‘Biggest Source of Tension’ in Russian Elites in Last Year is Kremlin’s Purge of Defense Ministry, Komin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 17 – “The biggest source of tension within the Russian elites in 2024 was the purge of the defense ministry,” according to Mikhail Komin, who argues that the removal of the most senior officials there, an action which can be called “rotation through repression” is something other members of the Russian elite fear could happen to them.  
    Those fears, the Russian scholar at the European Council on Foreign Relations says have been “intensified” by the purge has not led the transfer of control over rent flows from one clan to another but rather to the dividing up of what had been one can’t patrimony into several (carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2025/01/shoigu-clan-repressions).
    Doing that, Komin point out, “has never before taken place in a single entity such as the Defense Ministry. Instead, up to now, when one group was removed, another one was put in its place, based on the logic that “this helped prevent inter-elite conflicts.” But this shift may lead to a similar approach to other sectors as well.
    Indeed, he concludes, “dismantling major elite groups and encouraging inter-elite competition might become an approach that the Kremlin ends u using more broadly. It would be a logical way to adapt to a long standoff with the West. But it would also lead to an even greater personalization of power in Russia and increased uncertainty for the elite.”