"Yet one essential dimension remains underdeveloped in the broader debate: the organic integration of criminal structures and methods into Russia's strategic toolkit. Russia's system does more than merely operate in a "gray zone." It has become a gray state, sustained by an " Uber Krysha," a super-protection racket in which the Kremlin fuses its security apparatus with organized crime to project influence and intimidation both at home and abroad."
"Russia's current ruling elite, led by President Vladimir Putin, has very much inherited the Bolsheviks' comfort with adopting criminal methods in the pursuit of regime objectives. Before 1917, Lenin's Bolshevik Party financed its operations partly through armed robberies justified as the expropriation of bourgeois wealth for the sake of the proletarian struggle. The Bolsheviks were revolutionary in ideology but gangster"
Contemporary definitions of Russian hybrid warfare often emphasize disinformation, proxy militias, cyber operations, sabotage, and psychological manipulation intended to fragment, confuse, and demoralize opponents. An essential but underdeveloped dimension is the organic integration of criminal structures and methods into state strategy. The Kremlin operates as a gray state sustained by an "Uber Krysha"—a super-protection racket fusing the security apparatus with organized crime to project influence and intimidate at home and abroad. The enabling mentality traces to pre-revolutionary and Bolshevik practices, including armed expropriations and the Cheka's sanctioned summary executions, reflecting continuity of criminalized state methods.
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