The character of the Russian regime

1 The scorpion and the frog

Prologue: The Russian fable of the scorpion and the frog

A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scor­pion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Half-way across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung it de­spite knowing the consequence. To this the scorpion replies: “Sorry but I could not resist; it is in my character”.

Coinciding more or less with the 3^rd anniversary of Russia’s full aggression against Ukraine, the 11^th since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Donbas, the 2^nd since the US government committed to defend “freedom for Ukraine, freedom every­where” (US President Biden in Kyiv, February 2023) and the 1^st since the death of Alexei Navalny, the US administration under Donald Trump in February 2025 not only commenced negotiations with the Russian regime – over the heads of Ukraine and Europe – to end the war but turned against Ukraine.

This is more than a political success for Putin. Trump may have been throwing the Russian regime a much needed lifeline.

It is unclear what will happen next. In any case, whether considering continued sup­port to Ukraine, negotiations to end the war, or a future security architecture, it is important to understand the character of the Russian political regime to negotiate and cooperate with or to isolate, contain or defeat.

The character of the regime was laid bare by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Russian regime, as is argued in this essay, in short:

(a) is an autocracy where a single leader is able to make decisions of catastrophic dimensions;

(b) is a kleptocracy not only permitting self-enrichment by Vladimir Putin and his ruling elites but also generating enormous resources to fund the actions and ensure the survival of the regime;

(c) functions in many ways like a criminal organisa­tion;

(d) has the features of fascism.

1 An autocracy

Following the end of the Soviet Union in Decem­ber 1991, the prospects that Russia would over time become a modern democracy were un­certain from the outset, and were further jeopard­ized in the “turbulent 1990s” by economic crises and the rise of the so-called “oligarchs”.

In the course of Putin’s rule as president (and prime minister in-between) since 2000, the Rus­sian regime became increasingly authoritarian. While for a few years, some indices considered Russia a “democracy with low performance” or a “hybrid regime” (reports by Freedom House), there is broad agreement that since 2012, when Putin returned to the presidency for a third mandate, the regime is authoritarian. It is marked (a) by the centralisation of political power; (b) by power that is not accountable; (c) by the absence of free, fair and competitive elections; (d) by repression of dissent and of political pluralism more broadly; (e) by restrictions to civil liberties, includ­ing control of speech and media; (f) by the effec­tive absence of a separation of powers; and (g) by the arbitrary application of norms and laws, that is, by the absence of the rule of law.

One type of “authoritarian regime” is that of an “autocracy” where power is concentrated in a single centre or person with absolute power and without being subject to control or limitations.

Analysists have previously been reluctant to label Russia an “autocracy” because of the theory of some sort of collective decision-making by an inner circle with Putin in the centre (“collective Putin” or “Politburo 2.0” or – alternatively – a “court”) where different interests of powerful elite groups or factions with all sorts of resources are balanced or reconciled. According to the author of the politburo-concept (Yevgeny Min­chenko), by 2021 the “Politburo 2.0” comprised nine members representing the power vertical (Nikolai Patrushev, Sergey Shoigu, Dmitri Medvedev), state corporations (Igor Sechin, Sergey Chemezov, Sergey Sobyanin) and the banking and business sectors (Arkady Rotenberg, Yuri Kovalchuk, Gennady Timchenko). Some of these have since lost influence while others (such as Alexander Bortnikov, Alexei Dyumin or Vyacheslav Volodin could be added). These persons are members of an inner circle of friends that Putin trusts and that represent nodes of power through which he can exercise control. However, this model hardly describes a system of collective leadership. While these “lieutenants” are crucial for the functioning of the regime, the prevailing opinion is that Putin now is fairly alone in decision-making. The widely broadcast Rus­sian Security Council meeting on 21 February 2022, three days prior to the start of the war, was illustra­tive in this respect.

The “collective Putin” or “Politbureau 2.0” theory can definitely be laid to rest since Putin’s decision to launch an all-out war of aggression in February 2022: Putin, who had become increasingly ob­sessed with Ukraine since the Maidan in 2014, who – compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic – had become extremely isolated in terms of access to him by others and of access by him to information, who possibly self-radicalised over the historical destiny of Russia (and himself) personally made the catastrophic decision to go to war because he had the power to do so. This is only possible in an autocracy where power is concentrated in a single person.

