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Despite his own many unpleasant encounters with the FSB, Harding doubts that ‘the security and law enforcement services belong in Putin’s domain’ or ‘that they follow his orders’ – ‘they enjoy near total autonomy.’ That several autonomous agencies will trip over one another’s feet is only natural. The Foreign Ministry was embarrassed by the FSB’s surprise decision to expel Harding because it was announced on the eve of a visit to London by the Russian foreign minister. ‘These are the kind of things,’ Harding writes, ‘that are supposed to have disappeared from Putin’s rational, vertical, Prussian-style state.’ That they have not disappeared is evidence that there is no rational, vertical, Prussian-style state.
