RUSSIA: Rocked by the arrest of Russia's richest man, the country's billionaires and liberal politicians are warning of a creeping takeover of the Kremlin by President Vladimir Putin's old comrades from the KGB.
Three years after Mr Putin came to power vowing to create a "dictatorship of the law", Russia faces parliamentary elections in December with Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky behind bars, national television under state control and the Kremlin bristling with power-hungry men who cut their teeth with the President in the feared security services.
They showed their hand before dawn on Saturday at a Siberian airfield, when armed special agents stormed on to Mr Khodorkovsky's jet, took him back to Moscow and saw him charged with involvement in more than $1 billion of tax-evasion and fraud.
Mr Dmitry Trenin, director of studies at Moscow's Carnegie Centre, said the oil magnate's arrest resembled an operation to seize a gun-toting Chechen rebel. "It was the kind of thing you imagine is reserved for Shamil Basayev," he said, referring to the separatists' notorious guerrilla.
Mr Khodorkovsky's error, analysts say, was to renege on an informal pact sealed by Mr Putin and Russia's tycoons in 2000, where he agreed not to investigate the murky sources of their wealth as long as they steered clear of big-time politics.
The likes of Mr Roman Abramovich, Russia's second richest man, have been content to spend their time and money dabbling in regional politics and buying playthings such as Chelsea FC.
But Mr Khodorkovsky, head of Russia's biggest oil firm, Yukos, has openly financed opposition parties ahead of December's parliamentary elections and has even hinted at a possible run for the presidency in 2008. "He ignored several opportunities to cash out or go abroad. He was looking for a showdown and a showdown he got," said Mr Trenin.
Now he sits in a four-man cell in Moscow, while the nation's billionaires and politicians wonder who is next on the hit-list of the siloviki - a monicker for men from one or other section of Russia's hydra-like security service.
The word is derived from the Russian for "strength". Dozens of siloviki quietly followed Mr Putin from St Petersburg and the security services to the Kremlin, and began ousting the clique which jealously guarded and dispensed power under Boris Yeltsin.
Drawing small wages in security departments which lost prestige under Mr Yeltsin, the siloviki watched with disgust as his allies and "oligarchs" such as Khodorkovsky and Abramovich amassed fortunes in the chaos of post-Soviet Russia. Now they want a slice of that wealth and power.
"Putin isn't the only player in this and he doesn't control the situation completely," said Mr Igor Bunin, head of Moscow's Centre for Political Technologies.
"The people who have tasted victory with Khodorkovsky will want more. Mr Putin is a silovik himself," he added, "but this is a personal test as to whether he will rise above these forces or become a puppet."
Mr Trenin said the Kremlin's opponents - and Russian society at large - now faced a stark choice: submit to the siloviki or be crushed.
"If society ducks - and I think it will - there will be no more bloodshed, but if it tries to resist and does so ineffectually, then more people will be punished."
Mr Bunin said Mr Putin, confident of victory in presidential elections due next March, knew he had few opponents at home or abroad who were willing or able to confront him.
"Putin doesn't want an independent political system and he knows the liberals are weak, the press is under control and the West will forgive him."