President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is said to work from identically built offices in multiple residences, so photos do not give away his location.
His assistants go through such a rigorous selection process that a former bodyguard once called them “a caste of the chosen.”
And more than three years into the pandemic, the Kremlin has continued to enforce a “clean zone” around the president, forcing many who come close to him to quarantine for days.
People who know him say that for decades Putin has been remarkably focused on his personal safety and on preventing rivals from using government power against him. Now, in the aftermath of last month’s short-lived uprising led by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner mercenary group that fought for Russia in Ukraine, Putin appears to be doing everything he can to make his system coup-proof again.
He rewards loyalty among the ruling elite and showers his most important constituency – the men with guns – with money. And so far he has avoided the kind of large-scale purges other authoritarian leaders have carried out in response to coup attempts or uprisings, perhaps to avoid further destabilizing his system.
“The president is acting very rationally,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist. “He is focused on his personal and political survival, and he is ready for anything to achieve that.”
She noted that, despite Putin’s reputation for ruthlessness, his response to the failed uprising currently appears to be more carrot than stick, as evidenced last week by a lavish Kremlin ceremony honoring the security forces and an official government decree. granting a 10.5 percent pay rise to soldiers, police officers and other security services employees.
Ms Schulmann argued that “the system is too emaciated and too fragile to indulge in large-scale repression” in response to the uprising.
Some argue that Mr. Putin’s handling of the mutiny has put him in a stronger position so far. He has removed Mr Prigozhin as a destabilizing factor in the Russian invasion force in Ukraine and has forced the military, security forces and members of the ruling elite to reaffirm their loyalty to him.
But analysts say they believe Putin will face new threats, especially as he continues to bolster a patchwork of security apparatus made up of different interests and centers of power.
“In the short term, Putin has won a victory here,” said Grigorii Golosov, a political science professor at the European University in St. Petersburg. “But in the long run, this is a destabilizing situation.”
During his 23 years in power, Putin has handed control of some of the state’s most important assets to old friends and placed former bodyguards and other loyalists in key positions in the government. The agency whose main mission is to protect him and other top officials, the Federal Protection Service, is a force of tens of thousands that is also taking on an increasing role in monitoring other Russian security services for possible plots against the president.
A defector from the agency last year, known as the FSO by its Russian initials, described a sprawling organization with a Biological Safety Center that inspects the president’s food. Mr. Putin is believed to pay close attention to his security arrangements; When asked about his safety in a 2017 interview, Mr Putin replied that Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader, had told him that he had survived many assassination attempts “because I was always the one who personally took care of my safety”.
Since the mutiny, Mr Putin’s actions have highlighted his cold calculations aimed at maintaining his own security and his grip on power. To stop the uprising on June 24, Mr. Putin compromised, allowing Mr. Prigozhin and his fighters were able to find shelter in Belarus even after shooting down several Russian planes, taking a city of a million people and reaching within 125 miles of Moscow.
Putin then heaped praise on his security forces and held a ceremony in the Kremlin’s sacred Cathedral Square, honoring the troops’ “determination and bravery,” even attended by the traffic police. To show his love for the people in times of crisis, Mr Putin appeared for the first time to publicly violate his own Covid-19 precautions: he ventured into an adoring crowd in southern Russia to join hands and even kissed a young woman on the forehead.
While Putin is known to take his time plotting against his enemies, there have also been no confirmed arrests of people who may have had a hand in the mutiny or of people close to Prigozhin. It stands in stark contrast to the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emptied his country’s prisons to make way for more than 40,000 inmates.
There is speculation about the fate of General Sergei Surovikin, a senior military official close to the mercenary chief. While some reports, including preliminary reports from US officials, said he may have been detained or arrested, several close observers of Mr Putin’s system predicted that if the general had been detained for questioning, he would soon be released.
Arresting generals “would confuse the military,” said a person Putin has known for decades. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared repercussions for discussing sensitive matters.
The apparent caution was yet another indication that Putin, despite the conspicuous anger he showed at what he called Prigozhin’s “betrayal,” is reaching for a familiar toolbox to maintain power.
The increase for soldiers and law enforcement personnel had been announced earlier, but Ms Schulmann, the political scientist, said it didn’t seem coincidental that it wasn’t made official until days after the mutiny.
Mr. Putin also apparently promised more weapons to one of his most loyal security chiefs. The head of the National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, a former bodyguard of Putin, boasted last week that the president had promised to arm his troops with tanks and artillery.
And the Russian leader has telegraphed confidence in Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu, whose ouster Mr. Prigozhin had long demanded for problems on the battlefield, but who has worked for Mr. Putin since the president first took office in 1999. Mr. Shoigu spoke publicly about the uprising for the first time on Monday in remarks from Russian state media, stating: “These plans have failed because especially the armed forces personnel have remained faithful to their covenant and military duty.”
But rewarding the military and security services with more money and power comes with its own risks. Mr. Golosov, the St. Petersburg political scientist, warned that other factions within them might be tempted to start their own uprising after witnessing Mr. Prigozhin’s ability to launch one.
“It is quite possible that, looking at how the Prigozhin mutiny developed, some other players in the security services will see this as, say, a more plausible course of action for themselves than they did before the Prigozhin experience,” he said. Mr Golosov. .
According to analysts, the Russian invasion of Ukraine will be a further destabilizing force. It was the battlefield role of Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary force that apparently led Putin to overlook the warlord’s criticism of the war effort. Now the Kremlin can rise to the challenge of waging war in Ukraine without parts of Wagner — and keeping balance in an increasingly fragile system.
It’s a system that originated in peacetime, where loyalty is more important than effectiveness, said Nikolay Petrov, a visiting scholar at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. But in a war, the Kremlin needs both – and struggles to find players who are both effective and loyal, as Mr. Prigozhin showed. That raises the possibility that Putin’s renewed emphasis on loyalty in the aftermath of the mutiny could affect Russia’s performance on the battlefield.
“Putin and his whole system are now in a dilemma,” Petrov said. “If you value the principle of loyalty over effectiveness, then there are no risks associated with the mutiny. But there is also no hope of a more effective functioning of the system.”