrible statesmanship, but it is a reasonable way of securing yourself if you are worried about internal threats.”
If Shoigu is still in post, he will have a seat at the table when the elite try to work out what to do after Putin dies. But his chances of acting independently against the boss today are slim. “The whole clan that backed and surrounded him is gone,” says Nikolai Petrov, a veteran observer of Russian domestic politics currently with SWP, a German foreign policy think tank. “Shoigu is finished.”
Shoigu’s greatest weakness is that he is not a soldier. Even before the Ukraine war exposed his incompetence, few of Russia’s 1.15 million soldiers, sailors and airmen would have been devoted enough to follow him in a bid for power.
Putin typically appoints outsiders to such positions for exactly that reason, says Petrov. But the same is not true of the career officers.
As Sergey Markov, a Russian political analyst close to the Kremlin acknowledged this week, there are a great many Russian soldiers who share Prigozhin’s disgust with the high command.
They did not back the mutiny, and Markov insists the army remains devoted to fighting “neo-Nazis in Ukraine”. But the soldiers also know better than anyone else how disastrous the invasion is, and have just seen how easy it is to run a brigade or two up the M4 highway to Moscow.
If you had to name one officer with the public profile to act, it would be Sergei “Armageddon” Surovikin, the commander of the Aerospace Forces.
A fighting general, popular among the troops and respected as competent – if thoroughly brutal – by enemies and allies alike, Surovikin is probably the only Russian general to emerge from the disaster in Ukraine with any kind of public credibility.
During his last appearance – in a video message appealing to Prigozhin and Wagner to end the mutiny – he was wearing no rank slides or other insignia, and spoke with an unusually ponderous, slow voice that led some to speculate he was drunk or drugged.
The Dossier Centre, an investigative agency funded by Khodorkovsky, claimed to have obtained documents showing Gen Surovikin was a secret “VIP” member of Wagner.
There may be other, as yet unknown, mutineers waiting in the wings. But Russia’s military does not have a happy history of political interventions.
The last time it did was in 1953, when Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the hero of the Second World War, personally arrested Lavrenty Beria, the universally loathed secret police chief poised to succeed Stalin. The KGB and its successors learnt their lesson. Today’s military is thoroughly infiltrated by the 2nd Service Federal Security Service (FSB), which is nominally about military counter intelligence but really devoted to detecting disloyalty.
“Since the arrest of Beria, the idea has been that the army – brothers-in-arms who all know each other and think they are all heroes – is a natural political entity, that it must therefore be dismantled,” says Gabuev.
“That’s why, unlike generals in Western armies or even Asian armies, who need to be at the table to advise leaders on complex policy matters, Russian commanders have a much narrower remit and a much narrower education.
“In Russia military education and the quality of sophistication is very, very different. Again, that is a feature, not a bug. The KGB tried to make sure these people do not have a clue how to run the state, so they do not try. ”
In August 1991, Muscovites woke up to find Swan Lake playing on television and tanks rolling through the streets.
These are the “siloviki” – the shadowy “men of force” rooted in the world of espionage and influence. Putin trusts them. He is one, after all, and they are among the main beneficiaries of his 23 years in power.
Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB, wields more direct hard power as the controller of the “armed corporation”, argues Gabuev. But he is barely out of step with either Putin or Patrushev.
He and Patrushev are also as dependent on Putin as he is on them. Over the past 16 months they have presided over catastrophic intelligence failures that in any other country would have seen them sacked.
They painted an entirely misleading picture of the situation in Ukraine ahead of the invasion, directly leading to a military disaster. And the FSB’s second department failed to stop Prigozhin’s mutiny.
Naturally, to avoid entrusting too much power to one organisation, there are rival “silovik” agencies – including the Federal Guards Service, the “praetorian guard” responsible for Putin’s personal security. But there is little doubt that, despite its failings, the FSB remains the most formidable agency in the country. If it turned on Putin, he would struggle to survive.
In the immediate aftermath of Prigozhin’s mutiny, Putin confined himself to video addresses. Shoigu kept quiet. The heads of the FSB and other spook outfits remained, as is their wont, in the shadows.
But Vikor Zolotov, the head of Russia’s national guard, was beaming with self-importance as he fielded questions from reporters in the Kremlin. No, he said, the mutineers would never have taken Moscow. Yes, we had advance intelligence of the plot. Importantly, he added, the mutiny had exposed weaknesses in his force that would now be addressed.
“We have artillery and mortars, we have combat helicopters but we don’t have tanks and other long-range heavy weapons. We will introduce them into the force,” he said.
Although his men were deployed – disastrously – to Ukraine in the early stages of the war, Zolotov’s real job is putting down internal insurrection.
Zolotov, an old St Petersburg bodyguard of the president, is often ridiculed by observers as slightly dim – a prime example of Putin’s habit of promoting loyalty over ability. “A good bodyguard just doesn’t necessarily make a good commander,” says Petrov, before explaining Zolotov’s rise to high office. “One of the things we often don’t know is the reason – possibly some incident in the 1990s – Vladimir Putin decides he trusts someone absolutely.” Today, Zolotov is not to be discounted. “He is foolish, but he’s not an idiot.”
