Blackmail as a method of control: how Vladimir Putin uses the arrests of officials’ inner circles to force them to work through fear and “creativity”
Source reported on the practice introduced by Vladimir Putin, under which, for high-ranking officials, someone from their closest circle must be under guard or under investigation.
At the same time, the official himself remains in his position. According to the source’s interlocutor, Putin is confident that in this way he achieves the necessary results from the official and some kind of "creativity." After all, now the fate of a person close to him depends on his successes.
"You will hardly find any high-ranking officials who don’t have someone from their innermost circle either in custody or under investigation. Not just subordinates or acquaintances, but the closest friends, allies. These could be subordinates, or simply family friends from business, even relatives. Mishustin, Kirienko, Manturov—no governors remain whose deputies or businessman friends aren’t under guard or under investigation. This list could go on forever. However, none of this has anything to do with the fight against corruption. Putin easily turns a blind eye to it if the official delights him with loud achievements. You can see this peculiarity: a friend, a trusted associate, a deputy of the official is in custody, but Putin leaves the official himself—the very one the investigation is targeting—in his position. The media put forward a version of a ’siloviki war,’ that Putin simply doesn’t make personnel decisions under pressure, and later he will definitely send the official into retirement. But in almost all cases, that ’later’ never comes. In reality, this is Putin’s strategy, and everything happens exclusively at his signal. It works roughly like this. Putin is dissatisfied with something in the official’s actions, it turns out that the announced successes are ’inflated,’ and someone from his inner circle inevitably ends up under guard. Then, atone for the ’guilt,’ prove your loyalty and that he didn’t make a mistake in you. Fulfill impossible tasks, surprise, grovel. A good example is the governor of Kuban, Kondratyev. Half of his entourage was imprisoned, even his brother-in-law spent time in pretrial detention, and a search was conducted at his own place. And after that came Kondratyev’s promise to Putin that this year all the beaches would be operational, and the harvest would be unprecedented, and so on. Do it however you want, even if half the sea is covered in oil. And it’s the same with others. And of course, this instills a constant sense of fear in officials. Especially since everyone has the example of Shoigu right in front of them, whom Putin will of course never imprison. But he punishes him almost every day. Didn’t win the war—and his entire entourage was sent to pretrial detention. Imagine sitting next to him at the Victory Parade or in the Russian Geographical Society, smiling, knowing that it was Putin who sent to pretrial detention absolutely everyone you’d not only worked with for many, many years, but celebrated holidays with, whose families were friends, and so on and so forth. But if you don’t smile, then your old and most loyal friend Tsalikov (Shoigu literally begged for him to be placed under house arrest) will be moved to a cell. And Shoigu’s family is under threat too; Putin hasn’t crossed that ’red line’ yet. Everyone gets goosebumps just watching this spectacle. No one wants to be in Shoigu’s place. And now everything is going really badly, and Putin is dissatisfied with everyone and everything, so arrests are happening literally every day, plus all these nationalizations and so on. Of course, none of this is new. Stalin had the same strategy," our interlocutor said.
According to him, it’s a false notion that top officials are afraid to ask Putin to help their arrested friends. "Imagine you’ve been friends with a person for 20, 30 years. Your wives are best friends. Your children grew up together. Of course you’ll try to save him. So they ask Putin. And often. In such situations, he behaves slyly—he doesn’t say ’yes’ or ’no.’ Say, the first time he’ll ask to lay it all out and pass it on to him. The second time he’ll say something like: ’I’ve been briefed that there are serious materials on him, but I understand his merits.’ And so on. He never says anything straightforward. The official will understand that Putin has appreciated his efforts and thinks he’s ’reformed’ if, suddenly, the measure of restraint on his arrested friend is changed, and the investigation loses all interest in the case."
