Officials, security forces, loyalists. Notes from inside the disaster

Without exception, all of them are opportunists who considered support for the regime as a form of capital accumulation, and Putin’s aggressive rhetoric against the West as the right business strategy, writes Yevgenia Albats

The strongest impression of recent weeks is that it seems that cotton has been inserted into the ears. The old sounds, the conversations, the crossings, it all evaporated. There were no corporate birthdays, embassy receptions, private screenings and just parties where officials and newsmakers appeared, who could be taken aside and asked a couple of questions. There is a catastrophic lack of information, although, it would seem, during the two months of the war, a bunch of new telegrams and YouTube channels were formed. But the same guests walk from channel to channel, and the same information, without clear links and coordinates, roams the telegram space, is not verified or verified by anyone. Correspondents of correspondents of Western newspapers, agencies and TV channels, having left, deprived me not only of the picture - such as was given by CNN, BBC, Sky News, which have professional military correspondents in almost every city in Ukraine, but also of more or less well-founded analytics. Sources roam from article to article, and it is easy to guess: here is the “interlocutor close to the Kremlin”, who says how everyone united around the leader, this is KK political strategist. And here is an official of the economic bloc of the government, who complains about the growing costs of the war for the budget and the inability to somehow influence Putin, this is NN. And there’s no need to talk about PR people who have been living on Kremlin contracts for decades and passing under the code definition “sources close to the Presidential Administration” — all the rumors that were and what they invented are leaked just like that.

If there is any advantage of living in Moscow in our troubled times, it is still in the opportunity to meet people. Private. Better if it's a separate room. Or a small park between houses. True, there are very few powerful characters in these meetings - they are afraid not only to answer in messengers, but also to be seen in a public place. However, there are exceptions. And there are retirees, interlocutors of many years, businessmen yesterday, security officials, doctors, friends who suddenly discovered that they were robbed and thrown out, despite the crust of United Russia and a long track record in which deviations were not observed.

Below is a condensation of these conversations with exact quotes, all names have been changed.

Officials . They, judging by the words of the interlocutors, were divided into clean and unclean. The clean ones are guys in uniform, mostly from the FSB. They make decisions, they punish, they are afraid. Unclean - all the rest. But even among them there are gradations. There is a “give-bring”, the ideologists from the Presidential Administration began to perform such a function: “they were told - they did it”. They said - in the Office for the Protection of the Constitutional System of the Second Service of the FSB, which continues the glorious traditions of the Fifth Directorate of the KGB.

However, even here there are disagreements: a couple of interlocutors pointed to a banker with an alleged Chekist past, Yuri Kovalchuk, who controls all the country's most important media assets through various structures, as a kind of think tank of the operation. "Kovalchuk's reception area is half the size of a football field, and there - well, like in the UN - flags, flags, probably of the whole world, you can immediately see: a very important person," says an informed interlocutor of NN (still in power structures) about a man whose no one disputes the influence on the first person and the informal position of the second person in the country.

The economic bloc of the government has a special position today, technocrats are valuable today. Because, as is commonly believed, they are saving the economy from endless new sanctions that make their task more and more hopeless. 70 percent of the final products manufactured in the Russian Federation have an imported component, it is practically impossible to replace them. In the government, says a well-known financier, a former high-ranking official, there are endless meetings. The director of a plant producing Russian aircraft arrives. One problem — his engine is imported. He promises to do his own. If they give money, and a lot. And he will do it in two years. If he does at all. “I have not met (in the economic bloc) those who would support this (the war in Ukraine), everyone understands that a catastrophe has occurred. But everyone thinks how to adapt.

“Where can I go?” says another interlocutor, also horrified by what is happening, and one of the few who are not yet under sanctions. “No one will let me do this.” However, there is no doubt that they are all considering options for how to end up in another jurisdiction, do not go to a fortuneteller.

“90 percent are unambiguously negative about what is happening,” says a well-known doctor from one of the private clinics in Moscow about his patient-officials. “Everyone is afraid to open their mouths – the example of Ulyukaev or Abyzov is before their eyes, and therefore they adapt,” says the financier.

“Only the security forces knew about the beginning of the operation, even (the prime minister) Mishustin was not informed, Nabiullina did not know anything,” says a source from the government. “During that famous Security Council (which allegedly discussed the issue of the independence of the LPR and the DPR, it was partially shown on TV on February 23), it was clear that the most informed were against it,” says the retired intelligence general. And he lists those who, from his point of view, tried, however quite frightened, to say that it might not be necessary yet: (Prime Minister) Mishustin, (Secretary of the Security Council) Patrushev, (Chief negotiator on the Minsk agreements) Kozak, (head of the Foreign Intelligence Service) Naryshkin, from which Putin publicly made food for sparrows. “The best informed,” he says, “were against it.”

Siloviki . What is happening inside the corporation that controls power in Russia - the FSB and allies, no one can reliably say: it is to some extent a black box. But there is no unity there either, say interlocutors with general's epaulettes on their shoulders. Someone inside the special services warned both the United States and Ukraine about the upcoming "special operation" - the media wrote about this, Bellingcat investigator Hristo Grozev also claimed. “Can we say that there are purges in the FSB? This is more of a figure of speech, but definitely an investigation is underway - political, about betrayal, ”says the interlocutor. However, no one confirms the rumors about almost twenty arrested generals. But they say about the conflict between the Chekists and the military - someone should become a scapegoat "for the failed first stage of the operation," the source assures.

