- January 17, 2026
- 10:15 pm
- World News
Vladimir Shevchenko, Andrey Savarets (Ukr.) — especially for “Hvylya”. The material was published on January 14, 2026. The analytical version was prepared based on the author’s research and adapted for the Israeli and international audience.
Modern Putinism is not a static regime and not “authoritarianism with a human face.” It is an unfinished political-economic construction that is rapidly moving towards its ultimate form — Stalinism. Not as a metaphor, but as a working management model, tested by history and convenient for the self-preservation of power corporations.
The Kremlin is aware of its own incompleteness. Hence the attempt to “complete” the system through war, repression, total control, and internal mobilization. To understand the logic of what is happening, it is important to look not at individual decisions, but at the evolution of Russian statehood as a recurring historical cycle.
The feudal model identified the state with the personality of the monarch. The liberal one turned it into an arbiter and “night watchman.” Lenin’s considered the state as an apparatus of class violence.
The Stalinist system went further: violence became universal, fear replaced institutions, and the state turned into a self-sufficient Machine, where even the elites are not protected. It is this matrix that today becomes the ultimate goal for the Putinist construction.
The war against Ukraine turned out to be not a cause, but a condition for bringing the regime to totalitarian absolute.
Economy under lock: return to the mobilization model
The full-scale war became a convenient smoke screen for large-scale nationalization of the economy. Under the slogans of “security” and “sovereignty,” there is a systematic redistribution of property.
Three basic mechanisms are used: revision of the 1990s privatization through courts; direct nationalization under the pretext of violations or non-fulfillment of defense orders; alienation of assets of foreign companies that left Russia.
The reprivatization of the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant and ferroalloy factories is a demonstrative case. Formally — export to “unfriendly countries.” In reality — strategic importance for the military-industrial complex.
Since 2022, dozens of foreign assets have been transferred to the state through decrees, temporary management, dividend blocking, and court decisions. Simultaneously, a law on “protecting business from foreign influence” was adopted, effectively removing large companies from external control.
According to NSP estimates, the volume of such “nationalization” reached 3.9 trillion rubles; Reuters names a comparable amount — about 50 billion dollars.
A characteristic comment was made by Oleg Tinkov in 2025, comparing the post-Soviet period with a prolonged NEP: technologies and assets came in, then were seized, and now it is assumed to “sit” on this for the next decades.
If in the 1990s the security forces became owners of what they managed, now the special services prefer to be managers of what others owned. The oligarchy is systematically weakened: even personal loyalty no longer guarantees the inviolability of assets.
Money under a microscope
Financial control is the next level. In the fall of 2025, the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina directly announced preparations for the mass introduction of the digital ruble, which will allow tracking the targeted use of funds.
Technically, it is an ordinary ruble, but with software marking of each transaction. In fact, it is a tool of total financial oversight and a symbol of the completion of the “new NEP.”
Simultaneously, pressure on the self-employed is increasing, VAT is raised to 22%, and Rosfinmonitoring gets access to all transfers through the SBP, Mir cards, and universal codes. Putin himself publicly demands to strengthen control over cash.
Exit from the legal field
After the constitutional changes of 2020 and the start of the war, Moscow is effectively dismantling the primacy of international law. State Duma Vice Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy directly stated that ahead is a new revision of the Constitution, as “world practices have not taken root.”
Russia withdrew from the Council of Europe, denounced dozens of agreements, and deprived businesses of the opportunity to protect themselves through international arbitration. The nationalization of assets like the “Rolf” company became legally without alternatives.
This is not a side effect, but a strategy: war is used as a tool for the unpunished seizure of property.
Repression as a management method
Internal “cleansing” has become an integral part of management. The army, which for a long time remained a competitor to the special services, was dismantled: the death of 16 generals, arrests, show trials.
The arrest of Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov and the subsequent ousting of Sergey Shoigu symbolized the transfer of control over the military vertical to the security forces. Under the slogan of fighting corruption, an entire management team was destroyed.
Simultaneously, there is a wave of mysterious deaths of top managers of state corporations and security structures. The repetition of scenarios — falls, “sudden” heart attacks, gunshot wounds — makes coincidence unlikely.
Digital GULAG
From January 1, 2026, the FSB receives its own penitentiary system, including pre-trial detention centers and the exclusive right to detain and escort prisoners. Such a practice existed only during the mass repressions of the 1930s.
Through SORM, the special service controls internet traffic, calls, messages, banking applications, and citizens’ devices. The reason for a criminal case can be not a publication, but a search query.
Today in Russia, 2–3 sentences are handed down daily under articles on “state treason.” Most cases are classified.
Cult without personality
The cult of personality in modern Russia is not the worship of a person, but a political technology. Putin here is not a subject, but a screen onto which the fears and expectations of society are projected.
His image has consistently changed: “reformist tsar,” conservative, weak monarch, and finally, a stern “Stalinist” symbol of toughness. But this is not the evolution of personality, but a change of functions.
The myth of the leader replaces institutions and ideology. It is even more effective than the Stalinist cult because it does not depend on the quality of the bearer.
The growth of monuments to Stalin and Ivan the Terrible is not about history, but about sanctioning a new round of terror.
Militarization as a norm
Militarization covers education, the economy, and culture. The school turns into a mechanism for preparing the “man of the mobilization era,” and the cult of the so-called SVO erases the boundaries between war and civilian life.
The economy is finally subordinated to military needs. War becomes not a result, but a process — a way to legitimize endless mobilization.
As Vladimir Pastukhov noted, this is a repetition of old forms in new packaging: repression, “besieged fortress,” patriotic education. Only the copy always works worse than the original.
Illusion of the beneficiary
The system repeatedly demonstrates: there are no untouchables. Even loyal propagandists, Z-bloggers, and systemic political scientists turn out to be expendable material.
It is here that the Stalinist illusion works — the belief in one’s own security. But, as Hannah Arendt wrote, totalitarianism creates an atomized society where everyone remains one-on-one with the System.
As a result, the only real beneficiary becomes the System itself. It absorbs its creators, performers, and supporters.
The key catalyst of this process is the war against Ukraine. If for Stalin the concentration of power was a means of external expansion, then for the Putin model it is the opposite: war is a tool, concentration of power is the goal. And it is this logic that today determines the trajectory of Russia, as increasingly written and spoken about by NANews — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency.
