About

Sources used: Open-source research, academic literature, think-tank assessments, investigative publications and primary regulatory records; methodological standards drawn from academic practice and open-source intelligence principles; source typology aligned with GI-TOC, Atlantic Council, OCCRP, and academic citation norms.
Dedicated methodology page: Methodology · Legal: Notice · Privacy

Purpose of the Site

“Kleptopedia” is a public, bilingual informational resource that organises open, published knowledge about the structural features of the contemporary Russian political-economic system. It is designed according to the Data Beauty principle: knowledge outputs that are visually scannable, cognitively clear, fully citable, and usable in analysis or decision-making. It is not an advocacy platform, a news aggregator, a campaign tool, or a vehicle for original investigative claims.

The site enables reconstruction of a full systemic picture defined by seven interlocking categories of entities and processes, and supports three analytical theses that appear as secondary consensus in the critical literature. A person-centric subset alone is treated as insufficient.

Seven Categories (locked)

Central figures and power structures
Organised crime (OPG / vory-v-zakone and modern networks)
Power and “grey” instruments
International criminal and black markets / routes
Authoritarian partner regimes
Key processes (vertical of power, patronage, Uber Krysha, mobilisation state, etc.)
Historical trajectory / context

Three Analytical Theses (supported, not asserted as court-proven facts)

Internal transformation into a kleptocracy / mafia-state / criminocracy under an “Uber Krysha” arrangement.
Documented connections and instrumentalisation of international criminal networks and black markets (without claiming a single hierarchical global syndicate).
Systematic patronage of selected authoritarian regimes.

These theses rest on open-source consensus among critical analysts (Dawisha, Galeotti, Atlantic Council, GI-TOC, Brookings, OCCRP and others) and are always presented with source attribution and acknowledged limitations.

Source Policy

All factual claims must be traceable to open, citable sources. Preferred source types include:

Primary or near-primary

Official sanctions designations (US OFAC, UK, EU, Canada, Australia)
Court documents and formal legal filings available in open repositories
Official government reports (US State Department Country Reports, NCA UK statements, etc.)
Statistical releases from international organisations (UNODC, World Bank, IMF, Credit Suisse / UBS Global Wealth Reports where cited)

Secondary – high-reliability investigative and academic

Monographs with extensive source apparatus (e.g., Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy, 2014; Mark Galeotti, The Vory, 2018)
Reports by Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), including Gangsters at War (2024)
Atlantic Council research series on sanctioned kleptocracy and related topics
OCCRP investigations (Russian Laundromat and subsequent work)
Long-form investigative reporting by Novaya Gazeta Europe and comparable outlets with established editorial standards
Peer-reviewed academic articles and books from university presses

Secondary – analytical / interpretive

Think-tank assessments (Brookings, Lowy Institute, Chatham House, RUSI, etc.)
Expert commentaries clearly labelled as such

When a claim rests on an analyst’s interpretation rather than a direct documentary record, the text marks it explicitly as “assessment by [author/organisation]” or “secondary analysis”.

No claim is advanced solely on the basis of anonymous social-media posts, unverified Telegram channels, or single-source rumour. Preference is given to material that illuminates under-emphasised structural links rather than repeating the most frequently circulated narratives.

Limitations of the Evidence Base

Access to primary Russian state financial and internal security archives is extremely limited.
Quantitative estimates of personal wealth, black-cash volumes, and illicit financial flows are frequently contested and often rely on indirect methods.
Many relationships between security services and criminal networks are documented through secondary reporting, court cases in third countries, or testimony accounts whose reliability varies.
The site does not claim completeness. Absence of an entity or relationship does not imply non-existence; it may reflect source limitations or deliberate research prioritisation (focus on structural, less-repeated elements of the systemic picture).
Highly publicised individual scandals or figures already covered exhaustively in mainstream outlets receive less emphasis than structural mechanisms, routes, processes and historical continuities that are less frequently synthesised in one place.

Where sources conflict or evidence is incomplete, the text notes the divergence. The difference between judicial findings and expert secondary consensus is respected.

How Content Is Organised

Overview — high-level map of the seven categories and three theses.
Historical Trajectory — chronological context from late-Soviet / GULAG roots through the mobilisation state.
Mechanism pages — deeper treatment of the four systemic features, with atomic knowledge units.
Entity cards — structured factual summaries across the full taxonomy (person | organization | network | market_route | process | historical_institution | regime), with documented relationships and sources.
Relationship lists — structured catalogues by relationship type and core nodes across the network architecture.
Knowledge units — atomic, reusable claims that can be cited independently.
Sources & Bibliography — master list with type, language, and access notes.

Every major page provides clear, verifiable sourcing and citable representations backed by open published evidence.

Terminology

All core terms follow the project glossary. New terms are not introduced without definition and glossary update. Partisan or emotionally charged labels are avoided unless they appear inside a direct quotation from a named source. Analytical concepts such as “Uber Krysha”, “mobilisation state” or “criminocracy” are always attributed to the secondary literature that employs them.

Verification Standards

Content is published based on strict open-source methodology. All claims are verified against documented secondary and primary records before publication.

What This Site Is Not

Not original investigative journalism.
Not a real-time news feed.
Not an advocacy or mobilisation platform.
Not a comprehensive encyclopaedia of every Russian public figure or every reported scandal.
Not a claim of judicial proof for any individual relationship.

Its value lies in structured synthesis of open sources into a navigable, citable systemic picture that can be independently verified and extended.