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In the aftermath of the mutiny led by Wagner Group head Evgenii Prigozhin, a lively debate ensued about what this series of events revealed about the pillars of President Vladimir Putin's support. One way to approach this issue is to examine the attitudes expressed before the onset of the Russo-Ukrainian War by those holding positions a few notches below the top leadership in Russia. These are individuals at the apex of their professions--part of an elite stratum whose support, research shows, is more crucial for a dictator to maintain than that of the mass public. An analysis of trends from a unique dataset extending from 1993 to 2020, the Survey of Russian Elites, shows that highly placed Russians exhibit a nuanced combination of views on issues pertinent to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Although overall approval of the use of Russia's military outside its borders is shown to be much higher in 2020 than it was in the early 2000s, support for the unification of Ukraine with Russia is weak, as is approval of military adventurism that comes at the expense of domestic improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant paradigm for understanding contemporary Russia holds that Vladimir Putin's tenure in office has been accompanied by a massive influx of former KGB and military personnel – so-called “siloviki” – into positions of power and authority throughout the polity and economy. Claims of extensive elite militarization, however, are largely based on the analyses of only one research program and, moreover, the validity of the estimates produced by that research program is open to question on numerous grounds. In this article, we review existing research on elite militarization in Russia; discuss a series of conceptual and empirical issues that need to be resolved if valid and meaningful estimation of military–security representation is to be achieved; introduce new findings; and evaluate the totality of existing evidence regarding whether the Russian state under Putin deserves to be labeled a militocracy. We find that the most straightforward reading of existing data indicates that the percentage of silovikiin the political elite during Putin's first two terms as president was approximately half of that which has been widely reported in both scholarship and the media, and also declined during the Medvedev presidency. In addition, our analysis of a broader cross section of the elite estimates military–security representation during the Putin presidency to have been lower still. Overall, existing data paint a less alarming picture of the depths to which silovikihave penetrated the corridors of power since 2000 than has been commonly portrayed and thereby cast doubt on Russia's status as an “FSB state.” On the other hand, past trends also provide some basis for expecting that the numbers of silovikiwill once again rise during Putin's current presidential term.