The suspension of the sale of foreign currencies and the new capital control measures in Russia will make the joy of a segment of the Russian population: organized crime. The shock imposed by sanctions in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine should facilitate the return of mobsters who were framed 20 years ago by the president and former spy.
Unstable heads of state with their finger on the nuclear button are a constant cause for worldwide fear, but Vladimir Putin, in control of the largest arsenal in existence, with some 6,000 warheads, is particularly frightening. He is trapped and cannot go back from the humanitarian catastrophe he created in two weeks.
The Russian president’s gangster career began in the former KGB, when, stationed in Dresden, in former East Germany, he asked terrorists from the legendary Baader-Meinhof group to steal speakers.
Putin became an adviser to the mayor of his native St. Petersburg in 1991, not out of talent but because of his connection to the KGB, whose agents were still an obligatory presence in the gears of post-Soviet power. One of his duties at City Hall was to manage relations with the city’s powerful Tambo gang, which was already known for the presence of organized crime.
He had witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall from his post in Dresden. He returned home demoralized and poor, having to take his wife and daughters to live with his parents at the age of 40.
As soon as he reached the municipal government, Putin was investigated for setting up a criminal scheme to take advantage of the food shortages that the Kremlin feared would be turned into gunpowder for mass protests. He obtained export licenses for raw materials valued at $100 million in exchange for importing the food that never arrived.
Then he took that social contract to Moscow — to tolerate criminality, as long as political power is not contested — and applied it to the oligarchs who played a leading role in the looting western of the country after the collapse of the USSR.
With few exceptions, one of which pays with murder, oligarchs who now have their superyachts seized in European ports have come into line. The new mansions in London or New York were combined with gifts to the Slavic don Vito Corleone, perhaps one of the richest men in the world.
The cuddles would include a $1 billion palace built on the Black Sea coast and the $50 million yacht Olympia, which the now tearful Roman Abramovich, pressured to put Chelsea up for sale, is said to have given as gifts to his godfather Vladimir.
The kleptocracy of the Russian elite has somewhat replaced that of the gangs that emerged in the 1990s with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Instead of criminals exchanging gunfire over territory, state power, with the participation of local politicians, is the predominant gang.
Part of the popular support Putin received at the polls is due to the firmness with which he tamed post-USSR social anarchy over the past decade and controlled wars with organized crime. But the question is to what extent organized crime has contributed to shaping modern Russia.
Twenty years ago, Western governments were alarmed by the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of criminals. They didn’t notice that the most powerful of them had moved to the Kremlin.
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