2 A kleptocracy

The system of governance in Russia under Putin has often been described as a “kleptocracy” or a “rule of thieves”, that is, a system marked by un­limited grand corruption, where members of the ruling elite appropriate for themselves with im­punity the wealth of the country that they govern.

In the 1990s – and prior to Putin becoming presi­dent – a small group of businessmen had become immensely wealthy by acquiring state assets during the process of market liberalisation and privati­sation. These “oligarchs” controlled a large share of the economy, banking sector and media. Some of them – the so-called “seven bankers” – decided to organise the re-election in 1996 of the then deeply unpopular president Boris Yeltsin. In a loan-for-shares programme they provided loans to save the government of Yeltsin in exchange for further shares in state enterprises. In the final years of Boris Yeltsin between 1996 and 1999, Rus­sia had literally been bankrolled by this group of oligarchs.

Russia, at that point, may not have been con­sidered a kleptocracy in the proper sense. While those oligarchs controlled much of the economy and exercised strong influence on the govern­ment of Yeltsin, and while the government itself was marked by corruption, the powerbase of the oligarchs was outside the government.

Upon becoming president in January 2000, Putin set out to either remove these oligarchs or put them and their property in their place, and at his service. The system of governance he established in the following years was shaped by his ex­perience in the mayor’s office of St. Petersburg between 1991 and 1996. As head of the committee for external relations he was directly involved in a system of corruption, extortion rackets related to the economic activities of the city and its port, the fraudulent sale of export licenses and misuse of public funds. He was in a position do decide which businesses and deals could proceed and which not. His approach was marked by (a) symbiotic relation­ships with criminal organisations; (b) establish­ing or putting financial and other private sector organisations – and thus assets worth bil­lions of Euros – at his disposal; and (c) putting trusted friends and persons in charge of these organisations to ensure direct or indirect control over these assets.

Once president, his approach was furthermore shaped by what turned out to be a milestone, namely the case of Khodorkovsky and Yukos. Fol­lowing the arrest and imprisonment of Mikhael Khodorkovsky in 2003, his company Yukos, with its core asset Yuganskneftegaz, was basically con­fiscated and auctioned off far below its value to a front company set up by the government and then handed over to Rosneft. This put Rosneft on course to becoming the largest oil company in Russia. In 2004, Igor Sechin – former KGB officer, Putin’s deputy in Sankt Petersburg, then his presi­dential deputy chief of staff and one of his closest friends – was appointed chair of the board of directors of Rosneft.

With the confiscation of Yukos Oil and the trials of Mikhael Khodorkovsky, Putin elevated the modus operandi he had developed in Sankt Petersburg to a higher level: (a) appropriation of the resources of the state, (b) placing his trusted friends in charge of the main actors of the economy and (c) submitting the judicial system to his orders. Numerous examples have been documented in the course of the years of how assets worth bil­lions of Euros have been accumulated by a small number of Russians with close ties to Putin and by Putin himself.

This is why the system of government in Russia under Putin is rightly labelled a “kleptocracy” where persons in power appropriate the wealth of the country for themselves and their associ­ates.

However, self-enrichment is not the only raison d’être of Putin and his ruling elite. This system generates enormous resources – resources that are off-budget and not subject to any control, over­sight or accountability – that are available to Putin to consolidate political control domestically, to carry out influence operations, hybrid warfare and military interventions abroad, or creating parallel and informal structures, methods or organisa­tions. These resources represent an “obschak”, that is, a type of cashbox or common fund – in this case a “presidential obschak” – that is typical for criminal organisations in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

3 A criminal enterprise

The political system under Putin has been called a “mafia state”, that is, a state where the govern­ment or some of its institutions or officials are part of a criminal enterprise. This term was reportedly first used by Alexander Litvinienko, the Russian defector and former officer of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), who had accused his superiors of having ordered the assassination of the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, having staged the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 to bring Putin to power and having ordered the assassination of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006. Litvinienko himself was assassinated by poisoning with polo­nium in November 2006 while in exile in the United Kingdom. The “mafia state” label made the headlines again when Yevgeny Prigozhin and his associates of the Wagner PMC (private military company) were assassinated in August 2023.

