Understanding Russia’s political and civic life is not easy. There is a ruling party, which should mean the rest of Parliament is in opposition. But this isn’t the case because the real opposition forces are not allowed to participate in elections. This would suggest that election results should be a cause of outrage. But in Russia, elections have been destroyed by mass fraud, in which tens of millions of votes are falsified.
The same goes for the Russian courts. Formally, according to the country’s constitution, the courts are independent. In reality, any decision in a political trial is made by order from the Kremlin.
Who supports this system, who protects it? The so-called security forces, known in Russia as siloviki, are the core and backbone of Vladimir Putin’s regime. Today, there are as many as five million people in the siloviki, including employees of the country’s state security, the police, the investigative committee (which is supposedly akin to the FBI in the US) and numerous other agencies, such as the National Guard, which employs more than 300,000 people and is only really tasked with dispersing protests.
