Lawfare Daily: Emily Hoge on Russian Mobsters at the Front

[Intro]

Emily Hoge: Yeah, it's sort of people acting with a sense of total impunity who go on to commit some fairly heinous violent crimes. Who've gone through prison, which is––Russian prisons are quite brutal––then sent to a war where they are further brutalized, where they are often encouraged to commit war crimes, where they are participating in a great deal of violence. And then they come home with a sense of total impunity for crimes that they commit.

Benjamin Wittes: It is the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes with Emily Hoge of Clemson University.

Emily Hoge: It seems like parts of the way that organized crime relates to the state are starting to change, as the state is able to offer less and is asking more of them continuously.

[Main episode]

Benjamin Wittes: Today we're talking Russian mobsters. What are they doing at the front in Ukraine?

What happens when they get out of prison and come home to Moscow after serving their time at the front? How is this affecting the murder rate in Moscow? And are there mobsters who are too violent even for Vladimir Putin to let out of prison in exchange for service in the war against Ukraine?

I want to start with the text of these two articles that you wrote for Lawfare, one in August and one last month. But I want to actually go into what I think is a deeper subtext of both of these articles, and a kind of thesis that you're playing with relatively quickly.

And so let's start with the first article. I think we, just to get everybody on the same page, the first article has to do with letting people out of prison, pardoning them in Russia so that they can go kill Ukrainians.

Talk me through what's going on in that article and what you reported.

Emily Hoge: So in that article I was looking at sort of the use of prisoners in the war as a way of kind of making the war invisible. That prisoners are sort of an available vulnerable population that the Russian state can kind of draw on to avoid a mass conscription that they need to kind of constantly replace their forces in Ukraine. And that in order to kind of hide the war away from those who have more sort of social power, who could object if the costs were being borne by sort of like people in Moscow and things like that, instead, they draw from other groups, sort of the economically vulnerable, non-Russians, and prisoners as well.

I was arguing in that article that the use of prisoners though presents a sort of particular difficulty, in that when some of these prisoners come back, they come back and go on to commit new crimes that then make the war become visible again to the people that are sort of having it disappeared.

Benjamin Wittes: Right. And so let's talk about some of the people who are at issue in this. These are not low-level criminals who are, you know, have agreed to go join the Marines and go to Vietnam instead of being prosecuted, right?

Emily Hoge: I mean, there's some of those too.

Benjamin Wittes: But I mean, that's not where the controversy is coming from.

Who are we talking about here?

Emily Hoge: There are very few restrictions on who they recruit. When it started, when Wagner started recruiting––

Benjamin Wittes: Is cannibalism a bar?

Emily Hoge: No, cannibalism isn't a bar. Murder is not a bar. Terrorism is one. Occasionally, certain kinds of sex crimes are not permitted, but they often ignore that.

People with especially long sentences are kind of the people most incentivized to sign up. That includes a lot of people who've committed some fairly heinous crimes, including, for example, cannibalism. There are, bizarrely, there's at least three cannibals that have been given pardons for participating in Ukraine, which is the wildest number it could be, I think.

Benjamin Wittes: right? I mean, well, I’m sure it could be four.

Let's talk about the theory of this a little bit. How much of this is about sending a signal to the population that all is forgiven if you're willing to kill some Ukrainians, and how much of it is actually driven by a manpower issue?

Emily Hoge: I suppose it's hard to say. I would say that it starts as a manpower issue, that it comes from a desire to find groups of people to recruit whose deaths won't be much of a problem, who can be used as cannon fodder very easily.

It has the sort of effect of also emptying Russian prisons. It's not really clear how many prisoners have actually been recruited, but it is a fairly high number. And at least two prisons have apparently closed, supposedly because they ran out of prisoners.

And the result of it is that it does give the impression that anything can be forgiven as long as you fight in Ukraine. I don't know if that is a desired effect, because it kind of emboldens people to go on to commit crimes that I don't think the Russian government wants to sort of have in the papers, to be dealing with.

But it does sort of have the kind of idea that if you participate, then any sort of crime can be forgiven.

Benjamin Wittes: Right, so let's talk about that. One advantage to putting cannibals from prisons on the front lines is that some of them get killed, and then you don't have to house them in prisons and they don't eat people in their villages or cities.

