MOSCOW: Russian security service hardliners known as the “siloviki”, a shadowy group at the heart of Vladimir Putin’s rule, are on the back foot after a cabinet reshuffle but not gone, analysts said on Tuesday.The shake-up on Monday was remarkable mostly for the lack of changes a week after Dmitry Medvedev took over from Putin as president.

Although the highest-profile figures from the Putin presidency, such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, remain in place, the departure of three prominent “siloviki” men signalled an end to the status quo.

“You can no longer talk about a ‘siloviki clan’. Everyone has their own business and interests, and these are often contradictory,” said Dmitry Oreshkin, a Moscow-based political analyst. The “siloviki” are people who, like Putin, have backgrounds in the Soviet KGB or the military.

They rose to the top of almost every political and business sphere over the eight years, often with a focus on carving up control over state resources and restricting democratic reforms launched after the Soviet collapse.

Monday’s reshuffle in particular targeted two men at the centre of an unusually open conflict last year over power interests.

One was FSB secret services chief Nikolai Patrushev, who was shifted to the Kremlin security council. The other was Viktor Cherkesov, who lost his powerful role as head of the anti-narcotics agency and went on to what analysts describe as a relatively lightweight position heading an arms procurement agency.

Justice Minister Vladimir Ustinov, seen as backing some of the Putin presidency’s harshest campaigns, including the dismantling of the Yukos oil empire, was fired.Also taking a demotion was Sergei Ivanov, a former KGB general who was first deputy prime minister. He was once widely seen as the more hawkish alternative to Medvedev for selection by Putin to run in the March 2 presidential election.

Analysts say the changes do not reflect the influence of Medvedev, a relative liberal with no known links to the security services, as much as Putin’s desire to put his own stamp on his post-presidential era. “Putin wanted to weaken structures that were posing a threat to him and he wanted to decentralise the ‘siloviki’ system,” Oreshkin said.

Proof that the “siloviki” are far from a spent force was the decision to move the clan’s unofficial chief, Igor Sechin, from deputy Kremlin chief of staff to deputy prime minister.

“The clan wars will never finish and cannot finish, because that is the basis on which Putin rules,” independent commentator and columnist Yulia Latynina said.

Masha Lipman, analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Centre, concurred, saying that Putin’s government shake-up signalled a recalibration of the old system, rather than wholesale change, let alone rejection of the “siloviki”. “The conflicts in the heart of the elite cannot disappear. They are the foundation of the current system, which is underpinned not by institutions and procedures but informal understandings,” he said.—AFP