Putin’s incredible shrinking circle
on the 12th it was announced that Vladimir Putin’s chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, was leaving his position as head of the Presidential Administration (AP) and taking up the new and rather less pivotal job of presidential representative for transport and the environment. In his place, Putin elevated one of Ivanov’s deputies, the essentially-unknown 44-year old Anton Vaino. Whatever Vaino’s strengths, this points to the way Putin is hollowing out his inner elite, surrounding himself with fewer but also less substantial peers, who are unlikely to challenge his worldview and opinions.
.. A shrewd and polished operator, Ivanov seemed at once ambitious and indispensable (asked whom he trusted back in 1999, Putin’s immediate response: “Sergei Ivanov”).
.. But his departure could also be part of Putin’s clearing of the old guard in advance of the 2018 presidential elections. The Kremlin was caught by surprise when the rigged presidential elections in 2011 led to the “Bolotnaya protests”. This time, although they do not seem to know quite what to expect, there is a clear intention to be ready, come what may
.. Putin, less trusting of the elite, is taking the opportunity to install a new cadre of officials who are younger and have more to prove and less to lose.
.. he is recruiting disproportionately from the people he knows. Given his cloistered lifestyle, that often means bodyguards, personal assistants, and the like. Vaino, for example, was head of his personal protocol office (and even memorably carried his umbrella from time to time).
.. The inexorable logic of Putin’s personalised, de-institutionalised and essentially ruthless regime is that he must periodically devour his favourites — where Yakunin and Ivanov go, other past cronies such as Rosneft head Igor Sechin and deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov may well follow — as they become tiresome, embarrassing or a threat.
.. What makes this iteration more noteworthy and worrying than most, though, is that it takes place at a volatile time when Putin himself is increasingly willing to sacrifice the immediate interests of the Russian people for his vision of a powerful, “sovereign” Russia and his own historical legacy. In their own self-interested and sometimes wrong-headed way, the boyars are one of the few checks and balances.