The circle of Vladimir Putin has changed. Many of his most faithful allies did a href="https://www.infobae.com/america/mundo/2022/03/11/todos-contra-putin-sus-funcionarios-mas-leales-se-sienten-enganados-por-el-ataque-a-ucrania/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"bnot know about the President's plans to invade Ukraine, nor were they ready forsanctions. Several Russian sources told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in Kiev: “For many years, those who have built fame and empire at home, or who have grown a sweet life abroad between western villages and huge hidden accounts, today see their castle collapsing like sand. Western sanctions”.
According to reports from US and European intelligence officials, as Putin escalated the war, the president became more and more isolated. It seems that businessmen and politicians who once belonged to Putin's internal circle now do not want or cannot put pressure on him to change his course.
More and more advisers and former devotees, including industrialist Oleg Deripaska and billionaire banker Mikhail Fridman, are now expected to raise their voices.
The Washington Post has succeeded in identifying some key players from an extensive network of political and economic elites surrounding Russian leaders. Many of these individuals have been sanctioned by the United States, the United Kingdom, or the European Union, while others are out of restrictions.
In the Russian context, oligarchs are very wealthy business elites with unbalanced political power. They appeared in two distinct waves.
The first group came from the privatization of the 1990s, in particular, from the cash sales of the largest state-owned enterprises since 1995. This process was undermined by severe corruption, culminating in the notorious “stock lending” scheme. The scheme transferred shares of 12 large natural resources companies from the government to select the magnates in exchange for loans to strengthen the federal budget.
The government deliberately defaulted loans, allowing creditors, future oligarchs to auction shares of giants.
After Putin came to power in 2000, he promoted the second wave of oligarchy through state contracts. Private providers in many sectors, such as infrastructure, defense and health care, will overcharge the government at a price several times higher than the market, offering bribes to the relevant state officials. Thus, Putin enriched the new oligarchs who owe huge fortunes.
In essence, Putin proposed a deal. The oligarchs will get out of politics, and the Kremlin will stop doing business and often leave illegal interests alone.
The oligarchs helped Putin stay in power through political immobility and financial support for the Kremlin's internal initiatives. These people have huge stakes in industries such as metallurgy, banking, technology, petrochemicals, and luxury real estate.
According to media reports, government statements, leaked financial data and, in some cases, interviews with men, many were old friends or partners of the president, including Arkady Rotenberg, Putin's childhood friend and former judo partner.
In the English Premier League, some such as Roman Abramovich, the owner of the Chelsea Football Club, have long denied direct financial relations with Putin. In the case of Abramovich, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last week that “clear evidence” appeared linking Abramovich to Putin's regime.
However, others, such as bPetr Aven, acknowledged his relationship with Putin. In an interview with the US UU, Robert S. Muller III, who investigated Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, said he was one of the 50 wealthy Russian businessmen who met Putin on a regular basis. Nevertheless, he and his business partner Mikhail Fridman (Mikhail Fridman) in a statement earlier this month “lies about the imposition of EU sanctions It becomes and will challenge unfounded grounds.”
In Russia,a href="https://www.infobae.com/america/mundo/2022/03/12/la-verdad-como-victima-de-guerra-vladimir-putin-utiliza-rt-y-sputnik-para-generar-contenidos-toxicos-y-desinformacion/" rel="noopener noreferrer" most of the media is directly or indirectly controlled by the state or by entities related to President Putin. The few remaining independent media face many restrictions in their work, many of which are classified as “foreign agents”.
Today, words such as “war”, “Ukrainian army” or “aggression” are not available in the media under threat of blocking the web and economic fines. Audio-visual media do not broadcast images of the Russian hospital during the pandemic, so they do not broadcast images of Ukraine. This invasion slanders part of Ukraine and was presented as a “military operation” to protect the Russian-speaking population from “genocide”. However, numerous Russian journalists were in war. I was against it. They encouraged a declaration of condemnation and condemned the cultural, economic and social depravity that the conflict would mean in Russia.
Misinformation is an ancient technique that is systematically used in armed conflicts. Russia has developed a great cyber capacity to generate fraud and misinformation abroad, known as “Internet research institutes” and media RT and Sputnik, etc. The media creates content, trolls act on social networks, generating many confusing narratives, creating doubts and confusing facts and opinions.The primary goal of these operations is to build and disseminate claims in favor of the Russian government and foreign policy.
In order to avoid misinformation and toxic content they generate, the EU stated last month that it targeted a large number of media figures to impose sanctions, and announced restrictions that all those listed in the official journal used Russia's platform to support “actions or policies” that undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine”
This includes editors, writers, journalists and talk show organizers of the most important television networks in the United States. All of them are described as spreading anti-Ukrainian propaganda by the EU.
Critics of Russia said that sanctioning energy exports would be the best way to force Moscow to withdraw.
Russia is an energy-rich country with the largest gas reserves in the world.Europe relies heavily on energy imported from Russia, the second largest exporter of crude oil in the world after Saudi Arabia. Exports of oil and natural gas are essential to the Kremlin economy, but it is also one of Putin's most important geopolitical weapons.
The United States has banned all energy imports from Russia, including oil. Germany also stated that it will suspend the approval of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.However, since Western leaders are wary of measures that could harm their consumers, these products mostly did not spare sanctions. After the invasion of Russia, oil prices have already risen.
The state-owned oil company Rosneft is one of the largest listed oil companies in the world, and its CEO and president, Igor Sechin, has long contributed and loyal to Putin. bNikolai Tokarev, the main general of the Russian secret service, who worked with Putin in the 1980s, is now the president of Transneft, a state-owned company that transports most of the oil extracted in Russia.
Putin's cabinet includes defense minister, hunting and fishing companion Sergei Shoigu, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. The US and EU have targeted sanctions for both men in recent weeks. Both men have not publicly commented on the sanctions.
However, according to Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, the politician Shoigu, who had no combat experience, said that he was “one of the most ambitious members of Putin's internal circle”. He received Putin from his home in the mountains of Siberia, and local media reports collected by the Post describe him as a “close ally” and “friend” of the president.
However, according to Lieutenant General Scott D. Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Service, the fierce resistance of Ukraine to aggression caused the loss of up to 4,000 Russian soldiers.
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin (Sergei Sobyanin) are currently not necessarily key advisers, but are responsible for implementing Putin's domestic policy. That's why Switzerland and the EU turned to Mishustin for sanctions, and Canada included Sobyanin on the list.
Putin is a former intelligence officer, so he trusts military and security officials more, experts say. Some of them have been around for many years, from Chechnya to Syria to Crimea.
Among the most important listed in the Washington Post are the head of the Federal Security Service, Alexander Bortnikov, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, and Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin. Valery Gerasimov acts as Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and is partially responsible for the war plan.
According to US and European intelligence officials, Putin's close advisers may not tell the truth about how difficult and expensive the war is. It is also not known who is making a decisionthe truth is that for three weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, despite the presence of an advanced air force, it has not yet managed to take control of Ukraine's skies and suffered huge military losses.
Infographic: Marcelo Regalado
(Includes information from AP)
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