ALL THE AUTOCRAT’S MEN: - The Court Politics of Putin’s Inner Circle - by Mikhail Zygar

And the first of these is Minister of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev, the son of a longtime Putin associate who was the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and now serves as the Security Council secretary. [...] ATLANTIC COUNCIL 11 THE ARMY AND ITS CLONES F rom the very beginning of the war, Putin was afraid of the growing popu-larity of the army. [...] In the last two years, the heads of most of the important theaters and all the most import- ant museums have been fired in what appeared to be an effort to prevent the cultural elite from protesting the war—or to pressure them into supporting it. [...] In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, the federal authorities withdrew and the mayor of Moscow took the initiative—while the other regions obediently introduced the same measures as Moscow. [...] His latest book, War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, was published in 2023 and was featured on the New Yorker’s list of the best books of the year.