kompromat

Central to this system is the notion of kompromat, or compromising material.

Network officials said the program had descended into "kompromat," roughly translated as mudslinging.

Kompromat can be acquired from various security services, or outright forged, and then publicized by paying off a journalist.

It is like a KGB hunt for kompromat waged against children.

Press organs have thus been able to release selectively to the public compromising materials ("kompromat") on one or another opposing player.

In Russia, the destruction of a rival through kompromat - compromising documents, photographs, or videos - is common in politics and business.

Post-Soviet Russian politics has its own tradition of kompromat, or compromising material designed to erode a rival's reputation.

Widespread use of kompromat has been one of the characteristic features of politics in Russia and other post-Soviet states.

CD-ROM's with Kompromat, or compromising testimony, have been distributed to the scandal-hungry news media.

Farther east, the dirtiest tactics in the ex-communist world involve "Kompromat"—embarrassing information from government files, particularly involving corruption or ties with the former communist secret police.

Gathering kompromat – dirt – on rivals, industrial espionage, eavesdropping, intimidation and blackmail were, and to some extent still are, commonplace.

Russia's secret police have long meddled in Moscow politics, even coining the Russian word 'kompromat' - or compromising material - to describe potentially damaging information used for blackmail.

The real glue is the opportunity to make money, in whatever ways, and for Mr Putin to exert power by hoarding kompromat - compromising material - that could be used against them.

Not far from the gilded hall, they knew, Putin was keeping kompromat on them, material gathered by the security agencies on their rise to wealth - piles that were, a Putin adviser said, "meters high."

Given Gazprom’s record of opacity while Medvedev’s was in charge, the existence of kompromat (compromising material), used as blackmail against him to keep his energy policy in line and others’ vested interests safe, is highly likely.

The conflicting versions are symptomatic of the most recent phase of Russia's political wars, in which antagonists have reached into their rich reserves of "kompromat" - compromising material - in attempts to tarnish one another.

"Many people have something to be afraid of," he told the newspaper Izvestia, implying that he might soon release a flood of "kompromat," real or fabricated materials about tawdry financial schemes and other gross abuses of power.

But today, even as the prosecutor's office made its investigation public, yet more "kompromat" against the Yeltsin entourage was tossed into the public arena, suggesting that the President's political enemies, sensing his growing isolation, are zeroing in on a weakened target.

Alfa Bank's President Peter Aven has argued that the EBRD had been unduly influenced by claims about the company in the Russian press: "All this kompromat (compromising material) is published about everybody, including ourselves.

The investigation marks a new phase in Russia's latest round of political warfare, in which the weapon of choice is "kompromat," the Russian word for compromising material that is routinely collected and stored by politicians for use against their enemies.

Add endless arcane intrigues and a random sprinkling of "kompromat," or compromising material, and you have a country in the throes of "fin de regime" fever, where a struggle for power is being waged without ideology, rules or scruples.

Newspapers feverishly reviewed the Kremlin's options, among them a continuation of low-intensity warfare against Mr. Luzhkov, an erstwhile ally of Mr. Yeltsin and now an open foe, through the use of the media, scarce budget resources or 'kompromat,' the infamous Russian word for leaking damaging information.