The Real Reason Russia’s Ruling Class Is Struggling to Stop the War

It is burning through men, money, equipment, infrastructure, labor, markets, and the last remains of normal life. It has made Russia more dependent on China, more isolated from Europe, more militarized, more corrupt, and more afraid of its own future.

So the obvious question is: why don't the people at the top stop it?

They are not stupid. Many of them understand perfectly well that this war has not made Russia stronger. It has made their own lives more dangerous, their foreign assets more vulnerable, their children's future more complicated, and their escape routes narrower.

And yet they keep going along with it.

Because for Russia's ruling class, the war is a disaster — but peace could become an audit.

The moment the war stops, someone will have to explain where the money went, why the army was so badly prepared, why hundreds of thousands of men were wasted, why Russia became poorer and weaker, and who should be punished for the failure.

And in Putin's system, punishment is never abstract. This is why Russia's elites are trapped inside the machine they built. They know the war is dangerous. But stopping it means entering a new political reality where old protections may fail, new clans may rise, and the next ruler may need scapegoats.

Today, I want to show you who really runs Russia, what they are afraid of, and why their fear helps keep the war alive.

Here's our roadmap:

The Real Rulers — who actually holds power in Russia, beneath the formal offices and official titles.

Patriotism as Property — why the elite's "love of Russia" often means love of privilege, protection, and access to state money.

The Exit Class — why their children, savings, medical care, and dream lives usually point abroad.

The Trap They Built — why the same people who understand the war is damaging Russia still do not dare to stop it.

What Will They Do? — who may inherit power after Putin, why the elites will have to choose sides, and why the next ruler will almost certainly turn against some of the clans that kept the system alive.

The Real Rulers

A normal country is run by institutions: ministries, courts, law enforcement, and local administrations. The person matters, but the office matters more.

In Russia, the office is only the costume. The real power sits underneath it: with people who are part of the informal network that controls money, violence, paperwork, and access.

That is the ruling class.

It includes ministers, governors, generals, judges, security officers, state bankers, defense contractors, and the businessmen attached to them. Some are visible. Some stay in the shadows. But they all understand the same basic rule: the highest force is not law but protection.

At the lower levels, the Russian state worships paperwork. A school principal, a doctor, a local clerk, a police investigator — all of them are buried under endless reports they need to file. They are terrified of missing the right line.

But the higher you climb, the less paperwork matters. A powerful person can bend a rule, ignore it, or have a new rule written for him. The same law that crushes an ordinary citizen can suddenly become invisible around someone with the right patron.

This creates the strange Russian double world: endless paperwork below, selective lawlessness above. This selective protection applies to the person as long as they remain useful to their seniors.

The Russian state looks modern on the surface, but underneath it runs on feudal logic.

Power depends on protection.

A judge, a governor, or a security officer is never simply doing their job. Each of them sits inside a feeding chain. Someone helped them rise — and now expects loyalty, money, favors, silence, or services in return.

This is why corruption in Russia is a social fabric.

A person receives an office that gives access to money. They can keep some of that money, after they send a certain amount upward. In exchange, they receive protection. If they are attacked, someone can make the problem disappear. If they are useful, they may be allowed to become rich far beyond their salary.

But if their protector weakens, the same files that were ignored for years can suddenly become a criminal case.

Take Elena Khakhaleva, the former judge from Krasnodar whom Russian media nicknamed the "golden judge."

Her story became famous in 2017, after videos appeared from her daughter's lavish wedding. There were pop stars, expensive decorations, and the kind of luxury that looks strange when the mother of the bride is a regional judge. In a normal system, that would be the beginning of a serious investigation. In Russia, it was mostly the beginning of a media scandal.

For years, Khakhaleva was not just a judge. She was part of a local judicial network. According to Russian reporting, she and her sister were connected to powerful figures in the Krasnodar court system and allegedly enjoyed the protection of senior judicial officials. That is the point. A judge in this system does not simply interpret the law. A judge can become a gatekeeper for property, business disputes, land, taxes, and criminal cases.

