[RoloSlavskiy] Rumors of Heads Rolling in Russia's Deep StateTo converge or not to converge? That is the question that will decide Russia's fate.
As anyone who isn’t totally out of the loop knows, Russia has suffered some serious setbacks in recent months. It turns out that the people in charge of the Kiev operation and the subsequent Donbass campaign messed up and messed up big-time. But, who are these people? It’s certainly not Peskov or Lavrov or Zakharova or any of the outward-facing members of the Russian government. The three aforementioned civil servants have demonstrated time and again that they aren’t in Putin’s inner circle and generally don’t seem to be trusted with important information like, for example, oh I don’t know, the fact that Russia was preparing a surprise military operation. Also, if we apply some logic, for all their faults and ideological leanings, they can’t be blamed for what transpired.
So who, then, was in charge of the Kiev operation? Well, I believe that the evidence that we have so far points to a special department of the FSB being tasked with the special operation. The broader answer, however, includes the Russian Deep State.
Like in America, the public is largely ignorant of who is in the deep state, what their motivations are, and how much power they actually have. The now-classic formulation for explaining the power balance in Russia, which you will be taught in American universities if you study the field, is that there is a balance between the oligarchs and the “siloviks” that runs Russia. I see nothing wrong with this model and it’s widely accepted within Russia by people of all political stripes and persuasions. Now, its hard enough to figure out which oligarch or oligarchic faction is in favor and how much influence they have. But it gets murkier still when we start digging deeper into the siloviks.