The real threat to Putin comes from the siloviki, a Russian word used loosely to describe Russia’s security and military elite. These are people like Nikolai Patrushev, currently the secretary of the Russian security council, and Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), as well as other current and former senior security officials.
The siloviki are formidable. These are the men who tried to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny; when that failed, they had him imprisoned, seemingly indefinitely. The heads of the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU, planned and executed the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal using a Russian military-grade nerve agent. Other siloviki planned the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, lacing his tea with polonium in a London hotel. Putin, who reportedly approved these operations personally, is only too familiar with the capabilities of the security elite.
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