Abstract
In 2006 Putin restored balance between the two main clans by swinging back to the Sechinites. However, rude shocks awaited the Sechinites, perhaps because, by backing Ustinov, they overplayed their hand. It was the Sechinite coup in defeating Cherkesov and gaining control of the Customs that turned the fierce rivalry between the two main silovik groups into full-scale warfare. In response, Cherkesov assigned one of his top aides, Aleksandr Bul’bov, to put taps on the Sechinites’ phones. Cherkesov reportedly then gave Putin phone transcripts that allegedly showed Sechin and Ustinov to have been disrespectful about Putin, describing him as a weak president and Ustinov as a potentially better one. On 1 June a top oligarch, Abramovich, called a secretive meeting of powerful people, who demanded that Putin dismiss Ustinov as procurator-general. Putin reluctantly replaced him with the pro-Medvedev Chaika. From Ustinov’s dismissal till November 2006 Putin sharply reduced Sechin’s responsibilities. Then he moved back and undermined Cherkesov.
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Notes
- 1.
Moscow News, as quoted in Baev, May 22, 2006.
- 2.
On these complex events see articles in Kommersant by Dmitri Butrin, May 30, 2006, and by Butrin and Andrei Tsyganov, June 17.
- 3.
See, e.g., Latynina, October 11, 2007, and also her article ‘Chekistskiy kryuk-2’, Ezhednevnyi zhurnal, June 4, 2008, where she specifies that the phones of not only Sechin and Ustinov were tapped, but also that of Patrushev.
- 4.
This paragraph is based in part on two articles by Yuliya Latynina, ‘Bol’shoi brat slyshit tebya’, Novaya Gazeta, October 11, 2007, and ‘Chekistskiy kriuk-2’, Ezhednevnyi zhurnal, June 4, 2008.
- 5.
See Pavel Baev, ‘Ustinov’s Firing Reveals Clan Maneuvering Inside Kremlin’, Eurasian Daily Monitor, June 5, 2006. Shevtsova made her points at a meeting of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that I attended in Washington, DC, on September 13, 2006.
- 6.
Personal communication from a reliable Russian source.
- 7.
Media accounts by Belkovsky and others said, for example, that Ustinov was investigating Vainshtok’s huge corporation Transneft, in which Abramovich and Deripaska were said to have shares.
- 8.
Private communication.
- 9.
Pribylovsky, 60 biografii-2010, p. 187.
- 10.
Gaaze et al., ‘Oblechen doveriem’, Russkiy N’yuzvik, October 10, 2010.
- 11.
See Delyagin’s interview on Ekho Moskvy radio, www.echo.msk.ru, June 2, 2006.
- 12.
Belkovsky’s interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, as quoted by Oleg Dement’ev in ‘Rozhdenie fenomena Dmitriya Medvedeva’, Rossiiskie vesti, June 14, 2006. Dement’ev saw the main beneficiary of Ustinov’s dismissal as being Medvedev, who, if he could bring the four big ‘national projects’ he was leading to fruition, would stand an excellent chance of being Putin’s successor.
- 13.
On these events see Sakwa, The Crisis of Russian Democracy, pp. 189–190. See also Chapter 2 above.
- 14.
In August 2007 General Kupryazhkin appeared on TV in connection with investigations into the 2005 murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and was reported to be still working for the FSS. His reputation suffered when the weekly The New Times alleged that he had been receiving millions of dollars for services rendered to Evraz, the giant metals company of the oligarch Aleksandr Abramov, and that one of his protectors was Aleksandr Bastrykin, head of the Investigations Committee attached to the Procuracy (ICP).
- 15.
Latynina, ‘Bol’shoi brat slyshit tebya’, Novaya Gazeta, October 11, 2007.
- 16.
On the material in this and the preceding paragraph see the article ‘Kit i mech’ and the history of the Tri Kita case, both in Kommersant, September 14, 2006. Cherkesov’s report also features in the article ‘Terrarium piterskikh edinomyshlennikov’, ‘Vokrug novostei’ (an electronic publication), October 17, 2006, vokrugnovostei.ru/news/news/19228.html. According to Pribylovsky in his book Vlast’-2010, p. 45, at some point Cherkesov and Zolotov wrote a joint letter to Putin (probably but not necessarily a different document) to lay some complaints against Patrushev. Although the book places this letter in 2007, in correspondence with me Pribylovsky said that more likely it was actually in 2006, since his source had probably made a dating error.
- 17.
In all, 36 people were charged. The first four were selected for trial in June 2010.
- 18.
Latynina, ‘Bol’shoi brat slyshit tebya’, Novaya Gazeta, October 11, 2007.
- 19.
See for example R. Ukolov’s article on such crimes recently committed in Moscow, Nezavisimaya gazeta, October 4, 2006.
- 20.
Matvienko had reportedly, in reality, long had good relations with Kumarin, conducted through intermediaries. But she had masked this fact to try to avoid suspicion that he was bribing her.
- 21.
See the article ‘Kumarina zhdet sud’, fontanka.ru, August 23, 2007, part of a valuable collection of articles on Kumarin and the Tambov group posted on compromat.ru on August 24, 2007. The fontanka article provides a useful history of the group from the 1980s on.
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Reddaway, P. (2018). May–June 2006: A Fight for the Customs Service—Full-Scale War Between the Silovik Clans; the Fall of Ustinov—A Triumph for the Cherkesovites. In: Russia’s Domestic Security Wars . Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77392-6_7
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