Mikhail KHODORKOVSKY: How To Stop Vladimir Putin’s Mafia

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"Resisting Mr. Putin’s regime will require this type of action.

Identifying the group’s members, cutting them off from their overseas resources, and making their crimes public—that is the recipe for success in the confrontation with one of the most dangerous mafia gangs of the century.

...While the Kremlin sees its target in clear focus, the West has often failed to identify its enemy correctly. It is only in recent statements by British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, following the Kremlin’s poisoning of a Russian defector to the U.K., that a gradual awareness has begun to appear. The enemy is not Russia, a country of nearly 150 million people like you. It is not even the Russian government as a whole, which is composed of nearly three million civil servants, most of whom receive a modest salary and work for the benefit of society as best they can.

The West’s real enemy—and the enemy of the Russian people too—is a group of about 100 key beneficiaries of the Putin regime, and several thousand of their accomplices, many of whom hold posts in the Federal Security Service and the presidential administration.

Most of these people began their careers in the criminal underworld of St. Petersburg. Despite having now taken control of the presidency, the group retains every aspect of the criminal ilk from which they came. They are even conscious that they are a band of criminals whose goal is to steal money and avoid accountability by holding on to power. Their methods include buying people off, blackmail, murder and phony elections. But now they can operate world-wide, not merely in one city.

Acknowledging the mafia origins of Vladimir Putin’s entourage will allow the U.S. and its allies better to understand and resist the group’s actions. Mr. Putin’s strategy is often incomprehensible from a normal political perspective, but the background of his circle indicates his aims and vulnerabilities.

They are unconcerned about people—to them ordinary Russians are mere cattle and rabble. They are unconcerned about the country’s long-term future—for them Russia is something to be plundered and, at the same time, serves as a means of protection.

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How To Stop Vladimir Putin’s Mafia | Khodorkovsky

The effective method of fighting mafia groups is already well established. It isn’t diplomacy, though negotiations are necessary. It isn’t broad economic sanctions, which hit ordinary people but are ineffective against the mafiosi. The best method of targeting Mr. Putin’s circle is to identify its individual members, along with their accomplices and the politicians they have paid off. Then, the U.S. and its allies could act to cut them off from the mechanisms of their influence loot—the people, money, and corporations they control in the West.

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