At the moment, the one who is open to innovation wins on the battlefield, said the presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the candidacy of the former First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov for the post of Minister of Defense, RBC reports.
“Therefore, it is natural that at this stage the President decided that the Ministry of Defense should be headed by a civilian – and this is not just a civilian, but a person who headed the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia very successfully, who was for a long time an assistant to the president on economic affairs, and also in the previous cabinet of ministers was the first deputy prime minister. The Ministry of Defense must be absolutely open to innovation, to introduce all advanced ideas, to create conditions for economic competitiveness,” said Peskov.
He emphasized that the new assignment would not change the “current coordinate system,” whatever that means.
Sergei Shoigu, who has headed the ministry since 2012, is moving to the consolation post of head of the Security Council, and will also be Putin’s deputy on the committee on the military-industrial complex.
Who is Andrei Belousov?
He was born on March 17, 1959 in Moscow in the family of prominent Soviet economist Rem Belousov. His mother, Alisa Pavlovna, is a radiochemist.
In 1981, he graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University.
He did not serve in the army.
From the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s, he worked his way up from junior researcher to head of the laboratory at the Institute of Economics and Forecasting of Scientific and Technological Progress of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
From 2000 to 2006, he was the general director of the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasts. In the same years, he was a freelance adviser to the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.
From 2006 to 2008, he was Deputy Minister of Economic Development. In 2012, he was appointed head of the Ministry of Economic Development and headed this department for almost a year.
From 2013 to 2020, Belousov was an assistant to the President of the Russian Federation. On January 21, 2020, he was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia.
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