Putin's entourage
All the President’s Men
President Vladimir Putin reigns supreme in Russia. His grip on power is absolute. But he is certainly not the only one governing the country.
In the other sections of this website regularly appears, besides the name of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (1878-1953), other names of rulers who built a notorious reputation during Bulgakov's time. Think, for example, of Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (1875-1933), the People's Commissar of the Narkompros, or his brother-in-law Aleksander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov (1873-1928), head of Proletkult, or Genrikh Grigorievich Yagoda (1891-1938), the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs who organised the first series of the infamous Show Trials. They were part of an entourage whose primary goal, individually, was to remain in the ruler's good graces. They achieved this by fulfilling his stated or perceived wishes as meticulously as possible, no matter how absurd or unrealistic they may have been.
The same phenomenon is occurring in the Putin era. Various influential groups - former Soviet spies, apolitical technocrats, and those Putin knew from his time as a civil servant in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s - constantly vie for the president's attention. They are also the ones who shape and carry out Putin's wishes. A detailed account of these men and their «achievements» can be found in Catherine Belton's book, Putin's People.
Catherine Belton
On April 18, 2025, Oleksiy Sorokin, the deputy editor-in-chief of The Kyiv Independent, published an overview of Putin's entourage in his newspaper, which we gratefully use to identify the various political groups at the highest levels of power in the Russian Federation and to try to understand their actual aspirations.
Oleksiy Sorokin
Before the start of the all-out war in Ukraine, both Russian and foreign media outlets played a guessing game to determine the Kremlin's next steps.
The reason for this was that Putin was surrounded by various political groups with different priorities who were trying to steer the country in different directions by influencing the president. These groups were colloquially, and sometimes ironically, known as «Kremlin Towers,» an idiom referring to the fact that the Moscow Kremlin has 19 different towers..
The Siloviki
The most powerful of these influential groups is undoubtedly the group of fanatical hardliners, known by the Russian word силовики [siloviki], which can be translated as strongmen.
Among them are officials such as Aleksander Bortnikov, director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB); Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service; Viktor Zolotov, head of the Russian National Guard; and Putin's aide Nikolai Patrushev, who led the FSB before Bortnikov.
Aleksander Bortnikov
Bortnikov, Naryshkin and Patrushev all attended Putin's school... the KGB school. The three worked for the Soviet security service alongside Putin for many years.
Sergej Naryshkin
Zolotov, along with former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, was added to this group over time. Zolotov was the bodyguard of Putin's former boss, the mayor of Saint Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, while Shoigu was a longtime government official, Minister of Emergency Aid since 1992, and later leader of United Russia, Putin's political party.
All these men share a common background. They are the same age and have a common worldview, based on the idea that Russia is surrounded by enemies, that the West caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, and that the former Soviet states are «there for the taking».
Nikolai Patrushev
Friends from Saint Petersburg
The second group consists of Putin's friends from Saint Petersburg, sometimes also called the Ozero dacha cooperative. I'll explain exactly what that entails later. This group is extremely interesting.
Putin was born and raised in Saint Petersburg. His political career began there. He went to school there, learned judo, and after a few decades with the KGB, he started working in the administration of Saint Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. The people he befriended then were the ones he brought to power when he took office in Moscow.
Arkady Rotenberg was Putin's judo partner in the 1960s. He later helped Putin in the Saint Petersburg administration in the 1990s. When Putin took office, Arkady Rotenberg and his brother Boris Rotenberg suddenly became successful businessmen with their construction and energy companies. Both became billionaires in the late 2010s.
Arkady Rotenberg
Back to the Ozero dacha cooperative then. In the mid-1990s, eight men acquired large plots of land on the shores of Lake Komsomolskoye northwest of Saint Petersburg. The cooperative was named Озеро [Ozero] or The Lake. They built luxurious summer homes on this lucrative land and spent much time together.
One of them was Vladimir Putin; the other seven became successful businessmen and government officials when Putin became president.
Vladimir Yakunin became director of Russian Railways. Andrey Fursenko became Minister of Education and later presidential aide. His brother Sergey Fursenko became chairman of the Zenit football club and later president of the Russian Football Union.