And he is only one of several former bodyguards of Putin moved to prominent roles in a 2016 reshuffle. Others include Alexey Dyumin, the governor of Tula region and, chattering classes of Moscow say, a rising star to watch. The bodyguards, however, are unlikely to mutiny.
“The plan, as far as we can reconstruct it, was to give those officers who were absolutely unknown to the general public some experience as public politicians and civilian managers, and later use them to head big and powerful corporations,” says Petrov. Dyumin, he guesses, is being groomed for Shoigu’s job. “They are like Putin’s children. Without him they have no prospects at all.”
However – now that Prigozhin is off the scene – he is also the nearest thing Russia has to an independent warlord. Fears about his long-term ambitions long pre-date the war in Ukraine.
Like Prigozhin, Kadyrov is a monster of Putin’s own creation. As long as he keeps Chechnya quiet, inside the Russian Federation, and loyal to the president, the Kremlin allows him to run the republic as an autonomous personal fiefdom.
He gets to murder with impunity at home and overseas and – uniquely among Russia’s tightly controlled regional leaders – maintains a private army.
The A A Kadyrov 141st Special Motorised Regiment, named after Ramzan’s deceased father Akhmat, is technically part of the Russian national guard under Viktor Zolotov. In reality, it is made up of Chechen Kadyrov loyalists, and answers exclusively to the Chechen leader.
The same goes for its sister battalion the 249th South, the “Akhmat” Special Rapid Response Unit, the “Akhmat-Grozny Special Purpose Mobile Unit” and the “A A Kadyrov” Special Purpose Police Regiment.
In June, Kadyrov announced he would raise four more ethnic Chechen battalions to fight in Ukraine. In all, he probably commands in excess of 10,000 men.
If Putin dies or is severely weakened, Kadyrov’s loyalty may be tested. Some in Moscow, especially in the FSB, believe another Chechen rebellion is eventually inevitable.
Rumour has it he also maintains a heavily armed contingent at one of central Moscow’s larger hotels, an insurance policy to protect his interests in the capital.
In the event of Putin vanishing, they could act quickly – if not to install Kadyrov himself, then in favour of whichever faction or individual he chooses to back.
He is clearly strategic in his thinking. In Ukraine, his troops have been ridiculed as “TikTok” soldiers because of their fondness for self-promoting social media videos and a strange knack for avoiding any actual fighting.
But there is rationale for that, explains Galeotti: “Kadyrov is actually very careful with his fighters. These are the guys who ultimately keep him in power at home. So does he want them to go and die in Ukraine?”
They would also be outnumbered by the army, the FSB, and other parts of the national guard – and Kadyrov is universally feared and disliked.
Petrov is not sure that matters. “Prigozhin himself, even at the height of his popularity, wasn’t loved by the majority of Russians. Neither was Stalin when he began to take power. If there is a person who is decisive enough and capable enough to take power, it is another question to use state controlled media to make them popular.
“What the Wagner mutiny has demonstrated is that in an intra-elite fight, it is not necessarily the biggest military force that will dominate but the fastest one.”
Putin’s system of government depends on managed rivalries, and for 23 years it has served him well.
Dissent by one is meant to be nipped in the bud by enemies who prefer the status quo. All understand that none of them could ever replace Putin in the current system, so it makes sense to keep him there.
Last weekend, the system worked – but slowly, imperfectly, and at the expense of exposing fundamental weaknesses. The question, says Galeotti, is how it will respond when the next thing goes wrong.
“It could be a dramatic collapse at the front, and Ukrainian troops entering Crimea. Perhaps Vladimir Putin will be taken seriously ill and is unable to govern. It could be a cascading crisis that spreads from region to region,” he says.
“There is a whole range of black swans that could come fluttering over the Kremlin. The point is not what the crisis will be, but that there will be a crisis.”
He does not command the personal loyalty of any army. But he is in charge of Russia’s civilian bureaucracy, and none of the men with guns could hope to rule without him.
But what if, cometh the hour, Patrushev sends a secret signal to FSB officers and the other strongmen’s families are at that moment being arrested? And what if Zolotov has ordered his men to do the same? Or if, meanwhile, Kadyrov has told his men to grab the Kremlin and Ostankino television tower?
And there are other wild cards. Prigozhin and his Wagner mutineers are defeated, but still at large. Smaller private military companies are knocking around the battlefields of Ukraine. Radical nationalists like Igor Strelkov, the former FSB colonel who led the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, have barely concealed dreams of profiting from 1917-style chaos at home. They could wield influence if they could muster a “Freikorps” of armed supporters returning from the front.
Imagine, says Gabuev, that when Putin disappears “there is so much repressed ill-feeling that we see mass protests in Moscow for free elections”. “Imagine they stay on the street and don’t just go home. Imagine there is no firm order to shoot them, so more people arrive when they realise it is safe.” That is a lot of ifs. But revolution could be closer than we think.
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