situation that took place on the Maidan, in Ukraine, won't happen in Russia." Gaaze further said that Putin's creation of the National Guard created a counterbalance not only to the Federal Security Forces, but also to the Russian Army itself and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stating: "The newly established National Guard is the president's army in the literal sense of the word. An army, which can be used without intermediaries in the form of a defense minister and without the constitutional rules on the use of the Armed Forces." Ella Paneyakh, senior researcher for the Department of Political science and Sociology at the European University at Saint Petersburg, said that this new National Guard force was not just another law enforcement agency, but another army that had the right to conduct military operations against the country's citizens. Russian political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky, who heads the analytics department of the Center for Political Technologies (CPT), said Putin's creation of the National Guard was to counter the power of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. Tatiana Stanovaya, who heads the Center for Political Technologies (CPT) in France, in commenting on Viktor Zolotov's appointment to head the National Guard said: "The unnecessary link, that of a minister between the commander-in-chief and the head of the National Guard is removed. Whoever the minister is, a brother, friend, classmate or judo coach, his hand may tremble when you need him to execute an order. Zolotov is protected from those fluctuations as much as possible." Researcher Gordon M. Hahn, for The Duran, deems the probability of a "palace coup" as being minor than other scenarios. In this view, the National Guard is an added insurance against a regime split, palace coup, or other elite politics. Another "power game"-related reason may be, according to Hahn, the will to reduce power of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. National Guard as a tool against strategic destabilization According to Roger McDermott for The Jamestown Foundation the establishment of the National Guard is intended in order to counter colour revolutions and links foreign and domestic threat assessments as part of a seamless web. McDermott links the origins of the corps to experience acquired during internal crises and power games among key actors in the 1990s, as well as to colour revolutions abroad, especially close to the Russian borders and in Middle East. In this view, the 2016–2017 election cycle in Russia supplied domestic context