Sberbank CEO (he is a Russian German and has some typical traits making him noticeably different from typical Russian bureaucrat) and his posse is the leading p

Sberbank CEO (he is a Russian German and has some typical traits making him noticeably different from typical Russian bureaucrat) and his posse is the leading part of the technocratic wing of the political elite in Russia. Their people also lead another important bank - VTB (international payments/etc for large corps), and Sber has strong hold on various national networks, like naturally anything money related, like municipal services and traffic ticket payments for example, as well as on generic network infra and datacenters. If Putin is gone tomorrow there is strong chance that those technocrats will take the power (i haven't noticed any significant animosity between them and FSB which would otherwise be a complication). Particularly important aspect showing their power is that there have been no corruption scandals associated with them, at least not that i can remember in the last decade at least. They tread very carefully, not making any open political claims while presenting themselves basically like apolitical tech-infrastructure/platform for the efficient government and society and doubling down on the source of their shadow power - network/infra/technocracy. Thus they can't allow themselves to suck too much technically, and thus they naturally hire decent technical people (i have some first handshakes among the upper management in technology there)