A War Without Rules Has Begun Between The Kremlin Clans
- 20.11.2025, 12:55
Power turns into an arena of growing conflicts.
The fourth year of full-scale war with Ukraine has led to the destruction of the usual mechanisms of governance in Russia: law enforcement agencies are acting autonomously, and a systemic conflict is brewing within the government.
The government is turning into an arena of growing conflicts over sharply shrinking resources, wrote "Important Stories" citing sources close to the Kremlin and Russia's security agencies.
The system built by the Kremlin over two decades is disintegrating into autonomous interest groups that operate without regard for the center and clash directly with each other. One of the sources says that resources are shrinking rapidly, and the struggle for them has become systemic and all-encompassing.
He says that no loyalty or connections guarantee anything anymore.
This state is characterized by the disappearance of previous informal arrangements and the loss of the basic "rules of the game" that used to keep the elite within a manageable framework.
Sources say that representatives of the security agencies have stopped coordinating their actions with the government and the internal political bloc of the Putin administration. They now act autonomously, guided by their own interests.
FsB officers also speak of an internal reversal of the repressive apparatus. One current officer admitted that all equipment and resources have been redirected to wiretapping the government, regional administrations and other agencies.
The "foreign agent" tool, used for years to pressure the opposition and independent activists, is no longer a centralized AP tool. According to sources, the label is now being handed out without coordination with the Kremlin - big business owners and even pro-government speakers fall under it.
The first deputy head of the AP, Sergei Kiriyenko, who has been in charge of domestic policy since 2016, has also found himself in the midst of a hidden struggle. Sources say law enforcers often detain officials even among his appointees without notifying the AP in advance.
The security services believe that the tension around Kiriyenko is also due to his close ties to Yuri Kovalchuk, a shareholder of Rossiya Bank, who is described in elite circles as the second man in the country after Putin.
Kovalchuk remains a political rival for the security services, and the war has only intensified the contradictions between clan groups. According to sources, the longer Russia's war against Ukraine lasts and the more it affects the Russian economy, the sharper the conflicts between clans become.