Putin dismissed Shoigu from the post of Russian Defense Minister. international

Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (Chadan, USSR, 68 years old), the man most responsible for his failed invasion of Ukraine, after 12 years as head of the armed forces Is. Shoigu, who has been closest to the president since he began his political career in the nineties, has been blamed for the stalling of a “special military operation” that was initially intended to last only a few days and has now lasted 27 months. Has reached. The head of the armed forces will be replaced by a financial man, former Minister of Economic Development Andrei Belousov (Moscow, USSR, 65 years old), which indicates that the Kremlin is planning a long war against Ukraine. In any case, Shoigu will not leave Putin’s circle and will be appointed secretary of the Security Council, where he will meet with the powerful former head of the Federal Security Service (FSB, former KGB) Nikolai Patrushev (Leningrad, USSR, 71 years old) Will take place of. Old), whose destination is unknown.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Shoigu’s departure was due to the need to adapt the army to the war being waged against Ukraine. “The winner on today’s battlefield is the one who is most open to innovation, most open to implementation as quickly as possible. Therefore, at the current stage, the President decided that the Defense Ministry should be headed by a civilian,” the Kremlin told Russian media.

Putin has taken advantage of the mandatory nomination of a new government at the beginning of his fifth term to launch this revolution. After being sworn in as President on 7 May, the previous Cabinet of Ministers resigned in its entirety, in accordance with Russian law. Putin confirmed the continuity of some of them, such as the replacement of the prime minister, technocrat Mikhail Mishustin, and others.

Shoigu gained widespread popularity in the 1990s as President Boris Yeltsin’s emergency minister. Shoigu, who hails from the Siberian region of Tuva next to Mongolia, joined Putin’s team and played a key role in his election victory. The senior officer served as head of the state of emergency until 2012, when the Kremlin entrusted him with the mission of modernizing an army that had been stripped of all its Soviet heritage by Anatoly Serdyukov, his predecessor as defense minister.

Till now the Defense Minister was dependent on the Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov. Both had very high popularity until the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, and Shoigu even rivaled Putin in terms of approval in the polls. However, its failed invasion and the Ukrainian counterattack created a rift within the army. The most visible face of this disunity on the Russian front was Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, who dared to rebel with a convoy of vehicles headed towards Moscow in June 2023. Prigozhin was believed to be pardoned, but two months later his plane crashed, killing him. The circumstances were never clarified later.

Shoigu’s dismissal is not accompanied by the dismissal of Gerasimov, who has been confirmed as Chief of the General Staff. “As far as the military component is concerned, this appointment will not change its present coordination system. “The chief of the General Staff will continue his activities and no changes in this regard are expected at the moment,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Tass agency.

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“Although Shoigu held one of the most senior positions on the national scene – before Putin, he had the unique distinction of going very far without making any bitter enemies,” he described as one of the general’s great qualities in his book. Putin’s wars: from Chechnya to Ukraine,

The change at the top of the Defense Ministry comes at a time of changes on the Ukrainian front. Shoigu regained some of his credit after the failure of the long-proclaimed Ukrainian counter-offensive in the south of the country, in large part thanks to the defensive line built by the late General Sergei Surovikin, who was responsible for those defensive actions. until his closeness to Prigozhin meant his fall from grace.

Now Russia has taken the initiative and managed to capture the disputed city of Avdiivka around Donetsk last year and is trying to advance towards Chasiv Yar, opening a new front around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. .

These are minimal advances – ten years ago the separatists controlled Slavyansk, which is dozens of kilometers from the current front – and they are under threat from new weapons packages approved by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union. Added to these deliveries is the fact that American giant Elon Musk has promised that he will not allow the Russians access to his Starlink satellite network. Indeed, both sides find themselves entangled in the innovations of modern warfare: on a completely visible battlefield, drones and precision missiles have turned tank columns and large military gatherings into easy prey.

A financial expert for a long fight

When the war consumed more than a third of the state budget, Shoigu was replaced by an economist. Andrei Belousov succeeded current Governor of the Central Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina as Minister of Development in 2012, and a year later he was appointed Assistant to the President for Economic Affairs.

Belousov’s political career has developed over the past decade against a discreet background as he is part of the technocratic sector of the government. However, he remained highly trusted by the Kremlin and in 2020 he served as acting prime minister while Mishustin recovered from coronavirus infection.

Belousov, until this week first deputy prime minister, is one of the few technocrats close to the Russian president. “A politician surrounded by enemies.” This is how a government source described the Economist to the independent newspaper. bell, According to the newspaper, Belousov was the only person in the Kremlin’s economic circle who openly supported the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.

The leadership of the Finance Ministry will rest on the shoulders of Anton Siluanov (61 years old), who has been responsible for this portfolio since 2011. Siluanov will determine the funds available for troops and weapons, and with these accounts Belousov will coordinate with Shoigu, whose, as Putin’s spokesman pointed out, the new job of the head of the Security Council is coordination between the needs of the military industry and the armed forces. Will have to be monitored. This independent body of the government is responsible for taking decisions related to the military and the fight against terrorism.

A deposit for Putin’s “formers”

Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R Politik, comments on Telegram, “The Security Council is becoming a repository for Putin’s “former” key people, whom he cannot abandon, but has no place to keep them. ” Moreover, its organizational chart is revealing of the Kremlin’s priorities. Shoigu’s appointment as head of the Security Council has relegated former President Dmitry Medvedev, who years ago was considered a potential successor to Putin, to second place in the organization. The bigoted senior official initially did not comment on the change in Russian leadership.

Putin’s successor, former Defense Minister Shoigu, who headed the FSB between 1999 and 2008, will replace Nikolai Patrushev, one of Russia’s most powerful men. In any case, Patrushev will remain the organization’s leading figure within the Kremlin walls, however. Its future will be known “in the coming days,” as Peskov explained. The former head of the FSB, the country’s most powerful organization and rival to the military, is in good standing under Putin’s protection. His son, Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev (46 years old), has continued his career within the regime and in this new term Putin has chosen him as Deputy Prime Minister.

In the end, these are important changes, although everything will remain the same with Putin tsar Finally at the head of Russia. The President will also retain his other closest associates despite their advanced age. The foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov (74), will remain head of the organization despite the collapse of the entire diplomatic system he built for decades before the invasion of Ukraine; Sergei Naryshkin (69 years old) remains head of the foreign espionage department; And Putin’s praetorian guard, the Rosgvardia, will continue to be led by Commander Viktor Zolotov (70 years old), a man to whom the president entrusts a second independent army that answers only to Putin, not to the Defense Ministry.

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