Russian Civil-Military Relations in Concept of Ukrainian Geopolitics: Part-5 (Final)

Sergei Shoigu

Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu is a Russian politician and army general who has served as the minister of defence of Russia since 2012. Shoigu has served as the chairman of the Council of Ministers of Defense of the Commonwealth of Independent States since 2012. Shoigu was the minister of emergency situations from 1991 to 2012. He briefly served as the governor of Moscow Oblast in 2012. A close confidant and ally of Vladimir Putin, Shoigu belongs to the siloviki of Putin's inner circle. On 23 February 2022, the European Union considered Shoigu responsible for actively supporting and implementing actions and policies that undermine and threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine as well as the stability or security in Ukraine. On 25 February 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the United States added Shoigu to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List.

Sergey Lavrov

Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov is a Russian diplomat and politician who has served as the Foreign Minister of Russia since 2004. Lavrov served as the Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations from 1994 to 2004. On 25 February 2022, the day after Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Lavrov claimed that Putin ordered the invasion to "free Ukrainians from oppression". The same day, the US, UK, EU and Canada announced sanctions against Lavrov as well as Putin. The US added Lavrov to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List. On 26 February, Australia announced similar sanctions on Lavrov.

Those are the peoples who surround President Putin on a daily base forming his inner circle. For instance. The list of the Siloviki members goes on and each coming from different backgrounds but collectively the Siloviki members possessed remarkable hard power and will to use it. For the Siloviki members; the national agenda must prioritize domestic security in addition to threats coming from the outside Russia. The Siloviki believe that public order is the number one priority since that is how Russia imploded twice in the 20th century namely first was the Russian Empire and later as the Soviet Union. For the Siloviki; public order and security must be maintained at all times if a third implosion is to be prevented. Real threats to overthrown President Putin is not coming from Oligarchs but it is coming from Sloviki. There is something of a power-sharing agreement between Putin and Russian oligarchical team, but it is one sided and mostly economic: Putin allows them to run large moneymaking entities in Russia and abroad, and in return, they help him launder his own funds or assist him for whatever else he deems them useful. But the oligarchs have no direct access to hard power, such as police or other armed security forces in Russia. 

At this point, the real threat to Putin comes from the siloviki, a Russian word used loosely to describe Russia’s security and military elite. These are people like Nikolai Patrushev, currently the secretary of the Russian security council, and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), as well as other current and former senior security officials. Men like Patrushev and Bortnikov not only possess hard power, but they know how to use it and are inclined to do so. The FSB includes around 160,000 members of the Border Guard service, as well as thousands of armed personnel with law enforcement authorities. But the strength of the FSB comes not only from its ability to do violence; the organization is also highly secretive. FSB officers are skilled at working clandestinely, keeping their most sensitive operations strictly compartmented to small groups. Putin understands this better than most: He once ran the organization himself. The siloviki are willing to use this deadly mixture of hard power and secrecy when a serious threat to the Russian kleptocratic system emerges. That’s because the security elite derives their power from the system. The whole operation can flex when threatened; street protests are tolerated to a certain extent. When Soviet republics around the perimeter of the state were beginning to break away as declaring autonomy and even independence then the siloviki were witnessing a massive disruption that they feared would lead to the dissolution of the country and the power they had amassed as they had known it for decades. Rather than let the system from which they derived power and riches devolve further, they intervened, detaining Gorbachev while he was vacationing. In the end, the attempted coup was unsuccessful, but it marked the beginning of the end of Gorbachev’s regime and the entire Soviet Union. It should be noted that Putin will see little threat from either oligarchs or common Russians. He has mechanisms to repress both, and he has done so effectively in the past.

No oligarch will forget the fate of Mikhael Khodorskovskiy, who spent 10 years in prison for challenging Putin politically and is now exiled in London. On the other hand the Siloviki pose a much more serious danger for Putin. If the security elite perceives the system is rotting, they will do what’s necessary to protect their interests. They have weapons and the personnel to threaten Putin. They know how to operate under Putin’s radar, because they are the ones in charge of the radar itself. And while it is reasonable to assume Putin has some means to monitor the Siloviki, he will not be able to follow their actions constantly and with great precision, given all the other issues on his plate. The invasion of Ukraine has triggered a withering response that threatens the viability of the Russian state. As in 1991, the country is at grave risk. The Siloviki, watching the slow-motion dissolution of the kleptocratic autocracy that has kept them in power for the past three decades, have the ability to end Putin’s regime. They may decide to act. 

