Word: siloviki
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...taste of the paper's editorial outlook, just talk to Dmitri Muratov, its editor in chief. "Putin has created the largest, richest bureaucracy in the world, and the funds have been sucked out of society." Muratov calls the siloviki--the strong-arm factions that make up much of the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the secret police--a "business, whose only concern is hoarding money...
Since the beginning of that war, a new élite--the siloviki from the FSB (the renamed KGB) and the subservient new economic oligarchs--has come to dominate policymaking under Putin's control. This new élite embraces a strident nationalism as a substitute for communist ideology while engaging in thinly veiled acts of violence against political dissenters. Putin almost sneeringly dismissed the murder of a leading Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed crimes against the Chechens. Similarly, troubling British evidence of Russian involvement in the London murder of an outspoken FSB defector produced little more than official Russian ridicule...
There is much to lament about Putin’s Presidency, from his promotion of the siloviki (former military and KGB officers), to his gradual elimination of independent media outlets. But the Chechen conflict has been Putin’s most dramatic—dramatically horrific—failure. With the confidence of a cowboy and the sophistication of a schoolyard bully, Putin favors using a tank to crush a cockroach. Throughout the war, calls for moderation and respect for basic human rights have been dismissed as unreasonable restraints on Russia’s ability to achieve a long-term...
...decisive victory for Putin. The key point is taking oil under informal but tight Kremlin control, rather than launching a formally state-owned concern," which would scare off foreign investors. The new board chairman of Rosneft, who avoids publicity and contact with outsiders, is a key member of the Siloviki (hard men) - Putin's coterie of top security, law-enforcement and military brass, who many say are becoming Russia's new oligarchs. He won the new job after 14 years of loyal service to Putin. A 1984 graduate of Leningrad University in French and Portuguese, Sechin started his career...
...three years of stability." Until very recently, such pessimism was a minority view. The government hard-line was seen by business executives and analysts as a political power struggle, not a reassertion of the Kremlin's invisible hand in guiding the economy. The clout of the siloviki, President Vladimir Putin's coterie of security and military associates who retain a Soviet-style attachment to state economic control, was downplayed. Yukos, it was thought, would be allowed to pay its tax bills by handing over its 35% share in another oil company, Sibneft. Putin himself encouraged such optimism, saying...