Putin's Inner Circle

In the days before the invasion, Russian TV broadcast a session of President Putin's 30-member security council - BBC

This is a strange arrangement for a meeting. It almost looks like something out of a movie about some ancient empire. It just doesn't look like a good place to hold a meeting. The acoustics have got to be awful, so it's was probably arranged just for show while Putin gave a speech.

This photo is from a BBC story about the members of Putin's inner circle. There are a bunch of names, so as an exercise to familiarize myself with them, I put them into a spreadsheet. Russian names are tough. Half of the names mentioned in the story are reporters or western diplomats. They are marked outside. Putin's inner circle are labeled inside.

Spreadsheet here

Via View From The Porch