PUTIN’S PRESIDENTIAL ADMINISTRATION

The Russian political system is a diffuse and informal one, but the closest thing to a true command-and-control nexus for President Vladimir Putin, including non-military interference abroad, is the Presidential Executive Office of Russia, also known as the Presidential Administration (AP, Administratsiya Prezidenta).

The office performs crucial roles as the main gatekeeper to Putin, his primary source of information, and the president’s voice in terms of not only public discourse and presentation but also the setting of goals and the establishment of limits within the executive.

This is a secretive institution, so it is hard to be certain of its organizational code and culture. However, while it appears fully committed to Putin’s current geopolitical campaign and convinced that Russia faces an existential political and cultural challenge from the West, it is able (and required) to see the big picture and, as a result, is more risk- averse than the Russian intelligence community and perhaps even the military.

One of the key challenges when seeking to understand Russian policy—and thus to predict it—is identifying where power truly lies in this system. There is a formal structure that looks strikingly similar to most Western ones, with a separation of powers among the judicial, executive, and legislative branches; a cabinet of ministers; and a clear constitutional basis for power. Of course, in practice, little of this truly matters. This is a hyper-presidential regime, in which the law offers few constraints to the executive, parliament is largely a rubber-stamp body packed with selected yes-people, and the cabinet is essentially a structure devoted to the execution of policy rather than its formulation.

Putin’s regime is thus, in many ways, an “adhocracy” in which formal office and role often have little real meaning. His friends in business may also drive foreign policy in some areas more directly than the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does.

The model is more reminiscent of the tsar’s court, with (1) access to the vozhd (the boss) and his trust and favor being the most important political currencies and (2) “curators” appointed at the leader’s pleasure being responsible for particular issues and areas.

To this end, many of the activities in Russia happen not because Putin decreed or even approved them but because individual “political entrepreneurs”—businesspeople, politicians, ministries, departments, television anchors, corporations, even clergy—thought they would please him. From the Kremlin’s point of view, this is an admirably cost-effective approach. Initiatives that fail cost nothing and can be disowned, while those that succeed can be adopted and their principals rewarded. This helps explain the apparent—genuine—lack of some grand strategy or master plan when it comes to Russian active measures and adventurism abroad, which conform solely to a broad strategy of disruption, seeking to divide, distract, and dismay the West.

That said, there has to be some central node to communicate the Kremlin’s broad wishes, as well as to identity and amplify successful initiatives and kill off ineffective or counterproductive ones. There are also certain specific operations, especially responses to particular crises or opportunities, that demonstrate a degree of planning and cross-agency and cross-platform coordination, whether in response to a command from above or an initiative from below.

Coordination among the Federal Security Service (FSB, Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti), Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR, Sluzhba vneshnoi razvedki), and military intelligence, traditionally a problem, is often handled by the Security Council secretariat. However, when other sectors are involved—such as the media—the AP assumes a key role. The AP is the body that helps the president formulate policy, communicates it to the executive agencies, coordinates its execution, and monitors (and if necessary polices) performance. The AP is broadly comparable in formal remit to the U.S. Executive Office of the President or the British Cabinet Office, but it is substantially more powerful in practice because of the informal nature of the Russian system.

The Security Council secretariat is part of the AP, albeit a largely autonomous one, based in its own offices. Along with having a sizeable administrative team and the infrastructure for many special committees, the AP brings together a range of individuals whom Putin appears to trust for their advice and capacity to carry out his will. These individuals include Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, Foreign Policy Adviser Yuri Ushakov, and Surkov, who is one of the several “Assistants to the President.” Thus, the AP has an unparalleled breadth of responsibility, from defusing domestic unrest and strategizing for economic growth to exploiting the Arctic and developing the North Caucasus. The AP is a substantial organization based in the Kremlin. The AP’s official establishment strength is just under 1,600 people, but this excludes a substantial complement of staff seconded from other agencies, including the intelligence and security services. It also excludes many of the support staff, such as the guards provided by the Federal Protection Service (FSO, Federal’naya sluzhba okhrany), as well as the Security Council secretariat. The real strength is thus closer to 2,000 people.

The AP’s crucial roles appear to be fourfold, and each role brings its own form of power within the Russian system:

1. Presidential gatekeeper. The officials and individuals who do not have a personal relationship with Putin or an institutionalized means of direct access must almost invariably go through the AP. In such a system, access to the president is a currency that can be monetized directly through receiving Putin’s approval for a pet project or indirectly by advocating for someone else’s project. The AP thus not only is able to have a major influence over which views the president is exposed to but also reaps the benefits of being the controller of this asset. Of course, as noted, there are those who do not need to work through the AP–and there are ways around it.

2. Presidential briefer. As a corollary of the first role, the AP has very considerable control over the tone and nature of oral and written briefings delivered to Putin. It does not get to edit the three daily briefing files he receives every morning from the FSB (on domestic affairs), the FSO (on elite affairs), and the SVR (on international affairs), but it does receive advance copies and thus has an opportunity to prepare additional materials based on the president’s anticipated requests. Furthermore, especially through its Experts Directorate, the AP is one of the government’s most extensive commissioner of reports from think tanks, scholars, and other outside sources. However, these are infamously often written “to order,” precisely to support a particular idea or initiative. Thus, although Putin is notoriously prickly about any sense that he is being “handled,” the AP is also able to present a range of “independent” reports to support its favored policy options.

3. Presidential voice. Every week, Press Secretary Peskov meets the editors of the primary government media platforms to lay out in broad terms the kind of issues the Kremlin would like to see covered and how they should be approached. This broad guidance is supplemented by a regular stream of secret memoranda known as temniki dispensed by the Press and Information Directorate. However, this curating of the official line and the president’s public image is perhaps the least important aspect of the AP’s role as Putin’s voice. The AP is the institution communicating government policy and ambitions to both the rest of the executive machine and the legislature. A whole slew of other AP departments and committees are responsible for marshaling and disciplining other aspects of society that are being mobilized for state policy, from the Presidential Council for Coordination with Religious Organizations to the Presidential Council for Cossack Affairs. That said, it is clear that the AP does not have an unlimited mandate. It appears, for example, not to be in a position to dictate policy to the intelligence agencies or the defense ministry.

4. Presidential broker. In such a complex political environment, the AP sometimes must negotiate, and, above all, it plays an important role, along with the Security Council, in brokering deals between powerful and often ruthlessly self-interested institutions, especially in the business and security sectors.

Overall, the AP is a secretive organization with a strong esprit de corps underpinned by a desire to protect its discretion, so it is a challenge to develop a good sense of its culture, procedures, and worldview. It does not appear to have a rigid internal hierarchy; like a microcosm of the Russian state, it is characterized by multiple, often overlapping and competing political fiefdoms; a tendency toward improvisation; and a proliferation of initiatives pushed from below, hoping for approval from above.

Broadly speaking, like the Security Council, the AP is an essentially conservative agency. It is arguably as hawkish as, for example, the intelligence services but not so comfortable with risk. Although it might be going too far to describe the AP as a moderating influence, the AP does appear to usually adopt a perspective that is more attuned to the potential dangers of various initiatives, especially the chance of domestic political blowback. The AP is as committed to Putin’s agenda of restoring Russia’s great-power status as any other Russian agency or ministry—both because of genuine belief and the need to assert loyalty to the presidential mission—but it is more inclined to play a longer and more cautious game.

Although the AP as an institution clearly subscribes to the wider Kremlin operational code and wartime mentality, it is also more cautious and capable of placing potential short-term gains against longer-term risks.