Vertikal Vlasti, the 'vertical of power,' Russia's official top-down command hierarchy.
The engine contrasts the tidy official structure with the messy reality underneath.
On paper it's a clean top-down hierarchy, but in practice it runs on 'manual control': Putin personally steps in to settle disputes between rival factions, bypass institutions, and hand out resources. Remove that single referee and the competing factions would destroy each other.
It matters because the real source of order isn't the institutions but one person acting as arbiter, making the whole system dependent on him.