Russia’s Putin demands absolute loyalty from his inner-circle

President Vladimir Putin is known to keep a loyal cadre of officials and aides close to him, with the majority of his inner-circle having served the Russian leader for many years during his 23 years in power.

Putin has made no bones of his expectations of absolute loyalty from those closest to him. Once asked in a wide-ranging 2018 interview whether he was able to forgive people when they made mistakes, Putin replied saying, “Yes. But not everything.” When pressed by journalist Andrei Kondrashov to elaborate on what he could not forgive, Putin’s response was emphatic: “Betrayal.”

For those who have worked with the president for more than two decades, it’s no surprise that Putin values and demands loyalty among his inner-circle, many of whom he has kept close since he rose up the ranks in Russia’s Soviet security service, the KGB, before his ascendency to the presidency in late 1999.

“Neither in our country nor abroad have I seen bosses who keep disloyal people around them,” Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, told CNBC Tuesday.

“But for Vladimir Putin, loyalty alone is not enough. Three qualities are needed: 1. Professionalism, 2. Efficiency, 3. Loyalty,” he added in emailed comments.

Peskov, a top Kremlin official and seen as a member of Putin’s inner-circle, has been press secretary for 23 years. Likewise, most of the people within Putin’s inner-circle — made up of his closest ministers and confidants and often referred to as “Siloviki” (or “people of force”) referring to senior officials that have backgrounds in the military or security services — have mostly served the Russian leader for years, overseeing the silencing of opposition figures and movements that have challenged him.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been in post since 2004 while Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has held his position since 2012, having previously been considered as a potential leadership candidate himself.

Putin’s inner-circle also includes Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, as well as the heads of Russia’s state security services, the FSB, and its foreign intelligence counterpart, the SVR. There’s also the more ideologically influential propagandists such as Vladimir Solovyov and Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council.

The council’s deputy is nationalist Dmitry Medvedev, who also served as Russia’s former prime minister and president up to 2012, alternating with Putin. Medvedev was always subservient to Putin in either role but he remains close to the president and is a vocal supporter of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and ideological enmity with the West.

Russian analysts are not convinced that qualities such as competency and loyalty are valued equally in the Kremlin, with Russian scholar, historian and author Sergei Medvedev noting that “loyalty has always been more important than competency” in Russia.

“Russia is not like an efficiency-oriented, competency-oriented meritocracy,” Medvedev, author of “A War Made in Russia” and “The Return of the Russian Leviathan,” noted.

“It’s a very archaic and medieval — and in some sense, Byzantine [excessively complicated] — system of personal loyalty, and Putin will keep anyone — even the most inefficient managers like ex-president [Dmitry] Medvedev, for instance, as long as they show their loyalty,” Medvedev told CNBC.

An attachment to loyalty can lead to blind spots, analysts note, most recently seen in the ill-fated invasion of Ukraine and the rise of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s power, status and influence before his fall from grace.

When Russia first launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, analysts said it was likely that Putin had been told by his closest military officials that the invasion would be effortless, and Ukraine would be conquered easily before a pro-Russian government was installed in Kyiv.

But within the first few weeks of the war it became apparent that Ukraine was mounting far more resistance, and its allies far more support for Kyiv, than had been anticipated in Russia.

During Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, as it calls its invasion, questions have been raised about the strategy and competency of Russia’s military leadership. Shoigu has been openly ridiculed and criticized by a section of military bloggers in Russia, particularly those loyal to Prigozhin, the convict-turned-businessman-turned-paramilitary leader of the Wagner Group of mercenaries who also enjoyed Putin’s favor.

When the high-profile acrimony between Prigozhin and the defense ministry descended into open rebellion in the summer, however, Putin ultimately sided with his long-serving and proven loyal defense minister and endorsed the ministry’s edict that Wagner Group fighters would have to sign contracts with the ministry.

After initially coming to a deal seemingly allowing Prigozhin and Wagner fighters to be exiled to Belarus, Prigozhin and a number of top Wagner commanders died in a plane crash over Russia in August.