Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

The article surveys public information which casts doubt on the traditional definition of Vladimir Putin’s regime as the “Power Vertical” concept; i.e. the assumption of the same chain of reasoning that it was Putin who created this regime and that the beginning of its creation should be identified with Putin’s coming to power in Russia in 2000 is also questioned. The article attempts to substantiate the fact that processes resulting in what we now call the Putin regime began well before the collapse of the Soviet Union and were developing in Russia throughout the entire period of the so-called Boris Yeltsin’s democracy. They are related to the Soviet Union reformation plans of the KGB secret service, considered as omnipotent even in the Soviet Union itself, to the redistribution of assets after the collapse of the Soviet Union and to people who were either specially trained for the mentioned reformation of the USSR or were themselves KGB representatives; now it is they who are established in the highest echelons of Russia’s power. The objective of this article is to reveal the side of the nature of the Putin regime which considerably changes the customary picture.