Putin met his defence minister and his chief of general staff and ordered Russia’s deterrence forces, nuclear weapons included, onto “alert”, a response to Western sanctions he called “illegal”. Both men agreed. Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov answered the order affirmatively, according to a March 4, 2022 account by Atalayar, and Shoigu said the offensive would go on until “the established objectives are achieved.”
They belong to the ‘siloviki’, the security-minded circle around the president that backs his decisions on Ukraine. Who sits in it, and who has risen or slipped since, shows how power is arranged around a man who holds the final word.
Generals and spymasters
Shoigu has a Ukrainian mother and Tuvan roots. He arrived in Moscow as the Soviet Union broke apart and ran the emergency situations ministry. Putin made him defence minister in 2012. Gerasimov, a general born in Kazan, gained experience in the second Chechen war and played a key part in the Crimean campaign. In Russian military circles he is considered “a thoughtful leader” and “a good organiser”.
Nikolai Patrushev, who heads the Security Council, is among the most loyal figures. Like Putin, he served in the KGB in the communist era, then ran its successor, the FSB, from 1999 to 2008. Alexander Bortnikov took over the FSB after him and, Atalayar reports, has imposed “tight control over Russian life” and been responsible for tens of thousands of arrests. Sergei Naryshkin, who leads the foreign intelligence service, the SVR, completes the trio. He also heads the Russian Historical Society, and experts quoted by the outlet say he has supplied the president with “ideological foundations for his actions”.
Politicians, a diplomat and a banker
Anton Vaino, the president’s chief of staff, is regarded as central to Putin’s decision-making. Dmitry Medvedev, a former president, remains a close associate. Sergei Lavrov has been foreign minister since 2004. Yuri Kovalchuk is an oligarch described as Putin’s “banker”, and he keeps strong influence over the president without holding any political office.
Two years later the picture had shifted. Writing for the Atlantic Council on March 14, 2024, Mikhail Zygar said the real contest around that month’s presidential election was over who would become prime minister, effectively the second-in-command and a potential successor. Patrushev, he wrote, was pushing for Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to be replaced, and his son Dmitry, the agriculture minister, could signal the father’s growing influence.
Zygar profiled others as well. Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy chief of staff, manages domestic politics and has Kovalchuk, “the personal banker for senior officials of the Russian Federation including Putin,” as his patron. Rivals such as Vyacheslav Volodin and security-service hardliners threaten him anyway. Aleksey Dyumin, a former Putin bodyguard who has governed the Tula region since 2016, is seen as a military-linked rising star, and he reportedly negotiated during Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny.
Medvedev, in Zygar’s account, has turned from liberal technocrat into an aggressive militarist who uses crude language against Ukraine and the West, and he hopes to reclaim the presidency. The “systemic liberals” have thinned out. Anatoly Chubais left Russia, while Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina quietly stayed. Roman Abramovich became the most active liberal go-between in Russia-Ukraine negotiations, and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin stands for stability amid the conflict.
Sources
- Putin's inner circle (Atalayar)
- All the autocrat's men: The court politics of Putin's inner circle (Atlantic Council, Mikhail Zygar)