But a disadvantage is that some of them don't get killed, and then they go back to their cannibalistic ways in public. So, to what extent has there been a real problem with, you know, you pardon these people, and then they end up free and in Moscow or in their hometowns.

Emily Hoge: So it's definitely been a very publicly visible problem.

It's hard to say exactly how many. There's been, there's some estimates of how many pardoned soldiers have gone on to commit crimes, but a lot of those numbers are not available. It, somewhere around like 750 to a thousand violent crimes committed by returning veterans who've been pardoned. And a lot of those crimes have been very sort of sensational.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah. I mean it's not just the number of the crimes, it's the crime––it's the spectacular nature of the crimes.

Emily Hoge: Yeah. It's sort of people acting with a sense of total impunity who go on to commit some fairly heinous violent crimes. Who've gone through prison, which is––Russian prisons are quite brutal, as are a lot of prisons, but Russian prisons too––then sent to a war where they are further brutalized, where they're often encouraged to commit war crimes, where they're participating in a great deal of violence. And then they come home with a sense of total impunity for crimes that they commit. Which is not sort of a great recipe for the reintegration of convict populations.

So, the original kind of arrangement was that prisoners would receive a pardon after kind of six months of being used as cannon fodder. So the sort of, the first round of prisoners that were recruited into Wagner did come back, and went on to commit a number of crimes. Since then, the deal has sort of changed so that the pardons don't come quickly.

Convict soldiers are supposed to sort of participate until the end of the war. They do receive a pardon if they are given a medal or are injured. So some of them do come home.

So this sort of hasn't gone away, despite the fact that they're kind of keeping them in the war and trying to kill as many of them as possible before the war ends.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright. So you know, as you've looked at this, it seems like part of what you're reporting is they are saving a certain number of young Russian men, particularly in elite cities, particularly if they're Great Russians, i.e., ethnically Russian, whatever that means, from being conscripted.

But the flip side of that is that they're releasing people into communities that are, you know, were locked up for very good reasons. And so talk to me about how this plays in the Russian social contract.

Emily Hoge: It has created a great deal of distress. It's frequently discussed. The sense that, sort of, criminals are being released and returning home is a source of fear in the same way in Russia that it would be if cannibals were returning from prison here.

Benjamin Wittes: It really doesn't help that some of them are cannibals.

Emily Hoge: It really doesn't.

Benjamin Wittes: As opposed to merely murderers or rapists.

Emily Hoge: It's, yeah, the, there's not really that much, like––they pick people that are quite violent. And they sort of, they allow them to go.

But that does produce a sort of a sense of fear that is, I mean, when you read stories about that, there is a sense that criminals are being released and are, you don't know if they're around. That produces a sense of fear, in Russia, that relates to this kind––it's the sense of disruption of the sense of stability as represented by these returning soldiers.

They disrupt what feels like kind of peace back home.

Benjamin Wittes: Alright. Let's talk about the second article, because the second article involves the people who are too bad even for this program. So, worse than just your run-of-the-mill, garden-variety cannibals who've been turned down and feel left out of the situation.

So who are the guys who, even under this program, are not getting out?

Emily Hoge: So in that particular example, the one sort of case that they have not actually recruited from prison, that they haven't accepted people who have tried to volunteer, is a few people who are serving a life sentence without parole. And in the case that I was particularly looking at, that was––

Benjamin Wittes: The cannibals are eligible for parole?

Emily Hoge: If they don't have a life sentence without it, yeah. Yeah. That is a particular category of prisoner.

And the group that I was particularly looking at, there was participants in organized crime in the nineties, people that were important enough in the world of organized crime to kind of be dealt with by being given a life sentence without parole.

Which is not a huge number of them, but they are kind of the group that has not been sent.

Benjamin Wittes: And before we get into who these people are, why is this such an unthinkable category?

I mean, when we think of organized criminals. I mean, okay, John Gotti, right? Or Don, in a mythical context, Don Corleone. These are not like the people who you are most afraid of ever walking the streets again, though they are guilty of horrible things.

And certainly next to a cannibal, you might say, well, a mobster, a high-level mobster is actually relatively, could be a sort of genial figure, right. Why is it that mafia dons of the nineties are a particularly untouchable class, from the point of view of the Putin regime?

