The Coup in the Kremlin - How Putin and the Security Services Captured the Russian State
In recent years, Russian President Putin has created a bureaucracy run by securocrats on whom he relies to consolidate his control, allowing their power to grow relative to other organs of the state. Nina Khrushcheva suggests in this
Foreign Affairs article that dissent is now a crime, and individuals who once held decision-making power - even if circumscribed - have found themselves hostages of institutions whose single-minded purpose is security and control. Putin was convinced that strengthening the state’s “extraordinary organs” would prevent upheaval of the kind that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The author argues that even without him, the system he built is likely to remain in place, sustained by the new security cohort -unless a 1980s Afghanistan-style debacle in Ukraine causes it to fail. With this bureaucracy retaining power, Moscow’s foreign adventurism might abate but as long as the structure holds, Russia will remain oppressed, isolated, and unfree.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2022-05-10/coup-kremlin />
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