Then the protection stopped working.

The same state that had tolerated the obvious signs of wealth for years suddenly discovered everything: missed workdays, allegedly false records, unexplained assets, land schemes, relatives, companies, properties. In 2020, Khakhaleva lost her judicial status. In 2022, she was arrested in absentia. In 2025, she was detained in Baku while reportedly trying to fly to Dubai. Azerbaijan later refused to extradite her, and by 2026 she was reported to be living in Tbilisi.

Meanwhile, Russian courts moved against the family assets. In 2026, property connected to Khakhaleva, her relatives, and affiliated people was ordered into state ownership: dozens of land plots, nearly a hundred buildings and premises, company shares, and millions of rubles.

What happened to Khakhaleva means one thing: her clan was pushed away from its feeding source.

Maybe she quarreled with someone too important. Maybe her patrons weakened. Maybe someone stronger wanted her position, her assets, or both. In the end, the reason matters less than the mechanism. Her protection failed.

This is how the entire upper layer in Russia lives. The law does not truly protect their lives or property. But the same law does not protect ordinary people from them either. Law is not a shield. It is a ritual of obedience, mostly required from those below.

So what we see here is not simply corruption. It is a social parasite whose purpose is to extract state resources for itself. Such a parasite needs the host to stay alive. But it also needs the host to remain weak enough that it won't be removed.

This is not uniquely Russian. Rent extraction was practiced by every colonial power, from Spain to Britain. The difference is that other European empires usually directed this machine outward, toward conquered peoples. The Russian elite has spent centuries colonizing its own population — and calling it patriotism.

Any real change threatens the feeding system of Russia's golden million. For them, reform is not an abstract political risk. It is an existential threat. They have very few skills outside this environment. A judge like Khakhaleva cannot simply move abroad and become a successful judge somewhere else. Her value existed inside one very specific system: informal protection, selective law, and access to state resources.

The same is true for much of Putin's elite.

They can function only under these conditions. So they will defend these conditions. And that defense is what they call love for the motherland.

Patriotism as Property

Is Russian elite patriotic? In a sense, it is.

When these people say they love Russia, they do not mean the country as a whole, with its culture and history, or fellow ordinary Russians. What they truly love is the upper layer of Russia: the place where their privilege and wealth live.

The easiest mistake is to imagine these people as hypocrites who secretly know the truth but keep telling lies in public. Some do. But many have trained themselves into a more comfortable belief. They believe that "Russia" equals their own position inside Russia.

If their power grows, Russia is strong.

If they get a bigger budget, Russia is defended.

If their enemies are crushed, Russia is safe.

This is how a ruling class slowly appoints itself as the country.

Look at the Russian defense sector. Publicly, it speaks the language of sacrifice, patriotism, and service. In reality, it became one of the richest feeding zones in the entire state.

Take Timur Ivanov, the former deputy defense minister. He was responsible for military construction projects — the bones of the military machine.

In 2024, Ivanov was arrested. In 2025, he was sentenced to thirteen years in a penal colony on corruption charges: taking bribes and embezzlement. One bribe amounted to 1 billion Russian rubles (about 15 million dollars).

Then came others. In 2026, Ruslan Tsalikov, another former deputy defense minister and a long-time associate of Sergei Shoigu, was charged with embezzlement, money laundering, and bribe-taking.

All this happened around the ministry responsible for a war that was killing Russian soldiers by the thousands. Every single day.

From the point of view of a normal citizen, stealing from defense spending during a war is treason. But from inside the Russian elite, it looks like routine distribution. The soldiers dying in the trenches are not part of the Russia they love. So they have no reason to care.

But what about their personal safety? By stealing from Russia's defenses, aren't they putting themselves and their families in danger?

The Russian elites don't see it this way. To them, Russia is not home but rather a place where they make money. Once it becomes unprofitable or too dangerous, they're ready to move out.

The Exit Class

The Russian elite makes money in Russia in order to build a better future outside Russia. They want their savings, medical care, children's education, and retirement to be somewhere safer.