Emily Hoge: When we're talking about organized crime in Russia in the nineties, we're talking about something that wasn't just like a criminal subculture, like what we talk about with sort of like the American mafia.

It's not just beneath the state, kind of operating in a different kind of environment, but––it was an actual sort of challenge to the existence of the state  in the nineties. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, as things got real chaotic in the nineties, organized crime kind of became not a subculture, but culture.

It was kind of the––it replaced the functions of the state. It challenged the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force. The state couldn't control or deal with the mafia in a sort of meaningful way.

So in the 2000s, as the Russian state consolidated, part of that process of consolidation is creating a new arrangement with the mafia that could allow the state to be supreme over the mafia.

Organized crime doesn't, sort of––these important mob bosses of the nineties, the ones that couldn't be put under the state, are a particular challenge to state power in Russia, to legitimacy. They are a threat not just to sort of individual Russians, but to the idea of a Russian government.

So to the Russian government, the power of organized crime could be more of an issue than a cannibal. Most of, kind of, the organized crime in Russia doesn't have––like, they work with the state.

But the particular people that the state went about putting in jail for their entire lives that didn't want to have them be released are the people that are particularly threatening.

It's people who sort of didn't follow the rules, who wouldn't agree to kind of be subordinated or to calm the levels of violence that they participated in down. And that kind of means that they represent a challenge to what the Russian state thinks of as its legitimating role.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, so I'm going to come back to this, because this is, I think, beginning to tease that subtextual thesis here, which is relates to the nature of the modern Russian state.

But before we do that, let's just flesh out––so, what is the difference between a 1990s mob boss who doesn't have a life without parole sentence and is eligible for this program and one who's not? So like, what's the distinguishing features? Is it the number of notches on the belt? Is it the particular mode of killing people? Is it the refusal to submit to the authority of the state?

What distinguishes these people who are now pleading to be allowed to go to Ukraine and get killed?

Emily Hoge: There are a bunch of major figures from organized crime who have volunteered and who have gone to Ukraine. They seem to recruit, they seem to put them in positions as officers a lot of the time.

You know, they're experienced at organizing a band of violent people. And that can be useful to them.

But so it's sort of a few of them that have not been sent, who haven't sort of––if they have wanted to volunteer, haven't been sent. That does sort of seem to depend on the fact that they have been given life without parole.

And there's not a huge number of them that were given life without parole.

And the ones that were the ones that were seen––presumably, at least––as especially heinous. Which doesn't necessarily relate to––I think in the case of Osya, who I wrote about in this particular article, he was seen as engaging in violence in an especially chaotic way. He didn't follow what was the kind of set of understandings that governed how violence operated in the mob in the nineties.

He sort of indiscriminately did violence. He didn't give you any kind of warning. He didn't want to discuss things. He didn't subordinate to a set of rules.

And that made him both, especially a sort of a figure that other mob bosses didn't like and an especially threatening figure to the state. He is seen as especially chaotic and especially dangerous.

There is a feature that he was also kind of continued to operate for quite a bit after kind of the early 2000s, and then was arrested in the 2000s and sentenced around 2011. But so he is seen as especially dangerous and especially chaotic.

And that makes him more of a problem. He's not seen as somebody that kind of works within the new set of understandings with the state in the 2000s, that they won't challenge state power.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah. So I want to focus for a minute on the word chaotic. Because the word that you could have focused on is brutal, like particularly brutal. And if memory serves, he did kill people with a baseball bat, right?

Emily Hoge: I mean, he killed people in a lot of different ways.

Benjamin Wittes: But it's not the brutality that really separates him from a lot of his others the others, right?

It's the fact that he is disorganized about it and can't be brought under state control. Is that fair?

Emily Hoge: Yeah. Yeah, so it's not the level of violence, because the level of violence is high and constantly escalating. It's that he doesn't agree to the rules of the game.

So he didn't lead a particularly large or powerful gang, but his gang was––went after everybody. He ended up sort of having most of the rest of sort of the world of Moscow organized crime after him, because there was no sort of like order to who they targeted, as he sort of tried to gain power within Moscow organized crime.

And so that was what made him dangerous, is this kind of––there are an agreed-upon kind of subculture, a set of norms that people follow. Which are kind of hard to understand if you aren't within the world of organized crime. Like, it doesn't necessarily seem that, like, setting a date to have a conversation about it before you have like a shootout doesn't necessarily seem that much worse than just having a shootout.

