Spy Nation

It seems that Vladimir Putin is finding himself in very familiar company these days. Many of the prominent business leaders, especially in the energy sector are old pals. There are more and more former KGB officers filling those positions.

MOSCOW — On Nov. 15, the Russian Interior Ministry and Gazprom, the state-controlled energy giant, announced three new senior appointments. Oleg Safonov was named a deputy head of the ministry. Yevgeny Shkolov became head of its economic security department. And Valery Golubev was appointed a deputy chief executive at Gazprom.

All three men had something important in common beyond the timing of their promotions: backgrounds as KGB officers and experience working directly with President Vladimir Putin when he was a KGB operative himself in Germany or later, when he was a rising presence in the local government of St. Petersburg, his home town.

Russia's intertwined political and business elites are increasingly populated with people like them, former intelligence agents who have personally proved themselves to the president. At the same time, Putin has spearheaded the regrouping and strengthening of the country's security services, which had splintered into a host of agencies after the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991.

In particular, the Federal Security Service, known by its Russian initials FSB, has emerged as one of the country's most powerful and secretive forces, with an increasingly international mission. Putin headed the agency in the 1990s.

"If in the Soviet period and the first post-Soviet period, the KGB and FSB [people] were mainly involved in security issues, now half are still involved in security but the other half are involved in business, political parties, NGOs, regional governments, even culture," said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Moscow-based Center for the Study of Elites. "They started to use all political institutions."

Kryshtanovskaya recently analyzed the official biographies of 1,016 leading political figures — departmental heads of the presidential administration, all members of the government, all deputies of both houses of parliament, the heads of federal units and the heads of regional executive and legislative branches. She found that 26 percent had reported serving in the KGB or its successor agencies.

There really has been a steady increase in news reports about these developments in Russia lately, haven't there? Russia under the Soviets was a bureaucracy gone mad and it looks very much like it is reverting to those old ways. With a distinctively sinister twist this time, though. The KGB is still very much alive and growing in power. Russia is descending into a frightening, gangster-flavored autocracy and they are using the energy sector as their primary tool for exerting foreign policy.

Shell is being forced by the Russian government to hand over its controlling stake in the world's biggest liquefied gas project, provoking fresh fears about the Kremlin's willingness to use the country's growing strength in natural resources as a political weapon.

After months of relentless pressure from Moscow, the Anglo-Dutch company has to cut its stake in the $20bn Sakhalin-2 scheme in the far east of Russia in favour of the state-owned energy group Gazprom.

The Russian authorities are also threatening BP over alleged environmental violations on a Siberian field in what is seen as a wider attempt to seize back assets handed over to foreign companies when energy prices were low.

The moves will alarm many investors in the City of London as Shell and other share prices are hit, but the news will also increase ministers' concerns about Britain's energy security.

These really aren't good developments for either Russia or for the world.

Other Links to this Post

1. CARRY ON AMERICA » Blog Archive » Have Things Really Changed in Russia? — Tuesday, 12 December , 2006 @ 6:53 am