Connections between Russian administrations and criminal organisations have existed for hundreds of years, and relationships between mem­bers of the former Soviet nomenklatura with crim­inals for mutual benefit have also shaped the evo­lution of post-Soviet Russian organised crime from 1991 onwards. Governments, or those in power, may have tolerated or even sponsored organised crime. However, there is a strong case for the argument that today not only is there a symbiotic relationship between members or institutions of the Russian regime and criminal organisations but that the Russian regime itself has the characteristics of a criminal organisation: a criminal enterprise that is aimed at generating profit from illicit activities and that is deploying corruption of officials, intimidation, threats or force to protect its operations. Supporting argu­ments include:

1. The Russian regime is a profit-seeking kleptocracy as described above.

2. Corruption, intimidation and force have been the means of Putin to ascend to the office of prime minister of Russia and then to the presidency. In 1998/1999 – as head of FSB he produced compromising materials (“kompromat”) on prosecutor general Yuri Skuratov in order to force the closure of corruption investigations of the then presi­dent Boris Yeltsin. In the summer of 1999, Yeltsin made Putin prime minister and, upon his resignation on 31 December 1999, his successor as president of Russia. From September 1999, Putin became known to the Russian public by his vigorous response to the “Russian apartment bombings” that had killed more than 300 people in Moscow, Dagestan and Volgodonsk. Ever since these bombings, there have been reports that they had been organised by the internal security service (FSB) in order to bring Putin into power. Several mem­bers of an independent commission set up to investigate these allegations were sub­sequently assassinated.

3. Assassination of opponents is a regular modus operandi of the regime. Numerous politicians of the opposition, journalists, human rights activists or business persons have been assassinated over the last twenty five years.[1] Poisoning has been one of the means used, including with the radioac­tive metal Polonium or the nerve agent and chemical weapon Novichok. Some have survived assassination attempts through poisoning but were then imprisoned (ex­amples, Alexei Navalny (subsequently died in February 2024) or Vladimir Kara-Murza). Since the launch of the war against Ukraine in February 2022, an increasing number of Russian businessmen, oligarchs or politicians – and sometimes their rela­tives – are dying under suspicious circum­stances.[2]

4. Money laundering is a systemic feature of the Russian regime, while the anti-money laundering system seems to be used to control opponents. Russian “dark money” – reportedly amounting to the equivalent of hundreds of billions (some suggest more than 2 trillion) of Euros – have been laundered in recent years, often making use of off-shore or western banking systems (Baltics, Cyprus, Panama, Switzerland, United Kingdom and others), much of it by close allies of Putin and, according to some reports, on his behalf (examples of Sergey Roldugin, Arkady Rotenberg, Yuri Kovalchuk). In 2001, Russia had been blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as an NCCT, that is, a “non-cooperative country or territory”. In 2002, and in line with FATF recommendations, Putin set up a well-resourced financial intelligence unit (since 2004 called Federal Service for Financial Monitoring or “Rosfinmonitoring”) and had anti-money laundering legislation adopted that, inter alia, introduced legal measures for the confiscation of criminal assets. Since 2012, when Putin returned to the presidency, Rosfinmonitoring is directly subordinated to him. This anti-money laundering system seems not to be applied against members and allies of the regime. Rather, it is used to control financial transactions and target and confiscate the property of organisations, opponents and businesses (including “foreign agents”) that don’t comply with the regime. Those that investigate fraud and money laundering are at serious risk (case of Sergey Magnitsky).

5. The regime seeks legitimacy through its relationship with the Orthodox Church – another analogy to mafia-type criminal organisations. The Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Kirill since 2009, is a strong ally of Putin (Putin was “a gift of god” and his rule over Russia had been “mandated by god”), blessing the war against Ukraine (dying in Ukraine “washes away all sins”). The Orthodox Church under Putin has received major state fund­ing for religious schools and church build­ings since Kirill became its patriarch. Kirill himself is considered immensely wealthy and to be a billionaire, reportedly having made his fortune smuggling duty-free tobacco and alcohol. Swiss police records indicate that Kirill, during his time in Geneva (1971-1974) had been working for the KGB. Perhaps even more than the Catholic Church for the mafia in Italy, the Orthodox Church is an important source of legitimacy for the Russian regime.

