From the Guardian: Putin’s security men: the elite group who ‘fuel his anxieties’

For our look at the executive branch and the nature of the people presidents surround themselves with. 

- Click here for it.

When Viktor Yanukovych sought to flee Ukraine as he was removed from the presidency in 2014, Vladimir Putin urgently summoned the heads of his military, security, and spy agencies for an all-night meeting on how to extract him. As they broke up at seven in the morning, he recalled, he told them: “We must start working on returning Crimea to Russia.”

In Putin’s telling, he was alone with his top security officials when he made one of the most fateful decisions of his political career.

Since then, Russia’s growing isolation has only strengthened the so-called siloviki, the Russian security men who have surrounded him, many of whom served in the KGB and have maintained conservative, often conspiratorial political views.

We do not know exactly how Putin makes his most important political decisions. Tatyana Stanovaya, the founder of political analysts R.Politik, recently divided the Russian elite into two groups: technocrats who dominate government but “have no remit to interfere in security matters” and the siloviki who “dominate the agenda, fuel Putin’s anxieties and provoke and escalate tension”.

As Russia gathers troops and appears ready to launch an attack in Ukraine, these security advisers may have an outsize effect on what happens next.