This is an old habit of authoritarian elites. It is not uniquely Russian. Upper classes in corrupt authoritarian systems treat their own country as a source of income, not as a place where they plan to grow old.

Before the full-scale invasion, this system worked. Earn in Russia, spend in the West. Curse Western decadence on TV, then buy real estate in countries where courts work, streets are safe, and officials cannot take everything away with one phone call.

After February 2022, the old escape routes became harder. Europe and the United States sanctioned many oligarchs, officials, their families, and companies connected to the Kremlin. Investigative journalists working with OCCRP built the Russian Asset Tracker and documented billions of dollars in foreign assets linked to Russian oligarchs and senior figures close to Putin.

But the old dream did not disappear. It just changed direction.

In March 2022, rich Russians started to move wealth from Europe to Dubai to shield assets from tightening Western sanctions. Many bought properties in Dubai and Istanbul: some for investment, some because they needed a home.

That phrase matters: "needed a home."

Many of these people had long stopped seeing Russia as their home. It was a place where they waited for an opening to move to a better place.

A good example is Anatoly Chubais: one of the key reformers of the 1990s, a man who helped shape post-Soviet privatization and later held senior roles under Putin. In March 2022, he resigned as Putin's special representative and left Russia. Sources told Reuters he left because of the war in Ukraine and did not intend to return.

That is the exit mentality in its purest form. A man who knew the system from the inside looked at the invasion and chose the door.

Most insiders did not, because leaving is not simple when your money and status are still tied to the machine.

This is where the moral excuse begins.

The official tells themselves: I am not stealing. I am protecting my family. I am preparing for the day when everything collapses. If I do not take this money, someone else will. And anyway, nothing good would be built with it.

Once a person thinks this way, the country becomes a mere raw material. Something to be taken before the next predator gets there first.

The Trap They Built

The Russian elite does not stop the war because every option is dangerous.

Continuing the war is destructive. But stopping the war is unpredictable. And for people who live by protection, predictability matters most.

As long as the war continues, they can keep following the rules they already know: obey Putin, repeat the slogans, and keep the budgets flowing.

If the war stops badly, everything becomes uncertain. Who will be blamed? Who will be sacrificed and lose all their assets?

Inside this system, peace is not automatically safe. It can mean audit, redistribution, and the search for scapegoats.

This is why so many insiders prefer waiting. Waiting is the oldest Russian political strategy. Do not move first, but watch the top.

The Prigozhin mutiny showed how the elite would react when violence turned inward.

In June 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Wagner fighters crossed from Ukraine into Russia, seized the southern military hub of Rostov-on-Don, and moved toward Moscow. For a short time, the world watched an armed column roll through Russia while the system looked stunned.

Reuters later reported that Russian elites trembled during the rebellion and that some private jets left Moscow. When real danger came close, their instinct was not to defend the state but to find the exit.

Russia's ruling class was absolutely terrified by the scenario of Putin falling. They know they are hated by many inside Russia. Liberals hate them for enabling the war. Z-patriots hate them for corruption and incompetence. Rival clans want their assets. Ordinary people may someday ask why their sons died while officials bought villas.

So they cling to Putin because he is their ultimate protector.

Many of them probably understand that the war has damaged Russia for decades. They understand that China is not a generous friend. But understanding is not the same as acting.

To act, they would need trust. They do not trust one another.

They would need courage. But the system has selected them for obedience.

They would need an idea of Russia after Putin. They have none.

So they continue doing their thing: keeping a low profile, building up their private wealth, and waiting for someone else to make the first mistake.

What Will They Do?

Of course, not everyone can emigrate.

If it were that simple, the war could be ended in a very elegant way: give Russia's entire ruling class residence permits, let them move their money abroad, and make sure they never do anything more dangerous than gardening, shopping, and taking yacht trips.

One million rich Russians scattered across foreign countries would not be much of a threat. Russia, meanwhile, would finally have space for democratic reforms.

Beautiful idea. Not very realistic.

Someone will still inherit the Russian throne.