6. The Russian regime shows the structural characteristics of an organised crime group. At the formal level, the Russian regime is functioning through the official institutions, regulations and procedures foreseen in the constitution and laws of Russia. At the level of the organised crime group, decisions are made by Putin, possi­bly in consultation with a small group of trusted friends, and executed by his lieu­tenants while making use of illicit means and informal or parallel structures, includ­ing other offenders and criminal organi­sations. The so-called “power vertical” (see section 5 below) is used to execute decisions both at the formal, normative level of the state and at the informal, crimi­nal level of the organised crime group. In a typology of organised crime, the Russian regime would be an hierarchical organised crime group with Putin as the “capo dei capi” who is directing the affairs of this group through trusted and highly loyal secondary bosses or lieutenants in charge of different sectors of the criminal enter­prise, while making sure that the levels under him remain sufficiently fragmented to prevent (coalitions of) competitors from threatening his position. For example, one role of Yevgeni Prigozhin with his Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) was to keep the military establishment at bay, until he became himself a threat to the regime and was thus assassinated.

7. The Russian regime has established a “roof” (“krysha”) – a concept often re­ferred to in analyses of post-Soviet organ­ised crime. In the narrow sense a “roof” means a protection racket where busi­nesses have to pay criminal organisations for the protection of their business. In a broader sense “krysha” refers to a patron­age system that is a characteristic of the power vertical: those that are loyal and are prepared to serve the regime in solidarity are given protection (a “roof”); those that are not loyal are persecuted by any means, ranging from assassinations and other forms of violence to business raiding, con­fiscation of property or prosecution through the justice system. This concept (it may be called “Krysha Putina”) explains rather well the methods applied by the Rus­sian regime to ensure that its interests are served.

8. One area illustrating how the regime functions like a criminal organisation is cyber­crime. The regime has not only devel­oped a symbiotic relationship with cyber­crime groups but has itself adopted the structures and methods of cybercriminal organisations: (a) It has created units within its internal (FSB), external (SVR) and military (GRU) security services to carry out cyberattacks and commit cybercrime, at times with global ramifications (example of “NotPetya”); (b) the regime supports or outsources activities to criminal groups or individuals in order to make use of skilled resources and cybercrime-as-a-service to serve its interests while providing “plausible deniability” (foundational models include the “Russian Business Network” from cybercrime and cyberattacks (from 2006) and the “Internet Research Agency” – also known as the “Sankt Peters­burg troll factory” – that was established in 2013 by Yevgeny Prigozhin for influence operations); and (c) the regime is tolerant towards cybercrime groups or individual criminals and permits them to pursue their activities as long as these do not target Rus­sian institutions or otherwise do not run counter the interests of the regime. A long list of other cybercrime actors commit crime for profit but are also aligned with the regime, carrying out offences related to ransomware, denial of service attacks, and posing threats to critical infrastructure. And many, if not most of them, have been or are involved in cyberattacks against Ukraine. This illustrates that cybercrime and other forms of cyberthreats commit­ted by security bodies of the Russian re­gime, private sector organisations and criminal organisations are often difficult to distinguish from one another. They pursue the interests of the regime in one way or another; and they appear to have morphed into one criminal organisation or network under the overall direction of the regime. Those organisations that operate in the interest of the regime are covered by the “roof”; others may be investigated and prosecuted.

9. The foreign policy of Russia, in some re­spects, is an extension of the criminal domain. Unlike the Soviet Union that had an ideology underpinning its foreign poli­cies and its alliances with other states, Rus­sia under Putin has no vision nor ideology to offer to other countries. The current foreign policy is aimed at permanent desta­bilisation, disruption and corruption of liberal democracies and of states associ­ated with the West. One of the tools used by the regime was the Wagner PMC, established by Dmitry Utkin and Yevgeny Prigozhin and named “Wagner” because of Utkin’s passion for the Third Reich. Wagner PMC had been active since 2014 in support of the annexation of Crimea and then in the Donbas to destabilise Ukrainian security forces, since 2015 in Syria, and then also in Libya and Sudan, and by 2021 in a number of other African countries as well as Vene­zuela. As is typical for the regime, much of the funding for Wagner PMC was off-budget and channelled to Prigozhin via government contracts and business deals in countries in which it operated (for exam­ple, paid in commodities such as gold and diamonds in the Central African Republic or oil and gas in Syria). In January 2023, the US Department of the Treasury designated Wagner as a “significant transnational crimi­nal organization”. In June 2023, Prigozhin turned against the regime; and in August 2023, Prigozhin, Utkin and others were then assassinated. The former Wagner operations in Africa were then taken over by an “Africa Corps” under the control of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

