"Put everything on pause"

The Russian elite split into three groups: supporters of war until victory, supporters of a respite and the “party of those running away”

The mood within elite groups on the eve of the New Year is far from festive, say interlocutors in the highest echelons of power interviewed by VERSTKA. More and more officials and parliamentarians hope for a quick respite in the war, but there remains an influential part of those who advocate intensifying hostilities, making a career out of supporting the war. “Layout” tells what is happening with the assessment of military achievements in 2022 within the government.

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Opinions are divided

2022 turned out to be a difficult year for the majority of Russians (according to Levada Center polls, approval of the situation in the country decreased from 69% in March to 63% in December). In general, by the end of the year, the mood of the elites turned out to be pessimistic, and they increasingly feel the same as ordinary Russians - tired of uncertainty. “Verstka” interviewed two sources in the State Duma, one in the Federation Council and two in the Kremlin about the mood prevailing among government officials and what they—and the people of Russia in general—should prepare for next year.

All the interlocutors interviewed by the publication agreed that the elite is divided into conditional camps, but they doubted that, as in the summer of this year, they could be called the “party of power,” the “party of peace,” and the party of silence (Verstka wrote about two of them earlier). According to one of the sources close to the Kremlin, government officials and officials can rather be divided into “supporters of a respite” and those who want to “put the pressure on Ukraine.” Both groups agree on one thing: the war (after Vladimir Putin used this word in relation to the special operation, people in power began to pronounce it) is not going as we would like . By the end of the year, the authorities arrived with far from brilliant results, and they cannot boast of what they expected - the demilitarization of Ukraine, striking military victories, the source says. The annexation of new territories and hastily held referendums there did not bring the expected surge of support to the federal center . Moreover, Russia may lose two of the four new regions - Zaporozhye and Kherson regions - in the foreseeable future, he claims.

At the same time, members of the first group (the source of “Vestka” has repeatedly repeated that this division is arbitrary and the boundaries of the “groups” cannot be clearly established) believe that in the context of falling public support for the authorities, the deterioration of the well-being of Russians, their mass exodus abroad and the ambiguous situation at the front , the Kremlin should “put everything on pause.” The country needs time to provide for the mobilized and organize other processes related to the course of the war - organizing the work of military registration and enlistment offices, transitioning the economy to a war footing. According to one of Vorstka’s sources in parliament, this ideally requires at least several months, “free from sudden military movements,” that is, from a large-scale offensive at the front. It also takes time to carefully and thoroughly work with public opinion, the Kremlin interlocutor believes. “If everything had not been done in a hurry in recent months, we would have had something to say [that the president could talk about in a message or at a press conference],” he argues. “This [information campaign around the war] needs to be built, otherwise everything is very rushed and ill-considered.”

More and more people are joining this conditional group, according to all five sources interviewed by VERSTKA. Among them are representatives of the economic bloc of the government and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin himself, oligarchs, heads of state corporations and large companies, including the head of Sberbank German Gref. This point of view is shared by many influential deputies and senators. However, the “main content” of this camp are representatives of the authorities and circles around the authorities who simply do not understand what to do, but see that the war is not going according to plan and are striving to join “at least somewhere,” says Vverstka’s interlocutor in the upper house of parliament. “For them, this is a gesture not of reason and reasonable choice, but of desperation,” he is sure. Members of this group, he said, are inclined to believe that Russia may lose the war and hope that they will have time to do something to make this defeat the least painful, the source said.
Some representatives of this group, who advocate de-escalation and reduction of tension, chose to move away from politics and go into business. The most famous such case is the resignation from the post of head of the Accounts Chamber of Alexei Kudrin, who moved to Yandex.

