That source added that when Putin said that Hillary Clinton might be behind the protests, he was not simply playing to the public - he really believed it. "At that point, Putin realized that a huge number of civil servants, elected officials and businesspeople depend on the West - because of children who live there, real estate they bought in London and bank accounts in Switzerland. That's when he got the idea to try to bring all of that back to Russia, so that the West wouldn't have such an influence."
One Russian official remembers a diplomatic meeting with the United States regarding the U.S. rocket defense shield. One of the U.S. negotiators told Russia to stop threatening to attack European cities with their missiles, saying bluntly to the Russian delegation: "You really think we are going to believe that you are going to attack a city where your children are studying and you keep your money? We have your number." The members of the Russian delegation thought long and hard about that comment.
Restricting international travel
According to people close to the Kremlin, these laws are instruments to allow the government to control the elite. And there is yet another instrument at their disposal: restricting international travel. There is already a pilot project at the FSB (the successor agency to the KGB). Employees have to turn in their passports and can only get them back with their boss's authorization. In addition, according to currently laws, an unpaid speeding ticket could be a reason to deny authorization to leave the country.
The number of Russian government employees, at all levels, who own property abroad is quite high. For some, the new rules will mean that they leave government service - particularly for elected officials who came from business backgrounds.
But owning property abroad does not mean that someone is independently wealthy, and for many it will mean choosing between a life-long career and cherished vacation properties. It also means that the government will be losing a fairly large number of employees who decide that working in the government is not worth the restrictions. It will also mean that today's business people will never get involved in politics.
According to Kommersant's interviews, more and more civil servants are looking to move out of the public sector, including the police and other agencies who helped get these new laws passed. According to one source in Russian law enforcement, everyone is looking for ways to get private sector jobs. These people might not have luxurious apartments in Miami, but they might have money in Latvia or a modest apartment in Bulgaria.
According to Mikhail Prokhov, the Russian billionaire whose overseas assets include the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, the government is trying to accomplish two mutually exclusive tasks - pleasing voters while restricting actual talk about corruption. "The Kremlin has a choice - either it can start taking corruption seriously, which means adopting rules that apply to everyone equally, or it can put the brakes on this whole topic."
As it is, the only thing that is clear is that the old rules of the game no longer apply, and the new rules make it hard to know exactly what will be allowed and whose transgressions will be overlooked. That uncertainly has had one clear effect: the Russian elite are getting very nervous.
