Putin’s elite tremble as hardliners call for ‘Stalinist’ steps in Ukraine war effort

The rise of outspoken hardliners in the Kremlin is alarming insiders fearful the Russian president will heed their calls for even more confrontation abroad and sweeping repression at home.

Senior business executives and government officials have watched with growing worry as players they once considered marginal like Yevgeny Prigozhin, known for his Wagner mercenary company and recruiting of prison inmates to fight in Ukraine, have become the public forces behind Vladimir Putin’s push to step up his increasingly all-encompassing war effort.

Prigozhin’s public calls for “urgent Stalinist repressions” against tycoons who aren’t sufficiently enthusiastic about supporting the war effort have led some rich Russians to fear for their own safety and that of their families, they said.

Prigozhin’s open attacks on top military commanders – some of whom have been subsequently removed – and the prominent Putin ally who is governor of St Petersburg, have added to worry within the bureaucracy about the Kremlin’s unwillingness or inability to defend its own.

With Kremlin officials now describing the invasion of Ukraine as a “people’s war”, hearkening back to the World War II rhetoric of Josef Stalin, a few insiders even say they fear the purges and arbitrary arrests of the Soviet dictator’s rule may not be far behind.

Amid the call-up of 300,000 reservists, officials furtively asked each other if family members were safe, worried about too openly admitting that they’d sent their military-age children abroad.