But it is sort of––if you don't try to make a deal, that creates more violence, creates more chaos, and is seen more negatively.

Benjamin Wittes: Yeah, so walk us through, like, what are the rules?

If we were going to publish a rule book of modern, acceptable organized crime that you don't go to prison for the rest of your life––or ‘you're welcome in at the front in Ukraine, if you are in prison you'll get pardoned, but mostly you're not even going to end up in prison at all’––what is the fundamentals of the rule book?

Emily Hoge: I mean, that's hard to say for sure. I'm not sure that there––it's probably less you, we would want to think of it as less organized than an exact set of norms and rules. It's sort of like a general sort of understanding of how you operate. And that's ‘more subtly than you did in the nineties.’

So less public violence. It's less common to have things happen, like, in the middle of the street in the day, which––there were assassinations any, at random times in the nineties, and that's like less, less public, don't get on the radar of the police.

Things like that. Keep it like a subculture underneath the state.

Benjamin Wittes: It's fine to rub people out, but they should be found in gutters somewhere, not shot in flamboyant fashion in public locations. In a fashion that gets written about in the newspaper.

Emily Hoge: Yeah, essentially, yeah. Yeah. If it becomes too public, that's more of a problem than if it's under the surface.

Benjamin Wittes: And what about the money, right?

I mean, United Russia, Putin's party, is basically a coalition of oligarchs, organized criminals and nationalist politicians.

What is the role of organized crime in the regime itself?

Emily Hoge: So there's some direct connections between power and organized crime. But not, that's not exactly what we're talking about.

It's not that most of these people are literally in the mob and they're, the state is literally run by the mob. It's more that state officials––the state itself has a kind of mutually beneficial relationship with the world of organized crime, but the world of organized crime would see itself quite differently than it sees the state.

It sees itself as sort of a separate entity and they don't necessarily––like, they often sort of work with or for the state, on behalf of the state, but they don't necessarily see themselves as politicians.

Some of them are politicians, but that's not kind of the main way that this relationship manifests.

But the state is able to use organized crime, that it's able to create this relationship through the fact that this is a mutually beneficial relationship, they can kind of push it in different directions. They can rely on like smugglers or hackers, various types of organized crime for purposes that they need.

Benjamin Wittes: And they don't get rid of it, right. I mean, my impression is that the Putin strategy toward organized crime is mostly one of cooptation and keeping it within acceptable bounds, not one of eradication or suppression.

If you asked the oligarchs or Putinistas what the relationship is, how would they describe it?

Emily Hoge: It's definitely not a relationship of total, adversarial––like, it's not a relationship that a state typically like that they are trying to suppress and they have failed to suppress.

It is a symbiotic relationship. Organized crime has an ability to organize force,  to move money, to make money that benefits the state. And the state's relationship with organized crime of providing protection for the mob bosses’ property, which is very useful. Keeping violence from breaking out at the same level that it did in the nineties is useful to them as well.

So there is no sort of need to eradicate it, because it's been sort of mobilized into operating on behalf of the state. And there is no reason to oppose the state because the state is beneficial to organized crime. It helps them operate in a way that is less dangerous and more profitable.

Benjamin Wittes: So let me put this in a provocative framing. You've just described Thomas Hobbes, right?

Which is only, Hobbes frames it not as warlordism, but as the relationship between the individual and the state, right? We, you sign away your autonomy to the Leviathan, and the Leviathan in return protects you and your residual rights and liberties become more meaningful and more valuable.

Well that sounds an awful lot like what the Putin regime is doing with organized crime.

You cannot oppose the Leviathan, but we're not going to interfere as long as you pay the right people and you don't oppose the state and you don't make trouble for the Leviathan. We're not going to sort of interfere with the way you run your little domain.

So why is this not a pure modern vision of sort of the Hobbesian state?

Emily Hoge: I mean, I would also point to Charles Tilly, sociologist, warmaking and statemaking as organized crime. Kind of argues that states come together through protection rackets that in––there are a variety of people that argue that protection rackets, organized crime, this kind of process is the process by which states form.

It is a view that you can also have of the formation of the Russian state, that it's sort of, you get this sort of stateless era and then through organized crime, a state forms.

