-Analysis-
Not too long ago in a cafe in the center of Europe, I met a former minor official of the ruling United Russia party, which unanimously backed Vladimir Putin in the presidential elections earlier this month. The former official has a residency permit, and he recounts with a smile how even now the party congratulates him, on occasion awarding him with various sorts of certificates and thanks.
When asked how things are going with his higher-ranking colleagues and officials — after all, Putin is waging a war on the West “for the sake of Russia’s survival” — the former official confidently replies that all’s well with everyone. Of course, while prominent people cannot go to Europe, their children, wives and mistresses have no trouble getting there. And Russian people are used to living for the sake of their children and grandchildren.
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Another question is how, after the isolation, all these Putin-supporters — party members, apparatchiks (“operatives”), civil servants, and people from state banks and corporations — imagine their future and the future of their descendants in Russia given the increasing repressions and bans, strengthening of special services and appearance of a new caste of heroes of the Special Military Operation, exempt from criminal liability.
To that question, the former United Russia official answers simply: “No way.” The main stratum of these officials is out of sight; they live by the principle: keep a low profile and do not contradict Putin’s vision. But they do not see the lives of their children and grandchildren associated with Russia.
The holy war
We don’t know whether Putin’s innermost circle believes in his holy war with the West — this circle is so hit up with sanctions that even the children of the president’s friends are unlikely to get across the border. And they have involuntarily become patriots. Before this, some of them managed to obtain European citizenship and even change their names to sound less foreign, like the son of Putin’s friend, Roman “Michael Oliver” Rotenberg.
But it’s easy to see that the fixation on a holy war for the very existence of the Russian state ends somewhere at the second echelon of people closest to Putin. Take, for example, the major state bankers.
During WWII, the families of Soviet party leaders did not nest in countries allied with Hitler.
The nephew of Sberbank CEO Herman Gref has lived in Switzerland longer than in Russia and was specially prepared to manage the Gref family assets (as documents from the Pandora Papers show). VTB Bank CEO Andrey Kostin beautifully protects his family’s European property.
And two days after Important Stories published a feature on the wife of Gazprombank head Andrey Akimov (the model Daria Popova) and her love for European and American glitz, she appeared in the pages of a glossy fashion magazine and at a fashion show in the Netherlands.
WWII aura
Support for the holy war ends somewhere close to the level of certain United Russia leaders, the heads of the regions. For example, the governor of the Moscow region Andrey Vorobyov tells children gathered in a hall and wearing Youth Army uniforms about the war against the West for the sake of survival. Yet his own nephews, who are just about the same age, live in London.
Some ask Important Stories “why are you pestering their children and wives? They have the right to live their own lives!” This position — supported by Russian propagandists among others — is surprising.
Following Putin’s lead, they are trying to create an almost World War II aura around the invasion of Ukraine, an uncompromising struggle against fascism and its accomplices. And they are accusing U.S. and Europe of aiding and abetting.
Yet Putin has clearly gotten mixed up about wars. During WWII, the children and wives of Soviet party leaders and commissars did not nest in countries allied with Hitler. The nomenklatura (Soviet bureaucrats) began to dream of being in the West, or at least abroad, with their children and wives during the failed Cold War.
An ideological hybrid
Putin knows this from his own experience and those of his friends; even as KGB officers, they strived for a better life, albeit in East Germany. Putin’s friend Nikolai Tokarev once begged a fellow student (a gifted artist in higher-level KGB classes) to take him to see a general who was in charge of service abroad assignments.
To make a good impression, they presented a portrait of the general, drawn by the artistic classmate. Later, the daughter of Tokarev (head of the state-owned Transneft oil company) received a Cyprus passport, and his granddaughter studied at a prestigious British school.
Maybe it’s even good that the families of not-so-ordinary Russians have settled or are striving to settle in Europe.
This all demonstrate a particular ideological hybrid in Russia today. A beastly serious fight against the collective West is being imposed on the ordinary Russians, who must go to the front and die for the idea. All while the not-so-ordinary Russians enjoy European benefits, including all the freedoms and human rights that Putin is fighting against.
Maybe it’s even good that the children, wives and mistresses of the not-so-ordinary Russians have long since settled or are striving to settle in Europe. After all, it is most likely this double life of the core masses of Putin’s officials that will ultimately defeat the insane artificial structures of this elderly dictator — just as it once defeated the seemingly much stronger and more consistent Soviet ideology.
*The author of this piece requested anonymity.
