MOSCOW, Russia
Russian President, Vladimir Putin has replaced his defense minister and a long-time close ally Sergei Shoigu with an economist, a major reshuffle of military leadership more than two years after Moscow’s grinding war against Ukraine has sent defense spending soaring.
Andrey Belousov, a civilian
who served as former first deputy prime minister and specializes in economics,
was appointed to the top defense post, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said
on Sunday.
Peskov tried to downplay the
move, but the reshuffle comes amid speculation
about infighting at the highest echelons of power. Just last
month, one of Shoigu’s long-time protégés at the defense ministry was arrested
and charged with corruption.
Shoigu was “relieved” of his
position by presidential decree, Peskov said, but he will remain an influential
part of Putin’s administration as secretary of Russia’s Security Council,
replacing Nikolai Patrushev, a former head of the Federal Security Service
(FSB), who would “transfer to another job.”
Shoigu will also become the
deputy in Russia’s Military-Industrial Commission, Peskov said, as Putin
embarks on a fifth
term as president.
The timing of Shoigu’s exit is
notable, coming off the back of several significant advances by Russian troops
in eastern Ukraine.
Russia has launched its most
serious cross-border
ground assault since Ukraine recaptured the northern Kharkiv region in
the late summer of 2022. There have been several months of increased Russian
air attacks on the city of Kharkiv amid a grinding advance in Donetsk in the
east that has seen incremental but significant progress.
Shoigu had helmed the
country’s defense ministry for 12 years and led the full-scale invasion of
Ukraine in 2022. Russian troops initially caught Kyiv by surprise but were soon
beaten back, exposing the weaknesses of Moscow’s corruption-riddled military and
its willingness to send waves of poorly trained and equipped soldiers into what
Ukraine and Russian troops have both dubbed a “meat grinder.”
His critics have frequently
described Shoigu as remote and out-of-touch with the realities of the
conflict. His most forceful critic was the late Wagner chief Yevgeny
Prigozhin who accused the Defense Ministry of starving his fighters of
resources and bureaucratic incompetence before launching an unsuccessful mutiny
last year and dying weeks later in a plane crash.
Despite the criticism, Shoigu
has remained a popular politician in Russia. Having spent two decades as the
minister of emergency situations, he cultivated an image of a helpful official
who brings help when it’s needed.
He is also a rare outsider in
Putin’s original inner circle, which consists mostly of the president’s allies
from his St. Petersburg political beginnings and his former KGB colleagues.
Shoigu was born and grew up in the remote Siberian republic of Tuva and got
into politics through his association with the former president Boris Yeltsin.
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