By definition, the interwoven fabric of organised crime, members of the siloviki, and dependent business groups, all operating out of self-interest, creates a self-sustaining environment of a violent predator food chain. As a result of this food chain, control of any large Russia-related asset or business (or societal activity), intrinsically, and by definition, relies on involvement with the siloviki and OCGs. If not for their involvement, a larger animal in the predator food chain would take over that asset or business. This food chain contains the fundamental building blocks of a constructed dictatorship. It implies that malign infection is endemic across the vast majority of the constructed system.
Absence of Justice
This predator food chain creates an environment of complete absence of equitable law. By definition, fair play and natural justice are not part of such an architecture. The food chain also creates a self-sustaining atmosphere of societal fear and distrust in civil society. In order to properly understand the resultant environment of the constructed dictatorship, a lens of ‘completely malign intent’ is an accurate way to look at this layered system, its events, and its participants.
The environment of dictatorship creates a commodification of society. People, assets, and the law are up for sale to the most violent bidder. The siloviki are fully aware of what they are doing and of the effect that this commodification has on Russian society. Equally so, the OCGs willingly operate for profit and power at any cost. The leadership of the Russian State, and the wider siloviki, have not allowed this constructed dictatorship to grow and develop by chance. Rather, they have carefully fostered its growth.
Some commentators regard Russia’s constructed dictatorship as a pyramid, with one person (the President of the Russian Federation) at its pinnacle. However, a more accurate description of the constructed dictatorship is a truncated pyramid, with a flat upper surface. That flat surface has thousands of people on it – Members of Parliament and Senate, regional Governors, senior judges, senior policemen, senior military officers, senior members of the security services, business leaders, and heads of OCGs.
The underlying body of the pyramid has tens of thousands of members across the largest country on the planet. This grouping includes aspiring politicians, traffic police, junior judges, lawyers, mid-level military officers, younger members of the security services, mid-level government employees, and OCG foot soldiers.
Some of the people on the pyramid’s upper surface have more power than others. Some are well-known names, and some hide in the periphery. However, they are all part of the same grouping. If the current president were to retire, the system would still be in place, and someone else from the pyramid would take over steerage of the constructed dictatorship.
In Russia, the people who lose from all of this are the wider population. They lack protection from the law, and their country is ruled by individuals with compulsive and chaotic visions of reality.
War in Ukraine
In the context of war in Ukraine, there is far more opportunity for the siloviki and OCGs to operate at will. Actions to forcefully change the ownership of assets can be justified as being ‘necessary’ and ‘patriotic’; or such actions can simply be hidden among the chaos of war. Law and ethics become irrelevant. ‘Car park justice’ – when a member of the siloviki or a member of an OCG tells a judge how to behave, or tells a lawyer what to sign – has become the order of the day.
Contracts (often of inflated value) for defence supply and war reconstruction can be awarded, and large-scale appropriation of commodities such as gold and diamonds can be carried out by private military companies (PMCs) on behalf of the siloviki. Banks and properties can change hands, disinformation can be spread, and people who dissent can be killed. This is all fuelled by the environment of war; war as cover for illicit activity within the constructed dictatorship.
The malign intent of this constructed dictatorship applies to siloviki and OCG activities across the world. In an environment of complete absence of equitable law, and alongside a predator mentality, global events are engineered and connected. A court case in one jurisdiction will be connected with financial events in another jurisdiction, which will be supported by a disinformation campaign in a further jurisdiction. In this context, highly engineered systems of related events are being used to obfuscate movements of money.
These patterns of activity are also present in the way in which the siloviki have penetrated Western European society. Lawyers in Western capitals knowingly work for members of the siloviki, assets are owned by individuals linked to the siloviki and OCGs, social institutions are infiltrated, the Western press are fed disinformation stories, hacking is rife, and it has become ‘normal’ for a PMC to send a sledgehammer to a politician in Brussels.
In a constructed dictatorship, the management and control of connected events, the management and control of the people in the system, and the fundamental intentions behind the system are all without respect for the law or society.
There is a constructed dictatorship in place in Russia. There is a violent food chain of self-interest which, by definition, dictates that theft, disinformation, and violent chaos are the order of the day. It is by looking through this lens that decisions about the dictatorship and its participants should be taken.
