[I]t was a detailed account of the criminal activities that [Andrey Zykov] feels Putin was involved in—abuse of power... of his official position... … - Karen Dawisha

While we talked about the failure of the 1991 coup... the failure of the efforts by the conservatives to oust Gorbachev... it's a much more complex situation. ...[S]ome ...were quickly tried and put into jail, but for very short periods and very few people... even though this was a nation-wide conspiracy... 1991 failed as an incident, but the effort to return... preeminence... as a protector of the grand Russian idea... became part of the project of bringing Putin to power in 2000.

Yevgeniy Gontmakher... deputy director of Moscow’s Institute of World Economy and International Relations... "[T]here is no state in Russia. ...millions of ...bureaucrats work," but they do not perform the [state] function... "Instead of... implementing the course of a developing country, we have a ...private structure ...diverting profits...[T]here isn't even a pale copy of ...the formation of the state." The Parliament had become "...another department of ...Presidential Administration" ...with the ...legal system, and bureaucrats who thought they worked for the state ... [but] serve only the interests of ...[a] "monopolistic business structure which can do anything it likes" and ...controls "...50 percent of the economy."

The and its supporters use the courts to scare off researchers who want to expose the corruption at the core of this regime.