With Putin’s presidential election over, now the question becomes who will make it into the new government, at a time when some insiders are suggesting there may be some substantial change. On the whole, the siloviki tend not to experience particularly rapid reshuffles, but there are some who are looking more vulnerable. In a couple of columns for the Moscow News, I look first at the three key silovik ministers (Serdyukov at Defense, Nurgaliev of the MVD and Prosecutor General Chaika), and secondly at the chiefs of the main security and intelligence services (FSB, SVR, GRU, FSKN, FSO). After all, it’s not just about personalia: the decisions about who stays and goes and more to the point the nature and origins of any new hires will say a lot about what Putin plans for the future, and what he fears.
All posts in category Military – Russia
Shuffling the siloviki: who may be the winners and losers in 2012?
Posted by Mark Galeotti on March 16, 2012
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/shuffling-the-siloviki-who-may-be-the-winners-and-losers-in-2012/
Tracing the Faultlines within the Russian Security Community
This week I’m speaking on ‘The Security Services and Russia’s Perceptions of Security Challenges and Threats’ at What Future for Russia?, which promises to be a very interesting event put on by NUPI. Apart from castigating myself for the bad planning of agreeing to go to Scandinavia in what seems to be the midst of Fimbulwinter, and flying there via Iceland, at that, this also got me thinking about the very notion of lumping ‘the security services’ together into one camp.
Of course, there are some broad traits which unite them, from a commitment to Russian national security to a common interest in talking up the challenges to it, in order to guarantee continued budgetary priority and political privilege. However, especially now that more and more the prospect of a post-Putin era is being contemplated — not that he’s likely to be going any day now, but people are no longer blithely regarding another twelve years as inevitable — then a variety of internal faultlines become increasingly significant.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on February 6, 2012
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/tracing-the-faultlines-within-the-russian-security-community/
Spooks and Soldiers
Just a quick catch-up: over the winter lull, Moscow News ran two columns of mine: ‘Keeping tabs on Putin’s spooks‘, which explores how the Russian intelligence community are at once the beneficiaries of Putin’s re-emergence and yet also under pressure; and ‘The very model of a modern military president‘ presented an unfashionably positive assessment of Russian military reform, and the irony that it took this least martial of presidents actually to start a genuine process (even though there is much still to be done).
Posted by Mark Galeotti on January 17, 2012
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/spooks-and-soldiers/
New GRU chief: Igor Sergun
Despite a little confusion (RIA-Novosti and Kommersant say yes, Rossiiskaya gazeta said no at first, then yes), it seems clear that, as predicted, Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) chief Colonel General Alexander Shlyakhturov, not seen at headquarters for months (despite claims that he’s been on duty), has stepped down on grounds of age. He’s 64 – an age at which remaining in post requires a clean bill of health and also presidential approval. Shlyakhturov will presumably be given a suitable sinecure, possibly as civilian adviser to the GRU, and/or Shlyakhturov would in the near future chairman of the board of directors of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology (MITT).
His successor is Major General Igor Sergun. (more…)
Posted by Mark Galeotti on December 26, 2011
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/new-gru-chief-igor-sergun/
On Military Police in the Moscow News
In this week’s column for the Moscow News, ‘Tough job for Russia’s new military police‘, I return to the vexed issues of crime in the ranks (still monstrously high) and the prospects for the new voennaya politsiya, something I’ve already written on here, although at that point without the benefit of Main Military Prosecutor Fridinskii’s splendid recent soundbite that “the scope of military corruption is mindboggling; it seems people have lost shame and a sense of proportion.” Nonetheless, the point does need to be reiterated that no police force – especially one drawn from an already-all-too-often-corrupted service – can ‘fix’ the problem. That needs to be a cultural process, a transformation of the Russian military that includes effective and law-based policing, but also extends to respect for all ranks, transparency of expenditures and a culture that holds senior officers to account. I think it’s a great step forward – but I’ll really start to believe in the VP when I see a senior officer in handcuffs, or them raid one of the underground factories producing counterfeit that you can still find sited on remote military bases to enjoy their “extraterritoriality” from regular law enforcement.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on November 1, 2011
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/on-military-police-in-the-moscow-news/
The GRU: looking back at the view when Shlyakhturov was appointed
It does look likely that GRU chief Shlyakhturov is going to be dismissed in due course. When his predecessor, Korabelnikov, was sacked in April 2009, I wrote this brief for Oxford Analytica:
Oxford_Analytica_RUSSIA_GRU_chief_s_dismissal_opens_door_to_reform_tmp1F6D
(I should note that this article was originally published in The Oxford Analytica Daily Brief and is produced here with kind permission.)
Let me just note the three key issues I identified, in part to pat myself on the back, in part to look to the future:
- GRU’s Future: I suggested that the GRU would survive, but in less grand form, no longer a federal body in its own rights but more closely subordinated to the Chief of the General Staff. The formal redesignation of the GRU hasn’t happened yet (but I think it will) but it is certainly more under Makarov’s thumb. Next year it may simply become a regular rather than main directorate of the General Staff and be forced to move out of its recently-built HQ in Khodinka (not least because of the profit to be made from selling that tasty bit of real estate).
- Spetsnaz Reshuffle: the five surviving Spetsnaz brigades have indeed been transferred from military intelligence to regular territorial army commands.
- Shifting Priorities: I thought the GRU would concentrate on core military intel missions and this does seem to be happening, with the closure or reduction of much of their pol-mil gathering and analysis elements, as well as a lot of their resources in Latin America and Africa. Expect to see them concentrating on conventional military intel missions and on Asia, Central Asia and the West.
Now what, though? We await to hear of Shlyakhturov’s fate and who succeeds him.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on October 10, 2011
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/the-gru-looking-back-at-the-view-when-shlyakhturov-was-appointed/
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