So in a sense, all states may have some sort of relationship with organized crime. I would say that, one thing that looking at Russian organized crime in the nineties suggests is that the state that kind of forms out of organized crime in this way, it hasn't sort of––the difference in Russia is that organized crime didn't cease to be organized crime.

As it consolidated into the state, it didn't sort of morph into something that looks exactly like a state. It morphed into––it became something that remains organized crime and remains part of the state at the same time. A sort of not fully integrated way, and that produces a host of sort of strangeness in the function of the state, that there are these kind of alternate domains of power that undermine the ability of the Russian state to fully consolidate.

Benjamin Wittes: So give us some examples of that.

You know, we have our own familiarity with organized crime in the United States. All of Western Europe has organized crime and it is generally not oppositional to the state. The mafia was––you know, I mean, it did its thing, but it never challenged the essence of the state.

So what is different about Russian organized crime and its relationship with the state that makes you say that?

Emily Hoge: So an example, the ways in which it hampers the function of the state. You can see that through kind of the ways in which the Russian state functions through corruption.

There is a degree to which the illegality that forms part of the basis of state power means that operating fully, legally––like creating a system that is fully sort of equal and legal for everyone––is not really possible. If you have a section of this large area of illegality that becomes a core part of the state, and that means that there are always going to be corruption and illegality and sort of––

Benjamin Wittes: Particularly if that part is allowed to kill you.

Emily Hoge: Yeah, like if somebody steals all your money, but they're too important and they can't, they're sort of part of this deal and they can't be targeted in that way, there's kind of nothing to do. It sort of creates these points of sort of corruption and illegality.

If your relationship requires that kind of, the mafia is profiting, that means that things become really expensive.

Like with the Sochi Olympics, which organized crime was involved in a great deal of the building of facilities and roads and things like that. And that made them very expensive and very corrupt, because in order to create this space, to have this relationship, to mobilize the mafia and use their capacity for sort of state function and violence creates additional corruption.

Benjamin Wittes: And why does Putin need that? I mean, at this point he has the state under his thumb, he didn't need to pay more for the Sochi stuff. Right? What benefit is that giving him?

Emily Hoge: I mean, I would suggest that he kind of did. Like the people that have, who can do these things, the plays that the state operates, it has been through corruption, through patronage, through unofficial networks, because this is kind of the structure of how things came together.

And it hasn't become a fully functional state that the operation through corruption is kind of a marker of a weak state rather than a strong state. That if you use corruption to govern, that suggests a kind of inability to govern through anti-corruption, which is more effective. And you can still steal from that.

Benjamin Wittes: Right. Alright, so let's bring us back to mobsters who want, who prefer to risk dying in Ukraine to being in prison. It seems to me that all of this challenges the sort of Hobbesian mafia state in a few ways.

The first is that it undermines the regime's ability to say, we brought this stuff under control. The nineties sucked, we brought it under control, and now you're safe.

If there are cannibals running around, you are a lot less safe. How much has this hurt them?

Emily Hoge: I mean, it's hard. It's definitely made the idea of recruiting prisoners really unpopular, and you can see that sort of the amount of press coverage of kind of the return of the nineties crime is back. There's violence in the street again.

Like the stability that has been kind of the basis of Putin's kind of legitimating myth is gone. That kind of caused them to change the deal with prisoners. It's for that reason, probably that as they started, as the Ministry of Defense started doing the recruitment, that they stopped getting pardons. In particular, like the way that people would be released is no longer a pardon that Putin has to sign.

So there's no longer like “Putin Pardons Cannibal” in the press.

Benjamin Wittes: You can see why that wouldn't be an attractive headline.

Emily Hoge: Yeah. So, it clearly has created some problems what the effect of those problems are, it's not easy to say.

As the war goes on in a host of ways, I think it puts pressure on all of these kinds of structures and deals, and that in the case of organized crime, it seems like parts of the way that organized crime relates to the state are starting to change as the state is able to offer less and is asking more of them continuously.

There has been sort of like sort of disruptions in the stability of the world of organized crime. That creates problems and it hasn't kind of fully broken down. And it probably wouldn't break down in the way it broke down in the nineties.

But there are kind of indications that this deal that prevents crime in the street, all of these highly visible murders, is under pressure.