Young people in uniform call Putin “grandfather” and say that it is time for him to retire. True, a comma after the words that "we can repeat" (again reach Berlin - NT.) if these "pin **** do not stop mocking Russian children, throwing them out of boarding schools and universities." The youngster is very angry. Firstly, many businesses collapsed, from which they were fed, their savings were frozen in sanctions banks, it became impossible to transfer corrupt money to the Emirates and offshore. Since the movement of money, the cashing out market and other things related to finances of various denominations are also controlled by security officers, many of them have invested in cryptocurrency. But as a result of the sanctions, these wallets were cut off from large crypto exchanges such as Binance : on April 21, Binance stopped servicing crypto wallets worth 10,000 euros or more, registered on Russian passports. Prior to this, other sites have taken similar measures. For many, the problem of withdrawing foreign currency from the country became impossible - it became impossible to pay for shares in investment real estate abroad. Of course, they found a way out: an excess of gold in the country (also a consequence of sanctions) allows you to buy gold bars, which can be exported in the amount of up to $70,000 - against $10,000 per person allowed by the Central Bank. Gold is well bought in the Emirates, where a financial services market is already taking shape, allowing you to bypass the slingshots of both the Central Bank and sanctions.

Loyalists . “I practically left United Russia,” a former official told me, let’s call him Kirill (name changed), who plays in the Night Hockey League, where Putin periodically drives the puck. “I was about to go and throw them a (membership) card” - And what stopped? I asked. “Well, they called me, they said, they’ll come right away, they’ll pick you up ...” But Kirill is outraged: the war in Ukraine, or rather the sanctions imposed against Russian banks and companies, literally let him go around the world. Well, it seems not quite in the world, but it still hurts a lot.

In 2019, Kirill told me, the Russian state invited wealthy Russians to invest in the domestic economy. De-offshirization, a ban on travel abroad for millions of security officials, judges, prosecutors and other rent collectors, the need to sanitize corruption foam and, finally, the banal need for money, which, as we now understand, was required for the manufacture of hundreds of tanks, armored personnel carriers, aircraft, hailstones and other iron for the war in Ukraine - all this prompted the economic authorities to develop mutual investment funds (PIFs). Say, give your money (which you, among other things, took away from the budget) a bit of patriotism! Units were sold by all the main state and commercial banks, luring them with Russian and foreign blue chips and high interest rates: if the yield on deposits, Kirill told me, was then 3.4%, then in Pifs it was 22%, and by the end of the summer of 2021 it reached 27%. There was one inconvenience: the money had to be deposited for three years. If you shot before, take 13% taxes to the cashier. Well, and another detail - anyone could buy a share in a mutual fund, but profitably - with a lot of money. “It made sense to start with 10 million,” Kirill explained.

According to the report of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation ("Overview of key indicators of mutual investment and joint-stock funds" Information and analytical material, M. 2022), in 2021 the number of shareholders, that is, people who invested their money in mutual funds, totaled 7.7 million people. The net inflow of funds amounted to 989.5 billion rubles, and the Mutual Funds themselves already numbered almost two thousand (1965 - to be absolutely precise), and assets were spinning in them in the amount of plus or minus 7 trillion rubles.

And then came February 24, 2022, "Kyiv was bombed, we were told that the war had begun." State-owned banks were among the first to be sanctioned, and then commercial ones. And suddenly mutual funds with all their trillions ceased to exist. That is, no, they exist, only in Russia there was no stock market, which means that the value of shares is also unknown, not to mention the fact that investments in foreign securities are simply frozen until the carrot spell and a little more after.

When Kirill came to VTB Bank, which disposed of his shares, he found out that the millions he had invested were no more. So far, not at all. Maybe over time, they will give back 40% of the investment, or maybe they will not give it back.

And there are more than 7 million people like my interlocutor in the country, and most likely in three or four of its main cities. The same Putin middle and upper middle class, one of whose representatives six months before the disaster told me: “You and Navalny are fighting windmills. We are the middle class, and everything suits us. Putin allows us to earn money, but the fact that there are no elections means that we can’t eat from them.” Well, and so on - children in private schools, then they will go to the best European universities, vacations - in the Crimea and the Emirate - three or four times a year, restaurants are better than in Europe, clothes, luxury cottage villages, etc. and so on. Well, really, why elections, when Chanel with Louis Vuitton - life is good! Success?

None of my interlocutors formulated any idea, ideology, which would lie at the foundation of their loyalty. Without exception, all of them are opportunists who viewed support for the regime as a form of capital increase, and Putin’s aggressive rhetoric against the West as the right strategy: if a competitor cannot be defeated in business, then he must be transferred, broken, forced to surrender.

But unlike the crash of 1998, the current financial and economic crisis has no positive outlook. There is only one direction of movement - only down. Bureaucrats, security forces, loyalists who have become (almost) oppositionists still hope that the negative trend will be reversed. I have no doubt that they read reports from the fronts in Ukraine very carefully. How quickly will they realize that the life they built for themselves is over? That the old one will never return? That politics came after them and now there will be scraps from sanctions? And that this catastrophe that brought down their future and the future of their children has a name, patronymic and surname? Here the points of view differ. But I did not find those who were ready to sacrifice themselves for the cause of expanding the Russian Empire.