Vladimir Yakunin
Sergey Fursenko
Others in the group became bankers and directors of lucrative state-owned companies. The most interesting among them is Yuri Kovalchuk, Putin's closest friend, who is said to have had the greatest influence on shaping the president's worldview.
Yuri Kovalchuk
Several key members of the Saint Petersburg group, however, were not part of the Ozero dacha cooperative, like the Rotenberg brothers, Igor Setchin, and Dmitry Medvedev.
Both Setchin and Medvedev were Putin's right-hand men when he became deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg. As a reward for their loyalty, Setchin eventually gained control of Rosneft, the country's largest energy company, which acquired the assets of the former Yukos company of the imprisoned tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Medvedev assumed the presidency between Putin's second and third terms - naturally, with a vigilant Putin on hand.
In Putin's People, Catherine Belton also mentions the names of billionaire Gennady Nikolaevich Timchenko, who holds citizenship in three countries: the Russian Federation, Finland, and Armenia, and Viktor Vasilievich Cherkesov. The latter, however, no longer plays any role, as he died in 2022.
The technocrats
The third group is the least influential and consists of a number of apolitical technocrats who manage the country's daily life.
Among them is Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, best known for his unobtrusive presence and his long-standing role in managing Russia's tax system. Aleksei Kudrin, who led the Russian Ministry of Finance for many years, was also part of this group. Another member is Elvira Nabyullin, head of the Russian Central Bank.
This group did not share aggressive views and did not want wars. They were the ones who kept the country running when those wars began. The Central Bank's monetary policy has been astute and efficient. It blocked the withdrawal of money from the banking system to prevent panic in the initial stages of Russia's all-out war against Ukraine and raised interest rates to compensate for inflation. Their worldview is far away from Putin's, but their effectiveness is what keeps them in control.
A new generation of technocrats is also entering Moscow's top cabinets. Kirill Dmitriev, for example, the CEO of the Russian Investment Fund Direcy, chaired the talks with US President Donald Trump's envoys in Washington. His career was boosted by his wife's friendship with Putin's daughter.
The warlords
There are a few other groups worth mentioning. The regional elites, particularly those of the Chechen Republic, are among them. Warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of Chechnya, rules his region like a fiefdom. With his aggressive rhetoric and ruthless ways, Kadyrov is among Putin's most loyal vassals as one of the strongest supporters of Russia's war against Ukraine.
Ramzan Kadyrov
Ultranationalism Before the war in Ukraine, all these power centers were constantly competing with each other. It was a constant tug-of-war, a fight over this or that gas company, a piece of land, a lucrative deal, or a favourable law they coveted. While all this fighting took place behind closed doors, journalists tried to interpret every new development as a sign that one group was winning and the other was losing. They also regularly tried to guess who the leader of each group was, who was closer to Putin, and who Putin trusted most. According to Russian writer and journalist Mikhail Zygar, Putin decided to launch his large-scale invasion of Ukraine during the coronavirus pandemic, when he was in isolation for months at his Valdai residence, located between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The man who spent the most time with him at that time was his old friend Yuri Kovalchuk, who shared the same ultranationalist ideas. Two 70-year-old men, sitting in a remote house far from civilisation, decided to launch a brutal invasion that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives. According to Zygar, Putin's already established worldview was further radicalised by Kovalchuk, who encouraged him to read ultranationalist literature, such as the writings of Ivan Ilyin, Vasily Rozanov and others who defended Russia's right to own conquered lands and emphasised the need for an oppressive, centralised state. One could argue that this meant the hardliners had won, but in retrospect, it's more accurate to say that they were always in charge, because the man pulling the strings was one of them. Vladimir Putin's interest in ultranationalism, his desire to control neighbouring countries, and his idea that might is always right were present from the beginning. Under the current system, in totalitarian Russia, the power struggle between various political groups and alliances will not change the way Russia operates. It's still one man who holds the reins. That man has already made his decisions and won't go back on them, but it will be very interesting to see how the various power centers, most of which dislike each other, react when Vladimir Putin's grip on power loosens. |