Large office in a military building – Newspaper Kommersant No. 199 (7400) dated 10/26/2022

At the first working meeting of the President of the Russian Federation with members of the Coordinating Council under the government to meet the needs of the armed forces after its creation, the powers of the new structure became clear. In the conditionally “economic” issues of the government’s work related to the military operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, the power block of the White House, previously subordinate, in fact, only to the president, will become part of the “civilian” government, which has a majority in it. In turn, political responsibility for military resources, along with the right to new administrative reforms for the sake of their availability, is divided in half between Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin (material resources) and the governors of the State Council represented by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin (human resources) – the military remains in the exclusive competence of the military only military action.

The coordinating council under the government was created by presidential decree No. 763 of October 21. Although the composition of this authority was approved immediately (the chairman is Mikhail Mishustin, the members are key vice-premiers and ministers in this area, including ministers of the power bloc, the leadership of military intelligence services, as well as Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and presidential aide Maxim Oreshkin), in fact his place in the system of power could be described in different ways. Yesterday, after the second meeting of the committee, it became more obvious that the Coordinating Council, which reports once a week to the president (yesterday’s working meeting with the president was, apparently, an ordinary weekly meeting of the council) is, in fact, a regular meeting of the Russian government in a narrow format with the participation of law enforcement agencies, but on a specific issue, and from this very simple observation, one can make quite significant assumptions about what is happening with the government of the Russian Federation in the new circumstances.

In the open part of the meeting (most of it, of course, was closed, since it obviously dealt with classified topics), in addition to the president, only the prime minister and the mayor of Moscow spoke. Mikhail Mishustin mainly talked about how the powers are distributed among the members of the Coordinating Committee – who is responsible for what in it, and from his report it followed that the Coordinating Committee itself is something like the White House commission on the material supply of the Russian troops participating in a special operation, as well as structures that were instructed to carry out construction (both military and non-military for purposes) work in four territories annexed to the Russian Federation in September 2022. “I am sure that the distribution of duties between the members of the Coordinating Council will allow us to quickly establish interaction at all levels in order to deliver everything that our military personnel may need in time,” the prime minister summed up the tasks set. From the report of Sergei Sobyanin it followed that the focus of the work of the governors is more related to the provision of troops with human (mobilization) resources, although “joint actions to support the military-industrial complex, assisting in the deployment of additional volumes for the production of everything that the army needs” in the regions are also underway.

It is obvious that in this construction, the presence in the Coordinating Council of the heads of the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Foreign Intelligence Service and the National Guard, which are part of the “power bloc” in the White House, which is subordinate to the President of the Russian Federation, is directly necessary only optional. Recall that in a normal situation, this part of the government is subordinate to the prime minister only in purely civil matters. However, during the meeting, the president raised the issue somewhat broader, explaining that he sees the main task of the Coordinating Council not only as military supply issues, but also “updating all procedures, all administrative procedures, everything related to what is called “management” in the very in the broadest sense of the word.” According to the president, “this, of course, cannot be done without broad and deep coordination between all areas of activity, all structures, all ministries, departments, and of very different directions: both the power bloc, and the economic bloc, and the regions of the Russian Federation – for this, own speaking, and the Coordinating Council was created. One of the tasks of the council will be “a realistic assessment of the situation, the state of affairs in general”, and “this applies to all our work in almost all areas” – thus, to some extent, the Coordinating Council is turning into a structure that is close in meaning to the “military cabinet » in the government, despite the fact that the commander-in-chief is the president of the Russian Federation, who is not a member of the Coordinating Council.

There is no point in ignoring the political aspect of what is happening: such a broad definition of the powers of the Coordinating Council, which will meet at its meeting as often as the government of the Russian Federation according to its usual rules, means the distribution and acceptance of political responsibility for the results of the Russian military operation in Ukraine by the White House in exchange for an informal change in the rather vague principles of the autonomy of the power bloc in the government to a clearer subordination in “economic” (however they are defined) issues to the command of the prime minister. The main ideology of Mikhail Mishustin’s team was also adopted – the main principles for overcoming difficulties in administration are the use of modern management approaches imported from the business environment, deregulation, digitalization and the definition of long-term priorities. “If we work within the framework of standard bureaucratic procedures, hide behind formalities, we will not get the desired result in any direction,” the president confirmed. Accordingly, the acquisition (and acceptance) of power, as in all such cases, is also associated with the assumption of responsibility – the military in this situation is only responsible for military actions, while previously the entire military operation in Ukraine, in fact, was only their issue – this, in fact, defined it by the term “special operation” in a purely domestic political sense.

Dmitry Butrin