Word: siloviki
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...company, Yukos - last week Sibneft, another major Russian oil firm, announced that its merger with Yukos was on hold. So why is Putin anxious? Because the Yukos affair has destroyed the balance of power between the associates of former President Boris Yeltsin - known as the Family - and the siloviki, the law- enforcement and security officials who are close to Putin. The Khodorkovsky crackdown split the Kremlin, pushing Putin even closer to the siloviki and unnerving the Family. One key figure associated with the Family, the head of the presidential administration, Alexander Voloshin, resigned a few days after Khodorkovsky's arrest...
Many in Russia view the arrest as the centerpiece of a power struggle between "the Siloviki," as President Vladimir Putin's coterie of security officials and bureaucrats is known, and "the Family," the billionaire oligarchs and top officials who thrived during the wild days of privatization under former President Boris Yeltsin. Putin is a former KGB operative, Khodorkovsky a former Young Communist League official, a platform from which he launched his business empire...
...largest privately-held oil producer in the world, with one-fifth of the reserves of Kuwait. And Khodorkovsky had for months been courting Exxon Mobil and Chevron-Texaco to buy up to 40 percent of the shares in the new company for billions of dollars. For the now ascendant siloviki faction around Putin - men from the "power ministries" such as the armed forces, police and intelligence services, both the power of the new corporation and the proposed sell-off of a major portion of Russia's oil industries to Western countries was too much to stomach...
...combination of his business deals and his political ambitions prompted the siloviki to press for action against Khodorkovsky. The Russian state is too weak to accept what those in power see as a challenge of this type. And then, despite open calls for his arrest, Khodorkovsky played chicken, refusing to follow the example of other oligarchs such as Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky and leave the country...
...Khodorkovsky was not only threatening the siloviki by expanding his share of the oil economy and looking at a major selloff in the West, he was also flexing political muscle and even daring to air his own political ambitions. For anyone who's followed him since the late 1980s, it was an unexpected turn. He's a very soft-spoken man who prefers to work behind the scenes, and has consistently kept a low profile. Unlike some of the other oligarchs, he largely remained quiet. Also, Khodorkovsky's father is Jewish, and it's accepted political wisdom in the circles...