Can Putin have too many enemies?

Stratfor tells us that Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow’s hybrid of Bill Daley and Al Capone, is in Vladimir Putin’s sights.

Luzhkov wields unprecedented mayoral power over the Russian capital, with close ties to major bankers, media moguls and the city’s biggest businesses. When he became mayor in 1992, his wife Yelena’s small construction company, Inteco, burst onto the Moscow scene, performing 20 percent of all construction work in the capital. Now, Inteco accounts for most of the construction in Moscow and many other cities, making Yelena Russia’s only female billionaire. …

Putin has long wanted to go after Luzhkov and end his reign over Moscow and the construction business, but the president has held back because of Luzhkov’s many political backers in the Duma and supposed Mafia ties. Moreover, Luzhkov is on the board of Putin’s political party, United Russia.

The straw that broke Putin’s back was the December 2007 legislative elections; not only was voter turnout in Moscow low, but votes for United Russia also were abysmal. …

Stratfor sources say Putin has given Luzhkov until the fall to tie up loose ends in his mayoral post, and he must then resign. Moreover, Putin is already clearing out Luzhkov’s supporters in the Duma, stripping Alexander Chiligarov of the Duma vice presidency and Iosif Kobozon of his place on the Duma Commission.

It remains to be seen if Putin will just strip Luzhkov of his mayoral title or if he intends to go after the mayor and his wife’s construction and real estate empire. Many Kremlin insiders and other oligarchs have been salivating at the thought of getting their hands on Luzhkov’s assets.

But Luzhkov is not the sort to go quietly. He still has some tools — mainly his alleged ties to the largest Mafia in Russia — that he might be tempted to use against Putin and the Kremlin, though making such a move would amount to suicide.

But on the other hand, Putin could use this time to prove to the Moscow Mafia that his control over the country will not be shaken by any move that the Mafia — or anyone else — would want to make against the Kremlin. Some of Putin’s loyalists allegedly have their own ties to the Moscow Mafia, and the president could use the Mafia members who supposedly are connected to Kremlin insiders against those said to be loyal to Luzhkov, fracturing one of the most powerful mafias in the world.

I don’t know that much about Russian politics, and most of what I do know, I learn from Stratfor first. But it bears repeating, over and over again, that one sniper bullet between the eyes of Putin, Vladislav Surkov, Igor Sechin, Dmitri Medvedev, Alexei Miller, or Oleg Deripaska would probably spark another violent spiral into 1990’s-style gangland warfare.

Putin has not been making very many friends on the Russian political scene. The KGB/FSB, the institution that made him, is bridling at the material damage Putin has inflicted upon the clan of Igor Sechin, which basically comprises the Ministry of Justice, the old-line security bureaucracies, and Rosneft (the devourer of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Yukos).

Yuri Luzhkov is a billionaire many times over, and Moscow is his fief. If he goes, his construction and real estate empire (nominally his wife’s) will exist solely at the pleasure of Putin’s clique — which has shown itself to be ruthlessly acquisitive against “big boys” who aren’t part of the Kremlin club.

Even if Luzhkov is willing to run that risk (which is doubtful), what about Moscow mafiosi, who probably murdered central banker Andrei Kozlov, among thousands of other important people over the past eight years?

One day, somebody will refuse to yield his fief. Everyone who has seen his fief cut back or wholly confiscated during the Putin years will be thirsty for revenge.

The Kremlin has become a clearinghouse for political power, and Putin is its chief market maker. But Sechin’s entire clan (the Rosneft bloc) is restless at the growth of Surkov’s Gazprom clan. As Putin demonstrated in his liquidation of Vladimir Barsukov’s Tambov mafia, Putin is not loyal to the institutions which made him the power he is.

Putin holds substantial power and wealth himself, and through Surkov and Deripaska he has the allegiance of much more. But the Yeltsin oligarchs in exile have been fighting a war on the run with Putin for years — Boris Berezovsky, for example, has four identical limousines which take different routes to wherever he goes — and they have been out in the cold for a very long time. George Soros and Marc Rich have been fighting a different kind of battle with the Kremlin since well before Yeltsin’s day. The Sechin clique has been unhappy for its own reasons. The Tartarstan clique, a group of “Russian” Tartar and Bashkir oligarchs whose fiefdom has been functionally independent from Moscow for years, knows it is not far down Putin’s most-wanted-assets list, as well.

Putin has many committed enemies. From Putin’s track record, one doubts Putin has many reliable friends.

Luzhkov’s clique faces the choice between capitulation with uncertain results, “amiable exile” a la Roman Abramovitch, or standing for its fief, and hoping that other clans rally to it.