In conclusion, in Russia criminal organisations and some official institutions of the regime have mor­phed into one and are often difficult to distinguish from each other. Where the interests of the regime are affected, the Russian regime is not only linked to or making use of criminal groups to pursue the interests of Putin and his associates and to keep them in power, but is itself structured like and is using the modi operandi of a hierar­chical organised crime group.

4 Features of fascism

Discussions on whether post-Soviet Russia may turn to fascism date back to 2000, that is, the first year of Putin’s presidency; and debates whether and, if so, when his regime has become fascist continued on and off ever since. Opinions were divided with some arguing that Russia under Putin showed all the elements of fascism or was at least fascistoid, and with others pointing out that key features of fascism were absent, at least prior to February 2022, such as a revolutionary movement, mass mobilisation, a modernising vision for the future, racism or extreme nationalism.

Following the onset of the full-scale war of aggres­sion against Ukraine in February 2022, the ques­tion has come to the forefront with an increasing number of experts now affirming that indeed “Russia is fascist” and with terms such as “Ruscism” or “Rashism” being used to describe the ideology and practices of Putin’s regime.

Before discussing this further, a word of caution: (a) There is no commonly accepted definition of “fascism”. Even the obvious fascist regimes in Germany or Italy before and during the Second World War differed in many ways. Opinions on whether pre-1945 Japan, war-time Spain under Franco or Portugal under Salazar were fascist are divided. And (b) accusations of “fascism” tend to be deployed in an inflationary manner. Labelling any opinion that is not liberal or any government that is not a liberal democracy as “fascist” – or “recklessly flinging the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction” as George Orwell already remarked in 1944 – deprives this notion of any meaning

While some features associated with (historical) fascism may still not be present in Russia even after February 2022, many others are. None of these alone would qualify the Russian regime as fascist, but in combination the Russian regime may have crossed the threshold to fascism:

1. An autocracy where power is concentrated in a single person. As noted above, the fact that Putin alone was able to make the cata­strophic decision to launch an all-out war against Ukraine is ultimate evidence that Russia is an autocracy. Such a concentra­tion of power is not only but also found in fascist systems.

2. Cult of the vigorous leader as the incarna­tion of the state. Projecting an image of hyper-masculinity and action – in stark contrast to ailing president Yeltsin – was an essential element of Putin’s strategy to be­coming president when he launched the second war on Chechnya in 1999 that cleared the path to his first presidency. Male chauvinism, aggressive masculinity, and a fetish of virility have been features of his leadership cult ever since. Putin is iden­tified with Russia as reflected in the much quoted "there is no Russia today if there is no Putin". Such a cult and principle of a single vigorous leader as the incarnation of the state is a characteristic of fascist regimes.

3. Direct implementation of central decisions by the “power vertical”. This is a concept that is well-understood in Russia – and borrowed from Mussolini’s fascist Italy. It describes a pyramid of formal and informal structures that permits centralised com­mand by the person on top, that is Putin, where senior officials are personally responsible for the implementation of presidential instructions, orders or the placement of personnel. Putin began to set up this system immediately after his election, when in May 2000 he expanded central control over regions through the creation of seven federal districts overseen by envoys appointed by him. Or when in September 2000 the first edition of this Information Security Doctrine brought the media sector de facto under governmental control. Or in June 2000, when a law on political parties was passed to increase the requirements to be met by parties, and when, as a consequence, the United Russia party and two electoral blocs were created in December 2000. This power vertical has been built and reinforced over more than twenty years, and is one of the main charac­teristics of the regime.

4. State power exercised through members of the coercive apparatus. Under Putin, thousands of “siloviki” (“people of force”) have been placed in key positions of the government at federal and regional levels but also in state corporations to control those on behalf of the regime.