Benjamin Wittes: So the second way that I think it may challenge the Russian social contract is that, you know, the organized crime bosses and leaders did face a submit-or-be-repressed moment in the early aughts. And they, for the most part, as you've described, chose submit, be less visible, and do business––follow certain rules.

And the ones who didn't, you know, got locked up for very long periods of time. More recently, however, there have been ones who do actually pose, pretty overtly, a state challenge.

And the most prominent of those, of course, is Yevgeny Prigozhin, who’s only sort of an organized crime guy. He sort of––

Emily Hoge: No, a hundred percent.

Benjamin Wittes: He sort of became very respectable. And, but at the end of the day, he did march on Moscow with a private army, which is not something that happens in non-mafia states very often.

So what, walk me through that. If I were Vladimir Putin, I would say, wait a minute, this is pretty––the nineties are chicken feed compared to this.

This is Caesar crossing the Rubicon here. How disruptive is this as a moment?

Emily Hoge: Oh, I mean, it's endlessly disruptive, constantly disruptive. A bunch of books about that came out recently.

But a host, I mean, it, it makes relying on sort of these like private military alternative institutions, a mobilizing force, like a mercenary company, look like less of a good bet, that there's a risk in doing so.

That it does kind of suggest a process of destabilization to allow Wagner to function in place of an actual military controlled by the state. They have been trying to change that relationship since then, to change the way that they relate to, sort of incorporate more things under the state to reshuffle the structure of the state.

I think that one of the main ways it did that is that it indicated the kind of the weakness of a state that is a collection of agreements with force-wielding groups. That, less available power to stop something like a march on Moscow, that suddenly there's this, you know, a lack of state between Prigozhin and Moscow that Prigozhin clearly didn't expect either. That nobody came out to stop him and there wasn't sort of a force that could do so. That it kind of reveals that this is somewhat a thing that isn't, that is an agreement, that is that shared imagination, that state power is capable of repressing somebody like Prigozhin.

And then that exposing that is kind of an agreement, a sort of shared delusion, is really dangerous for any state. And especially the Russian state.

Benjamin Wittes: On the other hand, Putin was capable of repressing Prigozhin, as Prigozhin may have known for a fraction of a second before he was obliterated.

But what he couldn't do was to do it without extreme violence, ight? That you had to kill Prigozhin in a very florid kind of fashion in order for people to know that this mobster had flown too close to the sun. So like, it kind of forced you to strip away the urbane modern state mask and show that, and admit that at the end of the day, this is a regime that it is in power because it will murder its way to staying in power.

Why is it important for the regime not to do that a lot? When you think about a lot of fascist regimes, they actually like using violence because it's a really good way of, you know, showing whose boss.

But Putin actually seems to like to sublimate, a little bit, the mafia nature of the state a lot of the time. I don't think he wanted to have that confrontation with Prigozhin.

And there's something about these mobsters saying, Hey, we wanna go to the front and die. And that there is a line beyond which he won't go. And he won't give everybody––you know the cannibals, yeah, but not the guys who are too chaotic.

Talk to me about the message of the limits that are here.

Emily Hoge: I mean, I think that the use of this sort of outside-of-the-state extra violence towards organized crime doesn't necessarily suggest the strength of the state. It doesn't suggest the ability of the state to sort of come down and quickly deal with organized crime.

It looks sort of like a failure, I guess. Does that make sense? That it sort of suggests the inability of the state to operate through more traditional means, that it has to deal with somebody like Prigozhin, like, by blowing him up in the sky rather than sort of stopping him.

Benjamin Wittes: But we really enjoy, if we're the Putin regime, we really enjoy the, you know, Skripal poisoning, right? These sort of theatrical killings overseas where, you know, those of us on the outside are kind of shocked and appalled and they deny it with a wink, right.

Now you have the same thing happen. With a wink, deny, you know, obviously it was just a plane accident, what a tragedy.

But you don't have the sense that it was enjoyable in the same way, and I'm trying to figure out why. When we're dealing with political enemies, is the chest-thumping valuable? But when you're dealing with the mob, the chest-thumping is regrettable and somehow reflects a weakness in the state.

Emily Hoge: Oh. I mean, I don't know what––it's hard to know what they enjoy. Weird stuff.

