“People are scared shitless around him. But it’s fear without respect. They haven’t had respect [for Putin] for two or three years now,” a source close to the Russian government told Meduza. Two other sources close to the government and one close to the Kremlin gave similar accounts of the mood in Moscow.
According to the sources, Russian elites’ feelings towards Putin soured after his decision to raise the country’s pension age in 2018 — a move a majority of Russians opposed. Formally, the Cabinet of Ministers was updated in 2020, when Mikhail Mishustin replaced Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister, but many mid-level government workers have held their posts since long before that. They still remember how Putin shifted the blame for the consequences of his pension reform on the ministers — ultimately accusing them of causing the entire government’s approval ratings to drop. “When people [in the government] hear the word ‘ratings,’ they still wince,” a source close to the government told Meduza.
In more recent years, the situation has only gotten worse. According to Meduza’s sources, Putin has gradually stopped warning the ministers of his plans both for the short term and the long term.
“Up until recently, the [ministers] would at least serve as a kind of Google for the president. He would voice scenarios that he thought were likely and ask, ‘What if we do this? What will the consequences be? And what if we do it this way? Then what?’ But that’s stopped,” said a source close to the government.
According to the source, after the start of the pandemic, Putin (who’s known to worry obsessively about his health) stopped consulting the ministers altogether — and limited his decision-making process to brief discussions with his “inner circle” (which, in recent years, is believed to consist primarily of the heads of Russia’s security agencies).
Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News 
You must be logged in to post a comment.