10 Reasons Why Vladimir Putin is a Terrible Human Being
7. He Has Presided Over an Utterly Corrupt Kleptocracy, Run By Ex-KGB Oligarchs
Over the four terms Mr Putin has been in power, a group of ex-KGB operatives has consolidated its political and economic power, and built a new sort of corporate state in the process. Men from the FSB and its sister organisations control the Kremlin, the government, the media, and large parts of the economy,as well as the military and security forces. Three-quarters of the country’s senior bureaucrats are siloviki—a Russian word meaning, roughly, “power guys,” which includes members of the armed forces and other security services, not just the FSB.
By many indicators, today’s security bosses enjoy a combination of power and money unprecedented in Russia’s history. The Soviet KGB and its pre-revolutionary ancestors did not care much about money; power was what mattered. Influential though it was, the KGB was a “combat division” of the Communist Party, and subordinate to it.
Now, however, the FSB has become the state itself. Apart from Mr Putin, there is nobody today who can say no to the FSB. All important decisions in Russia are now taken by a tiny group of men who served alongside Mr Putin in the KGB and who come from his home town of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). They control almost all of Russia’s economy and the finances, and have illegally enriched themselves in the process, becoming multi-millionaires and billionaires. Immense government corruption, vast embezzlement and uncontrolled access to state coffers have become the norm under Putin’s kleptocratic regime.
