Minutes after the public posting of Putin’s list of cabinet appointments, the Kremlin announced Shoigu had been reassigned to the Security Council, previously led by Nikolai Patrushev, a former head of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who had held the security council post since 2008.

The Kremlin said that a new job for Patrushev – a powerful figure widely seen as wielding more authority than any official other than Putin -– would be announced within the next “few days.”

Even some veteran Kremlin watchers were left guessing about the fate of Patrushev. Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst, said, “No one knows what’s happening with Patrushev.”

“There are rumours that he could be appointed head of the presidential administration; or perhaps he has been fired,” Markov said, adding that Patrushev’s age – 72 – and his health could also be factors.

Markov said that Putin’s decisions on the reshuffle were being taken in absolute secrecy. “It may be because [Patrushev] overstepped his authority,” Markov added.

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Former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, who swapped jobs with Putin from 2008 to 2012 to circumvent term limits, has served as deputy head of the Security Council since his removal as head of the government in January 2020.

“The Security Council is becoming a reservoir for Putin’s ‘former’ key figures – ones that cannot be let go, but there is no place for them anymore,” said Tatyana Stanovaya, the founder of R. Politik, a Russian political consultancy, who is now based in France. “For Patrushev, it seems, they will create something new.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, while briefing reporters on the changes, stressed that Shoigu would remain in close cooperation with Putin while simultaneously overseeing the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, which handles weapons procurement and military exports – an important body as Russia increasingly relies on China and several other countries for sustaining military production under the constraints of Western sanctions and export controls.

Peskov sought to portray a level of continuity and stability in the Defence Ministry. He said that Belousov’s appointment would not change the “system of coordinates in the military component of the department,” because the head of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, is responsible for it and remains in his post.

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Belousov has no previous military background. Rather, he is an experienced economist who is considered a member of Putin’s closest circle, having served as a presidential aide and in key economic posts over several decades.

Belousov made a name for himself as a proponent of squeezing funds from the state’s top earners – mining and metallurgy giants – to increase government reserves.

More than two years into the difficult invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin cited a need for a “civilian” appointee at the helm of the Defence Ministry who can “introduce innovation” and manage the war economy as military spending has ballooned.

“On the battlefield, the one who shows more innovation and its prompt implementation wins,” Peskov said. “And therefore, at the current stage, the president decided that the Ministry of Defence should be headed by a civilian. And this is not just a civilian, but a person who very successfully headed the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia.”

“The new changes - Belousov instead of Shoigu at Defence, Shoigu instead of Patrushev in Security Council is a perfect illustration of our ‘degenerate autocracy’ theory,” Russian economist Konstantin Sonin, who is now a professor at the University of Chicago wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Sonin, a fierce critic of Putin’s regime who has known Belousov personally for many years, said described the appointment as a little more than a game of musical chairs among Putin loyalists.

“Things are not going according to Putin’s plan, but he will endlessly rotate the same small group of loyalists,” Sonin wrote. “Putin has always feared to bring new people to positions of authority - even in the best of times, they must have been nobodies with no own perspectives. Toward the end of his rule, even more so.”

The shake-up comes five days after Putin’s inauguration for a fifth term, and as Russian forces have launched major new attacks in north-east Ukraine.

The Washington Post

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