The second, much smaller, but gaining significant influence group is confident that Russia’s victory in the confrontation with Ukraine is quite possible and even close, if the escalation of the conflict is increased , as many people as possible are thrown to the front and “don’t let Kiev down.” According to an interlocutor in the State Duma, supporters of escalation clearly include the “Kremlin chef” Yevgeny Prigozhin and the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov (“Vorstka” previously wrote about their relationship). Political scientist Tatyana Stanovaya also includes among members of this camp “the active part of United Russia and the systemic opposition, especially the hawkish part of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.”
Vestka’s interlocutor in the Federation Council also included Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev in this “camp” (according to the source, the latter’s aggressive polemics on social networks are absolutely sincere, and they are led by the ex-president himself). Supporters of escalation also include some representatives of the Kremlin - First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko and Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Andrei Turchak, who is extremely close to the Presidential Administration. Some large businessmen, in addition to Prigozhin, are also calling for “not to stop” in the conflict with Ukraine, said Vorstka’s interlocutor. Their main motivation is that during the war they began to gain instrumental weight due to changes in power structures, which before February 24 seemed “unchangeable and unshakable,” the source says.

"It's going to be a hot time soon"

The idea of ​​further escalation is closer to the first person, because the Kremlin adhered to this “general line” throughout the war, says an interlocutor close to the presidential administration. In any case, all decisions are postponed until after the New Year, he continues. Since all major public events with Putin’s participation have been postponed , a “hot time” will soon come, and during it the authorities will have to decide on the further course of action and controversy.

“The end of the year ends with an obvious contrast - the emphasized harshness of the rhetoric while not committing any military actions (not counting the shelling of infrastructure) that reinforce this rhetoric,” Mikhail Vinogradov, head of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation, told Vorstka. “In the conventional camp of “radicals,” conservation is taking place: approximately the same people make tough public calls throughout the year, and there is no serious replenishment of the camp of public radicals.” The ability of de-escalation supporters to formulate and develop their own strategy is limited and almost non-existent , Vinogradov is sure. Political scientist Konstantin Kalachev defined the mood of the more aggressive part of the elite as “it’s better to lose than not to finish.” According to him, there is no peace party as such, since “no one wants to become a traitor.”

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Who goes where

In the elite, in addition to the “escalation” and “de-escalation” camps, there is another, small one - those who voted with their feet and left the country. The most prominent among the representatives of this group is the former special presidential representative for relations with international organizations to achieve sustainable development goals, Anatoly Chubais. He resigned from this post in March, and later Kommersant published a photo of him taken in Istanbul. A Reuters source cited disagreement with the war started by Russia as the reason for the politician’s departure. Chubais was last seen before the New Year in Israel.

Also, the former vice-president of Gazprombank, Igor Volobuev, left the country, who after leaving went to Ukraine and joined the terrorist defense there. There is another banker abroad - the founder of Tinkoff Bank, Oleg Tinkov. In May, he said goodbye to Russia and his business, and in October he decided to renounce Russian citizenship. The owner of Onexim, Mikhail Prokhorov, left the country (he has not lived in Russia since the beginning of the pandemic, Vorstka sources claim, although his fund denied this), former top managers of Sber Lev Khasis and David Rafalovsky, and the founder of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, finally moved abroad.

Skolkovo founder Ruben Vardanyan also left. True, he went to Nagorno-Karabakh and explained his emigration not by the situation with Ukraine, but by the desire to support the inhabitants of the region in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. At the end of December, Vladimir Putin supported his request to renounce Russian citizenship. Alisher Usmanov, according to Vorstka sources, moved to Tashkent for permanent residence, billionaire Alexey Melnichenko received UAE citizenship. Former Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, now FIDE President, is abroad most of the time. In March, Dvorkovich said that he is against the war and that he “thinks about the civilians of Ukraine” and about Ukrainian chess players, and also spoke in favor of a ban on the participation of Russia and Belarus in official international tournaments until “until the war is over and Ukrainian players return to chess.”

There are also many representatives of the elite who did not leave the country, but sent their families abroad . According to Vorstka’s sources in the upper and lower houses, the number of parliamentarians who have moved their children abroad is very large. True, most of them, for obvious reasons, are in no hurry to make this public. An interlocutor in the State Duma recalled how in March-April his colleagues in the chamber regularly left the country “for a couple of days” to accompany children and spouses leaving the country. He even recalled that one of the deputies encountered serious problems when sending his dogs abroad, of which he had “countless.”

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