5. Security services at the disposition of the president. Upon taking power, Putin set up additional services directly or exclusively under his control. Creating new structures to displace previous ones or creating com­petition between different security ser­vices has been a practice of fascist regimes in the 1930s.

6. Militarisation of society. The emphasis on the role of the military in Russian nation-building, the creation of paramilitary struc­tures (National Guard, Youth Army), a thriv­ing private security industry, the founding and proliferation of private military compa­nies, the thousands of clubs and associa­tions that have appeared all over Russia over the past two decades providing mili­tary training, and patriotic-military curricula and programmes in educational institu­tions are evidence of the militarisation of Russian society.

7. Domestic suppression of dissent. The intimi­dation, criminalisation, imprison-ment or assassination of political opponents and the suppression of independent media and dissenting opinions have been part of the modus operandi of the Russian regime for more than a decade. Since February 2022, measures in this respect have reached an­other level. For example, anyone speaking the truth about the war of aggression or stating facts that divert from official state­ments of the Ministry of Defence, is being criminalised.

8. “Justice” in a “dual state”. The Russian justice system is subordinated to the re­gime whenever a case before a court affects its interests. The concept of the “dual state” was developed by Ernst Fraenkel based on his experience as a lawyer in Nazi Germany: where the inter­ests of the regime are concerned, the GESTAPO is always right.

9. ”Gleichschaltung” of media. Starting with the ascend to Putin to the presidency in 2000, the regime has put in place the tools, organisations and procedures to “co­ordinate” and control the media and thus public opinion. Since February 2022, additional measures to control information are being intro­duced with increased frequency. During Nazi Germany, the term for such coordina­tion was “Gleichschaltung”.

10. Corporate statism. Russia under Putin has been moving in the direction of a state where political and economic actors are co­opted into different interest or corporate groups under the mediation and thus control of the regime in order to promote a “cohesive society and a united people”. This type of corporate organization under the control of the regime has been an im­portant feature of fascism in Italy under Mussolini.

11. Showdown with the (western) enemy. The idea of an enemy having humiliated Russia in the past and now aiming to destroy Rus­sia, and in response, the need for Russia to resurrect from its knees, restore past glories and reclaim its place as a major power, is crucial for the legitimacy of the re­gime. According to fascist philosophies, the existence of an enemy – and the realistic possibility of a war against this enemy – is constitutive for the existence of a nation. The rhetoric of a showdown with the West is accompanied by an obsession with a do­mestic “fifth column” and conspiracies by foreign agents plotting against the Russian government. A speech delivered by Putin on 16 March 2022, about three weeks into the war against Ukraine, that is reminiscent of fascist rhetoric, illustrates this:

"Of course they (the West) will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on traitors – on those who earn their money here, but live over there. Live, not in the geographical sense, but in the sense of their thoughts, their slavish thinking. … Any people, and especially the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish the true patriots from the scum and the traitors, and just to spit them out like a midge that accidentally flew into their mouths” (reproduced in the Moscow Times, 18 March 2022).

12. An ideology of extreme nationalism. The war of aggression against Ukraine and the justification provided by it, is evidence that what started out as patriotism as a unifying ideology, has turned into an ideology of extreme nationalism. The cultural concept of “Russia’ness” and the “Russian world” (“Russkiy mir”) has become a justification for irredentism – protection of Russians abroad, reunification with historical Rus­sian territories – under the domination of the Russian regime. With such extreme nationalism or “hyper-nationalism”, Putin disposes of an “ideological weapon of mass destruction” (Vladimir Pastuchov in March 2022) that ensures approval rates of 80% or above. This ideology can rely (a) on the historical narrative of Russian heroics in the fight against Nazis and of the need for a strong and united Russia to fight external enemies that try to keep Russia weak and divided, (b) on patriotic-military indoctrina­tion, and (c) on the support of philosophers (Ivan Ilyin, Aleksandr Dugin among them) with nationalist – and openly fascist or even genocidal – positions that shape or confirm this worldview.

