The Very Strange Writings of Putin’s New Chief of Staff

For a country where politics has long been monopolized by the state, Russia has seen a lot of news in the past few weeks. It has been the sort of news that autocracies produce: resignations and appointments, the reshuffling of opaque men and often obscure names. High-level officials have been removed, some have been accused of embezzling and jailed, and last week Vladimir Putin changed his chief of staff, replacing an old K.G.B. colleague, Sergei Ivanov, with Anton Vayno, a younger, little-known bureaucrat who has been serving as deputy chief of staff.