Russia|Russia gets a new defense minister from a new economic expert. The former defense minister is moving into a role where he does not seem to have command authority.
Russian the core of the military regime changes in one fell swoop when he started his fifth term as president Vladimir Putin to be transferred by the Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigun Secretary of the Security Council and Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov as the new defense minister.
The third moving pawn is Putin’s long-term confidant Nikolai Patrushevwho will move from the position of Secretary of the Security Council to an as yet unspecified position.
The change is significant: Šoigu has been the Minister of Defense since 2012, Patrushev the Secretary of the Security Council since 2008. Belousov, on the other hand, will enter the military administration as a new name. HS presents a trio.
Andrei Belousov: A long-time economist
Andrei Belousov at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2019.
Tuesday Belousov, 65, who will become defense minister, is above all an expert in economics. In the final years of the Soviet Union and after its collapse, he worked as a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, specializing in macroeconomic forecasts.
When Putin began his first term as president, Belousov emerged as the director general of the ostensibly independent Russian Center for Macroeconomics and Short-Term Forecasts. At the same time, Putin named him as his external advisor.
Belousov served as Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade in 2006–2008. In 2012–2013, he became Minister of Economic Development. The ministerial job ended in June 2013, when Putin appointed Belousov as his advisor.
Putin appointed his adviser as deputy prime minister in 2020. When the prime minister Mikhail Mishustin contracted the corona virus in the same year, Belousov acted as prime minister for a while.
Putin and Belousov are known to be close, the news agency Reuters reports. Both believe in a strong state and technological development: Belousov has played an important role in overseeing the Russian drone program, for example, and has spoken to Putin in favor of the development of the digital economy.
Sergei Shoigu: Failed in Ukraine
In the photo provided by the Russian state news agency Sputnik, Sergei Shoigu and Vladimir Putin visited Tuva in Southern Siberia in 2018. Shoigu is from the Tuva region.
Former Minister of Defense Šoigu, 68, was first appointed to the Russian cabinet already in 1991, when the Soviet Union was falling apart. He served as emergency minister until 2012, when Putin appointed him defense minister.
In his work he is evaluating including sought to modernize the country’s armed forces. However, he has been seen to have failed in the war of aggression against Ukraine, says, among other things The New York Times (NOW). Shoigu’s dismissal has been speculated since the beginning of the attack, when the Russian armed forces failed in their plan to capture Kiev in a few days.
Like Belousov, Šoigu also did not have a military career behind him before becoming Minister of Defense. In public, he has tried to build a warlike image in addition to his rhetoric by almost always wearing a uniform.
Shoigu’s relationship with Putin is also close, even though he is not one of Putin’s closest associates.
So far, it is unclear how much power Shoigu will be granted in Putin’s new administration. The position of the secretary of the Security Council is the program director of the Foreign Policy Institute Arkady Moshes by an influential but, for example, political researcher from Moscow Alexander Baunov evaluatethat Šoigu will not be given “real authority” in his new role.
Nikolai Patrushev: Influencer behind the scenes
In the photo provided by Sputnik, Patrushev and Shoigu were talking at Putin’s inauguration last week.
Having influenced Putin behind the scenes for decades, Patrushev, 72, is primarily known as Putin’s right-hand man and the second most influential person in Russia. Putin and Patrushev, who are almost the same age, met already in the 1970s in the Soviet security service KGB.
When Boris Yeltsin made Putin prime minister in 1999, Putin made Patrushev head of the KGB.
When a former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in 2006 in London, Patrushev is believed to have decided on the matter. He is also believed to have designed the Wagner conductor Yevgeny Prigozhin assassination last year.
Putin elevated Patrušev to the position of Director-General of the Security Council in 2008. Although the position carries little formal power, Patrušev’s role as a background influencer has strengthened.
Economic magazine The Wall Street Journal has described Patrushev as “a hybrid of an intelligence official and a diplomat” who routinely meets with world leaders on Putin’s behalf.
Patrušev has not yet been assigned the next action, or at least it has not been made public.
The US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War points out that Patrushev is known to have played an important role as a disciplinarian of powerful figures with a KGB background, the siloviki, who are close to Putin. According to the think tank, it is possible that a new position will be created for him to implement this in the future as well.
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