MOSCOW: Since former KGB colonel Vladimir Putin moved into the Kremlin in early 2000, army men and intelligence chiefs have played an increasingly dominant role in Russian politics, both in central government and in the regions.

Few observers found it odd at first that Putin should choose to appoint former agent friends to his immediate entourage.

But some have voiced concern at the amplitude of the phenomenon and at the massive influx of recruits from the armed forces.

“In the past three years there has been massive recruitment among the men in uniform,” warned Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist and author of an Academy of Science-backed research paper on “the Putin elite.”

“This has brought about profound changes among the governing class and among their priorities,” she warned.

Without a political network of his own, Putin surrounded himself with those he most felt he could trust in order to implement his vision of the “power vertical” — the hierarchical structure that would impose the Kremlin’s stamp across this vast country.

“He himself brought five people with him, each of these in turn brought five others, and each of these 25 brought still others. There is a snowball effect, and the president no longer controls the process,” Kryshtanovskaya noted.

Under Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin, the “siloviki” — the nickname comes from the Russian for “forces” — held 11 per cent of the public administrative posts while they now hold 25 per cent, her survey concluded.

Military and intelligence men are particularly concentrated in the higher echelons of power, making up 58 per cent of the total, with the regional elite, federal inspection agencies (30 per cent) and ministries also showing high proportions of “siloviki.”

Their growing (some say pervasive) influence has given rise to apprehension, with Russia’s richest man, Yukos oil chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, warning of a steady drift towards a muscular military-style administration of the kind often found in Latin America in the last century.

Since last month Khodorkovsky, who is backing liberal parties rather than the pro-Kremlin centrist movement in next December’s parliamentary elections, has been hounded by prosecutors combing Yukos for irregularities.

Russian media say that Viktor Ivanov — a former KGB man now deputy chief of staff — and Igor Setshin, believed to be a former foreign intelligence operative and now head of Putin’s secretariat, launched the assault on Khodorkovsky.

Putin himself has admitted that “once a Chekist, always a Chekist” — a reference to the CheKa, the original name for the political police.

“The people of the special services have their own ideology, their own logic and perspective,” Alexander Golts of the weekly Ezhenedelny magazine noted.

The specialist noted that most of the ex-KGB newcomers were “of the same generation, between 40 and 50 years of age.”

Kryshtanovskaya concurred, observing that “the security agents and the military (handpicked by Putin to head regional districts as his representatives) were brought up in a hierarchy they hold to and obey.”

Aside from the war in Chechnya that Putin launched as prime minister in October 1999, the gradual shutdown of private television channels and mounting pressure on the business world are the immediate consequences of this shared philosophy.

Some analysts believe that the atmosphere may lighten up once the legislative elections are over and if the Kremlin wins the parliamentary majority it requires.

However, others warn of a dangerous slide to “neo-authoritarianism” which could grow harsher once the new elite’s grip on power is assured.

“Putin understands that his people don’t always have what it takes, but they are family and he wants to keep them,” Golts said.

A liberal economist, Yevgeny Yasin, warned last week that the Yukos affair could be “a turning point which will see Russia either become a real democracy or turn into a police state.”—AFP