Anton Surikov... former military intelligence specialist.. "...all Russian politicians are bandits from St. Petersburg." Surikov...was dead within se… - Karen Dawisha

[Putin] doesn't back down.

No action was more symbolic of the intention of the group around Putin... than the registration... 1996, of the Ozero Dacha Consumer Cooperative... establishing... Vladimir Smirnov as its leader. ...[O]ther members ...Nikolay Shamalov, Vladimir Putin, , Yuriy Koval'chuk, Viktor Myachin, ...Sergey ...and ...Andrey Fursenko. ...This group ...stayed by Putin throughout his ...period in office, and ...all made hundreds of millions and... billions of dollars. ...[A] cooperative... is a... way for Putin to avoid being given money directly, while enjoying... wealth shared among co-owners. ... Smirnov had long been "closely linked with the well-known 'mafia' businessman Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin)."

This group was seeking also to help themselves. They were a group of trained officers, very interested in economic liberalism, but with political control, and primarily liberalism for them[selves].