The only people left in the president’s inner circle are security officials who support his position on Ukraine, the agency claims.

The inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin has narrowed from several dozen associates to a small group of representatives of the special services and security forces, united by support for Moscow’s policies in Ukraine, Bloomberg writes on Friday, January 23, citing two sources whom the agency calls “long-time comrades” of the president.

“Vladimir Putin angers not only leaders from Berlin to Washington. He also irritates some of his wealthiest friends by brushing off their calls to end the conflict in Ukraine and ostracizing all but a handful of hardliners.

According to two of the agency's interlocutors, Putin is becoming more suspicious of people who have made a fortune through their association with him and who have suffered the most from US and EU sanctions. Bloomberg notes that the sources asked to remain anonymous “to avoid reprisals.” Businessmen close to Putin understand their obligations and avoid publicly criticizing the president, but do not want his personal ambitions to destroy their wealth, one of the sources said.

Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Bloomberg he was unaware of any dissatisfaction among members of Putin's inner circle with his Ukraine policy. Billionaire Gennady Timchenko, through his representatives, refused to comment on the position of the Russian President on Ukraine. A representative of billionaire Arkady Rotenberg, Andrei Baturin, said that it is incorrect to say that the businessman criticizes the policies of the head of state. press service Boris Rotenberg's did not respond to a request for comment.

The central group around Putin is led by Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, FSB head Alexander Bortnikov, Foreign Intelligence Service head Mikhail Fradkov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, said Sergei Markov, director of the Institute for Political Studies. Businessmen who have long been close to Putin are “now on the periphery,” he said.

In the highest echelons there is a group of people trying to protect themselves from losses, says political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky. “They criticize Putin, but they cannot challenge him because he can easily crush them. Which makes them even more unhappy,” he said.

Putin intends to “cleanse the elite” by weakening the network of businessmen and officials who have been around him since the 1990s, former banker and ex-senator Sergei Pugachev , now living in the UK, told the agency. According to him, the head of state began the castling by appointing Alexander Kolpakov, who came from the FSO, to the post of head of the presidential administration. Former administrative manager Vladimir Kozhin, who came under sanctions, was demoted to his position, becoming an assistant to the president, that is, essentially “nobody,” Pugachev said.

“Today, personal friendship and loyalty mean nothing. Why does Putin need friends when 85% of Russians support him?” - noted Pugachev.

On Friday, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said that external pressure on Russia has forced Russians to rally around the president. “If a Russian feels any pressure from outside, he will never give up his leader. Never. And any deprivations that will happen within the country - consuming less food, less electricity, I don’t know, some other things that we are all accustomed to,” Shuvalov said.

According to Forbes, the 20 richest Russians lost was calculated $73.4 billion for the period from February 12 (on this day the wealth of the participants in the rating “200 richest businessmen in Russia - 2014” ) to December 16, 2014. In particular, Gennady Timchenko became 1.7 times poorer.

Bloomberg spoke about the exit of billionaires from Putin's inner circle