It’s wishful to think Putin’s system is falling apart

Editor’s Note: This piece by Jamie Dettmer features quotes from CSP Senior Analyst for Russian and European Affairs, Andrei Illarionov.

There was understandable glee in Kyiv when news broke that the Kremlin was turning on the self-styled Club of Angry Patriots — the ultranationalists who, for months, have been decrying Russia’s war effort as too soft and castigating the country’s top generals for ineptness.

But given the bigger picture, the excitement may prove premature.

Among the ultranationalists, the sinister Igor Girkin was the first to be targeted. A former Federal Security Service (FSB) intelligence officer who goes by the nom de guerre Igor Strelkov, Girkin was arrested last week for “public incitement of extremist activity.” He appears to have crossed the line by telling his 800,000 Telegram subscribers that Russia “won’t survive another six years with this talentless coward in power.” And more importantly, he appeared to be developing political ambitions.

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Andrei Illarionov, a senior Kremlin policy adviser until he broke with Putin in 2005, wishes everything was indeed falling apart — but he doesn’t think it is. And he’s worried that “Putin is even stronger” than he was before Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny.

What Illarionov sees now is simply an adjustment — the “system” that’s presided over Russia for a quarter-century is in fact working according to design. And he takes issue with British intelligence chief Richard Moore’s view that the Russian president had to cut a “humiliating” deal and leave Prigozhin unpunished to “save his skin.”

A fervent Putin critic, Illarionov noted that there’s a major misunderstanding in the West about power in Russia — about how it is wielded and who wields it. “It is a different type of system than many in the West believe, even some of my fellow Russian opposition leaders. They think of it is a one-man show, a personal dictatorship. They all look at this from [the] outside, but I was inside, and I see it differently,” he told POLITICO.

“It is a corporation of serving and former security officers — the siloviki — and they enjoya broad degree of freedom, but up to a certain limit. They have a very special relationship with each other, even when they’re quarreling. They follow particular protocols, and they have a code of order — a code of behavior to ensure disputes don’t get out of hand. Only those who break the protocol get punished, like Alexander Litvinenko. And like Girkin right now,” Illarionov said. Girkin’s real offense wasn’t his open criticism, it was his political ambitions and the fact that he formed his club of angry patriots.

Admittedly, these protocols didn’t prevent the dispute between Prigozhin and Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov from momentarily getting out of hand. But Illarionov emphasized the word “mutiny,” avoiding describing the paramilitary leader’s self-styled “march for justice” as an insurrection or rebellion. “That’s when you saw Putin panic for a day and threaten to punish Prigozhin and Wagner,” he said.

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