Leonid Slutsky was promised second place in the September elections, sources tell Meduza. Frustrated that the Kremlin stopped helping, he’s now saying LDPR belongs to the security services instead.

Leonid Slutsky, who leads Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), has begun casting it as a “party of security officials” rather than as a party of the Kremlin’s civilian staff. That is how Slutsky describes the party in private conversations with allies and with businesspeople close to the Liberal Democrats, and even in public campaign materials.