Everyone inside the system understands that Putin is not eternal, and the end of his rule is not turning out the way the Russian elite once imagined. They expected a managed transition, preserved fortunes, negotiated immunity, and maybe a polite historical portrait somewhere in a state museum.

Instead, they are looking at war, sanctions, criminal liability, frozen assets, angry soldiers, angry liberals, angry patriots, and a country full of people looking for someone to blame.

And someone will have to be blamed.

That is the first job of the next ruler.

Whoever comes after Putin will not simply sit down in the Kremlin and continue business as usual. He will need to build his own coalition. That means attacking some existing clans, sacrificing some figures, redistributing property, and presenting himself as the man who has come to clean up the mess.

For many people in the elite, especially those under personal sanctions, this creates a serious problem. They cannot simply leave and pretend nothing happened. They are stuck inside the system they helped build, so now they have to make the right bet.

They have to guess who has a real chance to take power after Putin — and attach themselves early enough to survive.

Sociologist Konstantin Gaaze has named three realistic contenders: Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, and Sergei Kiriyenko, the First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration.

This does not mean one of them will definitely become president. Russian succession is not an election campaign. It is a struggle among clans, security services, bureaucratic groups, financial interests, and people who know too much about one another.

But these three names make sense because the next ruler will need a very specific package of qualities.

He must look respectable enough for negotiations. He must not be too old. He must have a reputation as someone who can solve practical problems. And he must not be so publicly stained by the worst crimes of the war that no one in the West can talk to him.

Of course, everyone in this system is stained by something. At the very least, by corruption. But by the standards of the current Russian elite, corruption is almost a parking ticket.

Sobyanin has spent years building the image of the mayor who turned Moscow into a showcase. Clean streets, parks, metro stations, digital services, polished sidewalks — the capital as a model of administrative competence.

Mishustin has a different image. He is not charismatic, and that may be his advantage. He looks like a severe but not insane manager: a man who does not write historical manifestos, does not scream about sacred wars, and does not seem personally hungry for apocalypse. He is also prime minister, which matters. If the president leaves suddenly, power formally moves to him, at least temporarily.

Kiriyenko is the most flexible of the three. His main talent is adaptation. In the 1990s, he was a young technocrat. Under Putin, he became a manager of domestic politics, elections, propaganda, occupied territories, youth projects, and ideological control. Kiriyenko can be almost anything the moment requires.

Everyone else has problems.

Some potential figures have no real resources. Some have no political weight. Some are too toxic. Some look impossible to negotiate with. Some would terrify too many clans at once. And the next ruler will need to keep the elites from tearing each other apart.

For now, the most serious contenders try not to shine too brightly.

In Russia, becoming too visible is dangerous. If Putin sees you building popularity, he may read it as a threat. He does not need independent political figures around him. He needs loyal executors who appear to have no ambitions of their own.

Of course, that appearance is false. But it must be maintained.

So the useful candidates stay in the shade. They do their jobs, avoid unnecessary drama, appear loyal, and wait.

This invisibility is also an asset. It allows them to sit through the war without becoming the face of it.

But the Kremlin may try to close that escape route. It may try to smear potential successors with the war deliberately — to make sure they have no future outside victory. If they are implicated deeply enough, they cannot present themselves as clean managers. Their only road then leads forward with the regime, because the alternative is a courtroom.

For the rest of the elite, the people who are not serious contenders for the throne, the task is different. They have to watch the signals. Who is rising? Who is being protected? Who is being weakened? Which family is suddenly attacked? Which governor is praised? Which security group receives new powers? Which old friend disappears from television?

They are not looking for justice. They are looking for weather.

And right now, the weather has changed.

The elite has begun to understand that there will be no simple return to the old life. The comfortable version of Putinism — steal in Russia, vacation in Europe, send children to Western schools, praise patriotism on television, buy real estate abroad — is gone.

Something will have to change.

If it does not, their life scripts may end the way the life scripts of the Russian upper class ended in the early twentieth century. For centuries, everything looked permanent, then the ground moved.

Originally published at https://elvirabary.com on August 2, 2026.