13. External aggression and expansionism. The war of aggression against Ukraine is the logical consequence of the irredentism, mili­tarisation and nationalism mentioned above. This war – similar to the Chechen wars – is marked by the murder of civilians, rape, torture and over 140,000 other war crimes and atrocities (between February 2022 and February 2025), and pos­sibly genocide, by Russian forces of which the massacres of Bucha and Irpin or the de­struction of Mariupol have become symbols. Such “redemptive violence with­out legal or ethical constraints [to pursue] goals of internal cleansing and external ex­pansionism” is characteristic of fascism (Robert Paxton 2004: The anatomy of fascism).

Given this combination of features, the proposi­tion that Russia is currently governed by a fascist regime is rather convincing. Features that may be missing are “mass mobilization” and a “revolu­tionary movement”. Apart from a few stadium rallies to demonstrate public support to the “special military operation”, the regime has been aim­ing to keep the population passive; it has also been reluctant to declare a full military mobiliza­tion. However, these particular features may not be necessary to qualify the Russian regime as fascist. Unlike historical fascist regimes that needed mass mobilization or a revolutionary movement in order to gain power, the Russian regime already had the power when it turned fascist. In a way, fascism in Russia is fascism from above.

5 Conclusion

The Russian regime is a kleptocratic criminal autocracy with fascist features. Putin is its auto­cratic leader, who relies on a small inner circle of trusted friends and lieutenants to maintain his power. A rather long list of “Putin’s people” (Catherine Belton) and “clerks” (as Anne Applebaum would call them) help sustain a regime that they benefit from, depend on or go along with.

The question is whether this is a regime to negoti­ate with to end the war or design a future security architecture, or that can otherwise be relied upon.

Given its character, domestically the current re­gime will further increase the control of society, the suppression of dissent, human rights and the rule of law, and the militarisation of Russian society.

Internationally, it will (a) continue its expansionist posture, disrespecting the sovereignty and terri­torial integrity of other countries and posing a mil­itary threat to countries it considers to belong within its sphere of influence; it will (b) continue its hybrid warfare to disrupt and undermine de­mocracies anywhere, including through disinfor­mation, cyberattacks, election interference, cor­ruption and other influence operations; it will (c) support authoritarian regimes that suppress human rights and freedoms wherever it can; and it will (d) resort to assassinations, war crimes and other forms of extreme violence without constraint if that serves its purposes.

The fall-out will not be limited to Europe or Russia’s immediate neighbourhood; it may impact governments and societies in any region of the world – as is the case with Russia’s current war of aggression against Ukraine.

The Russian regime cannot be trusted to respect international agreements and contractual obligations (exam­ples of the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, the agreement on the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Treaty between Ukraine and Russian Federation on the Ukrainian-Russian State border, the Helsinki Act, the Budapest Memo­randum).

This regime, in short, will continue to pose a threat to other countries and to core values of demo­cratic societies. Those who insist that supporting Ukraine was not only about freedom for Ukraine but about defending democracy, human rights and a rules-based international order everywhere, are right.

The longer the war continues, the more the re­gime will be confronted with its intrinsic internal contradictions: while the aggression is the logical consequence of the fascist character of the re­gime, it is not compatible with its kleptocratic and criminal interests. Those were better served in a more stable environment with open access to markets (something the Cosa Nostra also realised after the high-profile killings of judges Falcone and Borsellino in 1992).

By January 2025, Russia was failing in its strategic and security objectives: the war and over 150,000 war crimes com­mitted by Russia were reinforcing Ukrainian nation­hood; Ukraine was closer to the European Union and NATO than ever before; with NATO membership of Finland, Russia’s direct territorial border with NATO had been extended by 1340 km; Russia’s military weakness had been exposed; and overall, the war signalled to become a disaster for Russia’s future. The Russian regime had achieved the opposite of what it set out to achieve with this war; it was acting against its own interests.

And by January 2025, it was clear that negotiating to meet Russia’s “legitimate security interests” or other demands in one way or the other would not change the character of the regime. Continued support to Ukraine would be more likely to achieve that: attempting to defeat and isolate the Russian regime and to bring offenders to justice, and mak­ing the war as costly as possible would sooner or later weaken support for the autocratic leadership. Removing economic benefits would further weaken the klepto­cratic and criminal state. And since fascist regimes typically do not survive their leader: no Putin, no [fascist] Russia.

