He was one of the most powerful men in Russia for a decade, an old pal of the president who oversaw a million workers and a rail network spanning 11 time zones.

But then Vladimir Yakunin was suddenly out, ending a career that included a stint as an intelligence officer at the United Nations in New York during the Cold War. Now Yakunin, 67, has some parting advice for the remaining members of what he dismissed as Putin’s “so-called inner circle”: know your place.

“This circle will continue to rotate,” Yakunin said in his private office in Moscow during a 90-minute interview. Putin has yet to form a stable “ruling class like Russia had during czarist times,” the former head of state-owned Russian Railways JSC said.

The comments are a rare public admission from a longtime insider of the fragility of wealth and influence in the opaque and seemingly ironclad system of control Putin has built over 15 years. With that system under unprecedented pressure from plunging oil prices and international sanctions, any step Putin takes to maintain his grip on power reverberates far beyond Moscow. 

David Fuller's view

Putin needs to banish longtime insiders, not so much to create openings for new blood, but to keep everyone else in line.  I think the penultimate a paragraph of this article over estimates Putin’s security:

Still, nobody’s position but Putin’s will be secure until a governing elite like the one that existed before the Bolsheviks swept to power a century ago is fully formed, a process that may take decades, according to Yakunin.

Putin is feared by his inner circle but he is very unlikely to be loved or even respected.  Moreover, he will not be tolerated so readily as Russia’s economy deteriorates.  The number of influential people in Russia who regard Putin as a liability can only be increasing.