Of all the Siloviki, one of the closest to Putin – and the one with the most influence over him – has long been Igor Sechin. As Putin’s deputy chief of staff since 2000, Sechin oversaw the recruitment of KGB men to positions in the Kremlin. His position as Putin’s gatekeeper, in charge of the president’s diary, deciding who should be seen who should not, allowed Sechin to influence the direction of the country. He was a pragmatic hardliner who despised the civil liberty, free speech, pro-business policies of the liberals who had run the country under Boris Yeltsin. The Siloviki came from the security services, with a lifetime’s indoctrination that made them instinctively antagonistic towards the West; many of them regarded Yeltsin as a stooge of Washington. Once in power, Sechin’s behind-the-scenes influence helped to persuade Putin to ditch any remaining liberal sympathies and adopt the repressive, nationalistic policies that would come to define his presidency.
Before he became the CEO of Rosneft, Sechin worked for the KGB, notably in the late Cold War hot spots of Mozambique and Angola. As noted above, he consolidated his alliance with Putin during Putin’s time as deputy mayor of St Petersburg, becoming his devoted secretary and bagman, rarely leaving his master. Putin has kept Sechin close to him ever since, making him one of the most trusted representatives of the Siloviki clique. Despised and feared in equal measure, Sechin was instrumental in convincing Putin formally to renationalise firms, including Yukos, that had been privatised under Yeltsin, while in fact putting the whole of the oil and gas sector under the control of his own inner circle. Sechin was described by the former US ambassador, John Beyrle, in confidential cables released by Wikileaks, as the ‘grey cardinal’ of the Kremlin, ‘who has sought to break the power of the oligarchs, confiscate and amalgamate their assets into state companies under Siloviki control and to limit Western influence’. The damage he has inflicted on the Russian economy is incalculable.
Sechin is notoriously territorial, willing to go to great lengths to protect his position as Putin’s chief adviser. His anti-liberal convictions pitched him into conflict with Dmitry Medvedev, once regarded as the leader of a liberalising tendency in the Kremlin. In 2016, Sechin moved against his rival by entrapping Prime Minister Medvedev’s ally and minister of economic development, Alexey Ulyukaev, in a sting operation that led to the latter becoming the first serving minister to be arrested in Russia since the reign of Stalin. The move was a risky powerplay that could have backfired, but Sechin was secure in his position. The men he called upon to make the arrest were operatives from the Sixth Service of the FSB’s Internal Security Department, an elite unit that Sechin himself had created back in 2004 and knew he could count on. He had used them previously to carry out delicate operations, including the arrests of regional governors who refused to toe the Kremlin line. On 14 November 2016, Sechin invited Ulyukaev into his office and presented him with a suitcase that was later found to contain $2 million, as well as ordering a basket of sausages made from fresh game personally shot by himself to be loaded into Ulyukaev’s car. Unaware that Sechin was recording their encounter, Ulyukaev gratefully accepted the gifts, claiming later that he thought the suitcase was full of wine. All this ‘evidence’ would be used to charge him with corruption, backed by a sworn statement from Sechin that the money had been ‘extorted’ from him as a payment for Ulyukaev’s rubber stamping of a deal to transfer the Bashneft oil company to Rosneft.
At his trial, Ulyukaev denied all knowledge of the money and the recording produced by Sechin was remarkably unconvincing. Ulyukaev’s defence lawyers suggested that the prosecution was politically motivated, arising from a disagreement between the two men over the shady dealings of Rosneft. They summonsed Sechin to appear in person to be cross examined, but his office replied that he was too busy. When the court sentenced Ulyukaev to eight years in a strict regime labour camp, he compared the proceedings to the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s.
In all the Kremlin infighting, Putin has feigned the role of the ‘good tsar’, ostensibly holding the ring between his competing courtiers, while in reality he has played them off against each other. In the rivalry between Medvedev and Sechin, Putin has favoured the latter, possibly because of Medvedev’s performance during the time he served as stand-in president between 2008 and 2012. Putin had put him in the post merely to keep the seat warm for his own return to the job, but Medvedev let power go to his head, developing aspirations to hold on to the presidency, an uncalled-for show of ambition that angered Putin. As soon as the two resumed their proper offices in 2012, with Medvedev as prime minister, Putin responded by using Medvedev as a lightning rod against the people’s anger at falling living standards and making him take the blame for unpopular pension reforms. When Medvedev was confronted in 2016 by OAPs demanding pension increases, he made a run for it, muttering, ‘There simply isn’t any money at the moment … Hang on in there, all of you. I wish you all the best and hope you have a nice day…’ His vanishing act inspired a rush of comic songs and sketches viewed by millions on social media.
Sympathy for Medvedev was short-lived. In 2017, Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation released video evidence that suggested the ‘simpleton’ was also involved in crooked schemes. ‘Even this incompetent,’ Navalny alleged, had been able to pilfer millions of dollars from the country’s coffers. ‘Far from being a simpleton who falls asleep during important events, [Medvedev] is one of our country’s richest people and one of its most corrupt politicians’, Navalny claimed. Money that should have been spent on improving living standards and urgently needed infrastructure projects had gone instead, it was said, to help Medvedev and his associates accumulate real estate at home and abroad, funding luxurious lifestyles unimaginable to the millions forced to survive on threadbare state pensions. ‘They have palaces, residences and country estates, yachts and vineyards in Russia and abroad,’ said Navalny, ‘not to mention smartphones, gadgets and personalised Nike trainers.’ The photos of Medvedev’s interior- designed homes with one-of-a-kind architectural features were accompanied by screenshots of receipts, all of which were printed in someone else’s name, and evidence shown of vast wealth secretly held for him by fake charities and willing pals from his schooldays. Such is the nature of Putin’s inner circle that there is simply no place in it for anyone who is alleged to be mired in corruption.
Despite its devastating effect on his reputation, Medvedev responded to Navalny’s exposé by saying that the corruption evidence was ‘from weird stuff, nonsense and some pieces of paper’.7 Others have been less restrained. In 2018, Putin’s bodyguard, Viktor Zolotov, announced that he was challenging Navalny to a duel, with the intention of ‘pounding him into a nice, juicy cutlet’. ‘You know what your problem is?’ Zolotov asked Navalny rhetorically. ‘No one’s ever given you the beating you deserve. But now you’re going to find out! You libelled me in your internet report, so you and I are going to fight it out – in the ring, on the mat or wherever you choose. An officer doesn’t forgive that sort of insult; his honour demands he slap down the scoundrel who insulted him.’