Not by coincidence, Russian Tsars and Soviet rulers presided over a caesaropapist structure in which the leader was also the head of the church, be it Russian Orthodoxy or Leninism. Instead, for the secret services, as for much of the Russian elite since the origins of Russian statehood, the state and state power have been invested with mystical, even sacred qualities. Loyalty to the Tsar or president and the state was not merely a legal or hierarchical submission to rulers. Since its inception as a state, Russia has always had secret services and often, as under Ivan the Terrible and arguably today under Putin, the services constituted a state within the state. His grandfather was Lenin’s and Stalin’s cook for several years in the 1920s, and he has been imbued with their ethic for all of his life. First, Vladimir Putin’s family comes from the “organs”, as he himself has implied. Such acts have long characterised the behaviour of Russia’s security services, and will continue to do so as long as they retain their current status and power. Unfortunately, this statement reflected a continuing Western inability to comprehend Putin’s Russia and its mentality. Upon receiving confirmation that the UK had formally accused Moscow of poisoning Sergei Skripal, the former spy, as well as his daughter and 21 others, then US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said it was almost beyond comprehension that a state would act this way.
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