Abstract
Putin promoted Medvedev to be first deputy prime minister, and Sergei Ivanov to be a deputy prime minister. His minions spread the word that he would probably choose his successor from these two. So Medvedev and Ivanov were now locked in struggle, and their promotions caused the silovik war to heat up. Ustinov became aggressive, with Sechin’s backing. Putin also promoted the seemingly non-aligned Sergei Sobyanin to head the Presidential Administration. This gave him an extra counter-weight to Sechin. In May four governors were dismissed from their positions, in the interests of the Sechin group. In addition, the mayor of Volgograd was imprisoned and two Federal Security Service (FSS) generals were dismissed. Finally, a surge of nationalizations of private companies took place, following logically from the nationalization of most of Yukos’s assets, and pleasing Sechin.
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- 1.
On Sobyanin’s role in this, as the main representative of Bogdanov, see the vivid portrait of him (on the occasion of his appointment as mayor of Moscow) by Konstantin Gaaze, Yuliya Taratuta, Natalya Ivanitskaya, and Mikhail Fishman, ‘Oblechen doveriem’, Russkiy N’yusvik, October 18, 2010 (the final issue of this weekly). The authors recount that according to a source who worked in the St Petersburg mayor’s office at that time (possibly Vadim Glazkov), Sobyanin pressed Putin to halt Kumarin’s assault on Surgut. Kumarin had already seized Surgut’s gas stations in St Petersburg and now had in his sights Surgut’s Kirishi oil refinery in Leningrad region. It appears that Sobyanin and Putin jointly found a solution whereby Kumarin would stop threatening Kirishi. To guarantee that Kirishi would be secure, Putin’s above-mentioned associate Glazkov moved in 1994 from overseeing the fuel sector for the St Petersburg mayor’s office to being deputy head of the North-West Dept. of Surgut. In the Russkiy N’yusvik article, Stanislav Belkovsky is quoted as saying that Sobyanin ‘was a business partner of Putin and Timchenko in the St Petersburg oil business’. While this claim may be true, given the above episode, I have not seen it asserted elsewhere. On the Bogdanov–Kumarin conflict see Chapter 2 of this book.
- 2.
Putin reportedly argued in private that Ivanov could sometimes be excessively willful, whereas Trutnev would do what he was told. Also, since he came from Perm, his election would answer the charge that Putin’s administration was a clique of his cronies from St Petersburg. Ivanov quickly strengthened his appeal to the siloviki around Putin by backing the controversial plan to sell Tor 1 missiles to Iran. These were made by Almaz-Antei, a company to which Viktor Ivanov had close ties. Regarding source see footnote 10.
- 3.
See for example the interview by the well-informed journalist Aleksei Venediktov to Spiegel Online, www.inosmi, December 14, 2005. Venediktov reported Putin as having said as early as 1997 (probably a mistake for 1998—PR) that he would like to move to Gazprom. Venediktov added that Putin currently took part in Gazprom personnel decisions, and said he was convinced that Putin ‘wants to head Gazprom’.
- 4.
E.g., at a press conference on January 31, 2006, Putin said: ‘I would hardly be able to head any business organization: neither by personality nor through my previous life experience do I feel myself to be a businessman.’
- 5.
See in Chapter 11 below a brief analysis of this process, some of it based on leaked information from alleged phone taps.
- 6.
See the report by A. Nikolayeva and A. Nikol’skiy, ‘Ustinov razbushevalsya’, Vedomosti, January 24, 2005.
- 7.
Quoted in Yuliya Latynina, ‘Skandal v prezidentskom gareme’, Novaya Gazeta, September 13, 2007.
- 8.
See the full text of the 3 February 2006, speech on the website of the Procuracy-General, www.genproc.gov.ru (or available from author—pbreddaway@gmail.com).
- 9.
Quotations taken from Pavel Baev, ‘Putin’s Fight against Corruption Resembles Matryoshka Doll’, Eurasian Daily Monitor, May 22, 2006.
- 10.
Nikolai Petrov, ‘Undercutting the Senators’, The Moscow Times, May 30, 2006.
- 11.
On these episodes see Baev, May 22, 2006.
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Reddaway, P. (2018). November 2005–Early 2006: Putin’s Succession-Related Moves; Silovik War Heats Up; the Sechinites Groom Their Own Presidential Candidate, Ustinov. In: Russia’s Domestic Security Wars . Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77392-6_6
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