But I mean, I guess I think that it's still the sort of the use of violence, the ability to sort of act outside of the law and not get in trouble for it, is useful as a marker of power. But having to sort of––being pushed to a position where the Russian state has to act in that way is more of an indicator of weakness.

Does that, is that sort of the distinction?

Benjamin Wittes: I think that's, I think that makes sense. I just think it's a really interesting disparity between, you know, the desire to keep organized crime, you're willing to tolerate a lot from it. You're willing to use it a lot, but you want it to be quiet and invisible.

Versus this other type of violence where you're quite eager for it to be public in all but name. You're quite eager for it to be visible and understood as exactly what it is. I don't think Putin really wanted anybody to be fooled by the Skripal poisoning. And it strikes me as different, and I think it's because the nature, one is bound up with the nature of the legitimacy of the state. Which is, we brought these people under control, but they are a constituent component of our society.

And the other is a, you know, frankly, just how you deal with a traitor.

Emily Hoge: Yeah. How you deal with a traitor is, I mean, publicly and dramatically so everybody knows. So that is the sort of a difference. And that, I mean, is why you do a large explosion and things like that, is to make sure that it is, there's a clear consequence for being a traitor or going outside of the norm.

Benjamin Wittes: So what are the costs here? We have now, crime is back in Russia. We have mobsters roaming the street. We also have empty prisons.

Emily Hoge: Not quite like––it's not the nineties.

Benjamin Wittes: Right. So how much of this can they really do before they bring the foundational legitimacy, pillars of the state into question?

Emily Hoge: Yeah, I mean, what I would say is that nobody wants to know the answer to that. I don't think it benefits any particular sort of part of this deal. It certainly doesn't appeal to the state, but to organized crime as well, a return to sort of the era of the nineties, which was when they––when the mafia was at its height, isn't that appealing either.

Benjamin Wittes: Life was nasty, brutish, and short.

Emily Hoge: Yeah, they, I mean, you didn't live very long. You could not enjoy your wealth. You'd become incredibly wealthy, but then life was difficult and you were constantly under threat. Somebody might kill you at any time. They don't want to return to that any more than anybody else does.

So that––this sort of being undermined creates problems for the world of organized crime too. But it's not, and they don't necessarily want to find out how far it can be pushed before it has to fall apart. But you also don't want to be the last person to realize that things have changed.

So there are sort of pressures that push a kind of return to more visible violence that lead to sort of some skirmishes that occasionally occur. An increase in contract murders is sort of occurring at this time, more violent kind of corporate raids, that makes the strength of the state to suppress them look less strong, less like something they actually have to kind of, operate under rather than against.

And that creates sort of a risk of it eventually falling apart.

Benjamin Wittes: And other than the political unpopularity of these programs for releasing prisoners, do you have a sense of whether there is agita about it within the Russian power elite?

Like, we're making a real mistake, we're undermining our own, you know, this is going to bite us in the ass. Or is this just one of those things that the, you know, risks of drafting a whole lot of young Russian men in cities is so unacceptable that you pay this price and maybe swallow your––you know, swallow hard about the consequences you expect, but you don't really feel like you have a choice.

Emily Hoge: I think there's a lot of indication that they are aware that this––that I mean, not just organized crime, not just prisoners, but creating a sort of large batch of veterans with sort of increased instability economically, with more organized crime, is a real danger.

There is a lot of kind of effort to figure out how to kind of prevent them from becoming kind of disaffected and violent. After the Soviet-Afghan War, after Chechnya, veterans of those conflicts became kind of the base of organized crime, there were large numbers of veterans who had sort of no other job opportunities but did have some kind of training in the use of violence who became a part of this sort of instability, part of organized crime.

That appears to be a threat. And it does seem like one they know about as they try to kind of like turn veterans––there's kind of an effort to make veterans into elites, to get them to run for office, to provide more kind of support that will prevent that from occurring again, but with often kind of limited results.

It hasn't always worked. They aren't necessarily elevating people into being elites or making them less disaffected. And that does seem to be something that the Russian government is aware of and concerned about, that they're getting, you know, a large population of disaffected young men with guns.

Benjamin Wittes: Emily Hoge, Super interesting body of work you're developing. I hope you'll keep working on it and keep publishing it through Lawfare. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Emily Hoge: Thank you for having me.

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