But then, in February 2025, the new US administration began to bring the Russian regime in from the cold and switched sides: Trump coming to the rescue of Putin.

Epilogue: The Russian fable of the scorpion and the frog

In the end, the scorpion stings and both the scorpion and the frog are drowning. The scorpion: “Sorry but I could not resist; it is in my характер”.

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[1] The case of Alexander Litvinienko was already mentioned above. Other examples of assassinations or attempted assassinations include Vladimir Golovlev (liberal Russian politician, shot dead 2002), Sergei Yushenkov (liberal Russian politician, shot dead 2003), Yuri Shchekochikhin (journalist and liberal Russian politician, killed through poisoning with radioactive materials 2003), Yiktor Yushchenko (Ukrainian politician running for presidency (President of Ukraine 2005 – 2010), survived poisoning with dioxin in 2004), Anna Politkovskaya (Russian journalist, shot dead in October 2006), Anastasia Baburova (journalist) and Stanislav Markelov (human rights lawyer, both shot dead 2009), Natalya Estemirova (member of the NGO Memorial, abducted and shot dead 2009), Sergei Magnitsky (Russian tax adviser, died in prison 2009), Boris Berezovsky (Russian oligarch, possibly strangled to death in UK 2013), Timur Kuashev (Russian journalist, human rights activities, probably killed by poison 2014), Boris Nemtsov (Russian politician, shot dead 2015), Vladimir Kara-Murza (Russian politician and activist, survived poisoning in 2015 and 2017, criticised war against Ukraine, then arrested for high treason in 2022), Sergei Skripal (former Russian double agent, survived poisoning with nerve agent Novichok, UK 2018), Aleksei Navalny (Russian politician, survived poisoning by Novichok in 2020, subsequently sentenced to nine years in prison, then in died in February 2024 while imprisoned in the Arctic Circle's Polar Wolf penal colony). Most of these cases have been attributed to agents of or contract killers recruited by the internal security service FSB, the external security service SVR, the military service service GRU, or the so-called “Kadyrovtsy”, that is, forces of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

Assassination has furthermore been a method often used against persons considered to be terrorists or traitors, primarily in Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, but also other parts of Russia as well as abroad. For example, in 2019, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot dead in Berlin, Germany, by a killer contracted by the GRU.

[2] Examples include Alexander Tyulyakov (Gazprom, found hanged, Sankt Petersburg, February 2022), Mihail Watford (Ukrainian-born oligarch, found hanged, Surrey, UK, February 2022), Vasily Melnikov (billionaire, found dead with his wife and two sons, Nizhny Novgorod, March 2022), Sergey Protosenya (former Director General of Novatek, allegedly committed suicide after having killed his wife and daughter in Spain, April 2022), Vladislav Avayev (former Gazprom Bank, found dead by gunshot along his wife and daughter, Moscow, April 2022), Alexander Subbotin (LUKOIL, found dead in Mytishchi, Russia, May 2022), Yuri Voronov (Gazprom sub-contractor, shot in his swimming pool, July 2022), Ravil Maganov (Lukoil, falling from hospital window in Moscow, August 2022), Pavel Antov (Russian politician and businessman, dead after falling from his hotel window in India, December 2022), Vladimir Bidenov (Russian fellow traveller of Subbotin, found dead in his hotel room in India, two days prior to Subbotin, December 2022), Vladimir Makarov (former deputy head of the Main Directorate for Combating Extremism. Found dead in an apparent suicide shortly after being dismissed from his position, February 2023), Marina Yankina (head of the financial support department of the Russian Defense Ministry's Western Military District, died after falling from a window of a high-rise building in St. Petersburg, February 2023), Pyotr Kucherenko (Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education, dead after having fallen ill on a plane during his return from Cuba, May 2023), Mikhail Rogachev (former vice-president of Yukos, died after falling from his tenth-floor apartment in Moscow, October 2024), Vladimir Shklyarov (renowned ballet dancer and critic of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, died after falling from the fifth floor of his apartment building in St. Petersburg, November 2024), Vadim Stroykin (musician known for his opposition to the war in Ukraine. Died after falling from a ninth-floor window of his apartment in St. Petersburg, February 2025).

As Proj Russia Character Regime V10 (feb2025)

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