Russia: Analyst Discusses New Prosecutor-General

Political analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky (file photo) (RFE/RL) PRAGUE, June 29, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- RFE/RL's Russian Service spoke with Moscow-based political analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky about the recent appointment of Justice Minister Yury Chaika as prosecutor-general. Pribylovsky, who is the director of the Panorama think tank, argued that although the prosecutor's office has long been subject to politically motivated influence from the Kremlin, the latest move tightens the bonds between the prosecutor-general and President Vladimir Putin.

RFE/RL: What is the political significance of the events going on now around the Prosecutor-General's Office?

Vladimir Pribylovsky: I agree with analysts who argue that what happened was a sort of redistribution of the balance of power within the team of [President Vladimir] Putin. The extraordinarily large influence of the group around [deputy presidential administration head Igor] Sechin was restricted a little. The prosecutor-general has been placed under the direct control of the president, without any mediators -- which is the role that Sechin played when [Dmitry] Ustinov was in the position. We will see the same kind of imitation war against corruption that we have seen over roughly the past two months, in which criminal cases will be filed and secondary figures will be jailed -- people who most likely are guilty of something, are somehow soiled, but about whom the main point is that someone wants them out of the way, that they are blocking someone's path, that they don't belong to any of the main groups in Putin's entourage -- or that within the framework of one of those groups, they occupy some peripheral spot so that no one will come to their defense. [Nenets Autonomous Okrug] Governor [Aleksei] Barinov , broadly speaking, belonged to the LUKoil group, but no one is going to break a sweat helping him.

RFE/RL: Does this mean that the Russian political sphere sees itself or will see itself as a space where independent people are not welcome, where there are only "our" people and "their" people, and where everyone of our people or their people has someone in the Kremlin protecting them, where they have to have some protectors within the Prosecutor-General's Office?

Pribylovsky: I would say that this has been the case for a long time. Nothing important has changed in this respect. This system has existed, I would say, since the time of [former President Boris] Yeltsin, although it hasn't completely solidified yet. In addition, under Putin there has been a regrouping of the clans. The clans that dominated in the late Yeltsin period have been dispersed and pushed into the corner or have broken up and dispersed themselves. New clans and groups have settled in firmly around the president and every once in a while they clash a little bit, pull the chairs out from under one another.

RFE/RL: On one side of Putin, you have Igor Sechin. On the other, [deputy presidential administration head Vladislav] Surkov. Who else is among the "nobility"?

Pribylovsky: I would say that Surkov is not among the first rank. He is more of a servant, although a very important one. I'd say the elite is Sechin, [First Deputy Prime Minister] Dmitry Medvedev, [Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister] Sergei Ivanov, and [Russian Railways head] Vladimir Yakunin. As for the second rank, there would be Surkov, who in my opinion has been working lately for Dmitry Medvedev, although he might also play some sort of independent role.

RFE/RL: Among the group that was close to Yeltsin, that agreed on the handover of power and put Vladimir Putin into his position, have any of them remained?

Yury Chaika (TASS file photo)

Pribylovsky: Putin was placed on the throne by two Yeltsin-era groups. One was the so-called Family, which was informally headed by [former oligarch Boris] Berezovsky. The second was the so-called Petersburg economists, informally headed then and now by [Unified Energy Systems head Anatoly] Chubais. They fought with one another, but they were united by the fear that the group headed by [former Prime Minister Yevgeny] Primakov and [Moscow Mayor Yury] Luzhkov would come to power. After the Family was broken up, part of it went into emigration and part into the opposition. But the Chubais group remains intact, although it only plays a role in the economy. Since President Putin trusts them as economists and financial specialists, they have retained their posts -- the Central Bank, the Finance Ministry. That is, Chubais,[Economic Development and Trade Minister German] Gref, [Central Bank Chairman Sergei] Ignatiyev, [Finance Minister Aleksei] Kudrin -- although they are clearly not the leading group in political life.

RFE/RL: Now there are rumors about the impending departure of two deputy prosecutor-generals, people whose names are widely known to the general public because they were involved in high-profile prosecutions. I mean Vladimir Kolesnikov and Sergei Fridinsky. Are these independent figures or is this just the replacement of one group of henchmen by another?

Pribylovsky: Of course, there are no genuinely independent people there. They are all obedient -- Ustinov himself -- if he had been told in time that he was making some sort of mistake from Sechin's point of view -- he would have changed his ways. There are no independent people in the leadership of the Prosecutor-General's Office -- they are all obedient and do what they are told. If they are told to resign, they resign. But there are some original people.