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  Machinations in the Kremlin: Putin's Risky Bid to Hold on to Power

Machinations in the Kremlin Putin's Risky Bid to Hold on to Power

By Uwe Klussmann, Christian Neef and Matthias Schepp in Moscow

Part 2: The Power Struggle Behind the Scenes

It doesn't exactly take psychic abilities to arrive at this conclusion. The fact that the parliamentary election, according to one of the heads of the governing party, is to become a "referendum" on Putin, means that the Kremlin obviously plans to do everything in its power to surpass the outcome of the March 2004 presidential election, in which Putin captured 71.3 percent of the votes. The result would be that the pseudo-leftist opposition party, Fair Russia -- another Kremlin creation -- would barely exceed the 7-percent hurdle needed to enter the Duma, while the remainder of the vote could go to the communists and the supporters of right-wing populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

AP

President Vladimir Putin, and his new Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov. With no power base of his own, Zubkov would likely play his preordained part in any Putin plan.

Anyone who was paying close attention would also have perceived a note of displeasure at the United Russia party convention. Some delegates were clearly upset by the fact that party officials, without further ado, had simply stricken Sergei Bogdanchikov, a Putin favorite, from the list of candidates. Bogdanchikov is the head of the state-owned Rosneft oil company, Russia's largest oil producer.

The episode reveals a hidden power struggle between opposing groups within the Kremlin and shines a spotlight on Russia's internal make-up. Indeed, the power question is not decided in elections, but in a brutal struggle among interest groups. The leaders of these groups are not political candidates, and yet, next to Putin, they see themselves as the country's true masters.

Bogdanchikov belongs to the camp of Igor Sechin, Rosneft's chairman of the board of directors and deputy head of the presidential administration. Sechin, a former intelligence agent who worked for Putin when the president was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, is seen as a shrewd puppet master in the Kremlin.

In one episode, Sechin attempted to turn his brother-in-law, the then prosecutor general, into a political heavyweight, until Putin replaced the man. In another instance, he made the 25-year-old son of the most important Russian intelligence chief an advisor at Rosneft. These kinds of intrigues threaten the stability of the Putin system.

In response, a high-powered trio of intelligence officials has mobilized against Sechin and his supporters: Viktor Cherkesov, Putin's former deputy at the domestic intelligence agency FSB and the current head of the narcotics police, Yury Chaika, the prosecutor general, and Viktor Zolotov, the head of the presidential security service.

The rivalry between the two intelligence camps, which are involved in a dispute over corruption, creates growing problems for Putin. The two camps have their own way of interpreting the fight against corruption that the president touted in his speech at the party convention as "one of the major social and political problems" in Russia: The corrupt officials are always the ones in the other camp.

The two groups are fighting tooth and nail in their turf war. On the day the party convention anointed Putin as its top candidate, FSB officers in Moscow arrested a general in the narcotics police who was also a Cherkesov confidante on charges of abusing his position. The arrest followed on the heels of the accused general's own investigation into corrupt FSB officials. The warring camps are unlikely to reconcile anytime soon, no matter how many times Putin attempts to balance their respective interests. "We could even see a Night of the Long Knives," fears one Kremlin advisor.

Putin recognizes the risks in his own ranks. He warned the party delegates that a simplified process for prosecuting corruption offences could easily "lead to arbitrary actions, which in turn would lead to more corruption."

His willingness to run for the position of prime minister could even exacerbate the tensions within the power structure. Putin can at first rely on Viktor Zubkov, the political unknown who was appointed prime minister three weeks ago. The two men share intimate knowledge of business deals that Putin approved in the early 1990s as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.

It is also possible that Zubkov will bow to Putin's plans to mold him into a sort of ceremonial president at the Kremlin, one who would leave the real political power in Putin's hands when he becomes prime minister.

But the powerful presidential administration will hardly agree to a watering down of their influence. If Zubkov becomes president, members of the administration could convince him to invoke Article 83 of the Russian constitution, which entitles the head of state to dissolve the government -- including sacking the prime minister.

If Putin, with his machinations, does manage to bridge the gap to another term, the country could indeed be in for autocratic rule -- a prospect that frightens even pro-Kremlin commentators. "The risk of another major stagnation is greater than ever before in Russia today," wrote columnist Mikhail Rostovsky in the pro-government newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets,a reminder to his readers of the 18 crippling years during which General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, who was ailing by the end of his rule, dominated the Soviet realm. The country lacks a "transparent mechanism for a change of government," Rostovsky wrote.

The implication is that, like Brezhnev, Putin, who celebrated his 55th birthday last Sunday, could also end up growing old in office.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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