Conclusion

Russia's president Vladimir Putin made the remarks on the new battle while he sees for geopolitical dominance. In that, he told his select audience that Peter the Great was a role model. Given the fact that Peter the Great did eventually conquered land from the Baltics to the Black Sea, President Putin has openly compared himself to the Russian tsar, equating Russia's invasion of Ukraine today with Peter's expansionist wars some three centuries ago. However President Putin and Peter the Great have different personal characteristics in which  Peter the Great, though a ruthless autocrat, was a huge admirer of Western ideas, science and culture, famously building St Petersburg as a "window on Europe" and travelling that continent thirsty for knowledge to help drag Russia towards modernity but Putin implementing increasingly repressive rule slowly closed that window on the West; the war on Ukraine has slammed it shut and Russia is determined to project defiance in the face of Western condemnation and sanctions and Putin himself certainly appeared relaxed rather than beleaguered. At this point, Putin's political destiny will be shaped differently from Tsar Peter's political destiny. 

Putin's political destiny will also be different than Tsar Alexander and Grand Duke Nicholas because of the fact that Tsar Alexander established strong state structure with help of closest advisor General Alexy Arakcheyev therefore Russian military forces entered in the streets of Paris and French Emperor Napoleon’s abdication was a moment of triumph for Russian Emperor Alexander and for Russian State in which Emperor Alexander also oversees creation of a “Holy Alliance” to ensure that no more revolutions threaten Europe’s established order at Vienna Meeting of 1815.  This is why Union of Salvation and Decembrists military coup plot have been failed. However Putin’s Russian army failed to enter in Kyiv to arrest Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy furthermore Putin achieved to unite all European states and NATO against Russia. If Siloviki organize itself like Union of Salvation and Decembrists on the way of regime change with coup attempt, they can have a chance to take result but it should be noted that Vladimir Putin as the product of a ruthless security system himself, has been preparing for the risks posed by a palace or military coup since he came into power in 1999. The Russian coercive apparatus has multiple mechanisms to prevent a coup. Putin know very well that If he is to fall from power, it is likely to come from elite defection rather than a premeditated coup. Those are Siloviki. 

President Putin would have same political destiny look like to Nikita Khrushchev given the fact that Nikita Khrushchev enjoyed strong support during the 1950s thanks to major victories like the Suez Crisis, the launching of Sputnik, the Syrian Crisis of 1957, and the 1960 U-2 incident. By the early 1960s however, Khrushchev's popularity was eroded by flaws in his policies, as well as his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But it should be noted that the Soviet system had essentially three major mechanisms to prevent a coup: party membership for officers, political commissars, and military counterintelligence. Only one of those three mechanisms remains in contemporary Russia. Unlike during the Soviet period, Russian officers are not generally party members and the Russian military has been notably politically passive. There is one major element of the Soviet system of civil-military relations still present in Russia, and that is the presence of a network of military counterintelligence agents posted in the armed forces. That’s key to Putin’s control. Putin has also removed the military from any potential role in domestic repression but if Siloviki use its intelligence network inside Russian Army then President Putin will face up military uprising or palace coup against himself. 

President Putin established national guard is separate from the Russian Armed Forces. A law signed by President Vladimir Putin established the federal executive body in 2016. The National Guard has the stated mission of securing Russia's borders, taking charge of gun control, combating terrorism and organized crime, protecting public order and guarding important state facilities. Rosgvardyia is an attempt by Vladimir Putin to create a private army to control civil strife or attempts of a colour revolution. Putin aims to remove any cause for using the regular military for domestic repression, it reduces the incentives for the Russian military to attempt a coup. Dictators from Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez learned the dangers of calling on the military to repress mass protests. Another case is that On February 19-20, 2014, Yanukovych ordered his security forces to fire live ammunition on protesters, killing around 70 people. Rather than quelling the protests, however, the repression led to their intensification and the defection of key security services and top figures in the regime. Shortly thereafter, Ukranian security service announced it would cease operations against protesters, and the forces guarding the government left their posts. With no security forces remaining willing to repress, Yanukovych fled into exile in Russia.

President Vladimir Putin suspecting from Siloviki to implement a palace coup and Putin know that there are few Siloviki member in Russia capable of moving against him. He even suspecting from his own security services Rosgvardyia could remove him. But the costs of a failed coup against Putin would be potentially enormous. Failed plotters generally face jail, exile, or execution. If Siloviki led military coup failed, they know that they will share same faith with Lavrenti Beria of Soviet Union or Decembrist Group of Russian Kingdom.