For years, Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov lived in state, flaunting access to villas, yachts and Rolls Royces in St. Tropez.
When Ivanov, 48, was finally arrested last month and charged with large-scale bribery, analysts said the knife also hung over his close ally and boss, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Shoigu, one of President Putin’s oldest allies, is no stranger to luxury either. Anti-corruption campaigners found in 2015 that he was living in a £12m pagoda-style complex outside Moscow, which was registered to his daughter-in-law and built on land bought by his 18-year-old daughter to hide the ownership, dnes reported .bg.
Since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the armed forces under Shoigu, 68, have been dogged by rumors of waste and incompetence.
Now the president has stepped in to remove him and replace him with a seasoned technocrat in one of the biggest reshuffles of the past decade. Andrey Belousov, 65, was first deputy prime minister and an economist who was once an adviser to Putin.
According to analysts, his task will be to tighten the reins.
“Putin’s goal is to increase the efficiency of arms production and optimally meet military needs, Tatyana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Center for Eurasia, told The Times. In this context, Belousov is a logical choice.”
Rob Lee, a military analyst, said the appointment was “likely a reflection of Putin’s personal confidence in Belousov and the need for a better internal manager of the Defense Ministry bureaucracy.”
The Kremlin said Belousov was the man for the job as military spending rose to 6.6 percent of GDP.
“Today on the battlefield, the one who is more open to innovation, more open to its practical use in battle wins,” said Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman. “So it’s only natural that at this point the president has decided to have a civilian head the defense department.”
Samuel Bendet, an expert on Russian military technology, noted that Belousov was “a big driver of the development of domestic drones and UAVs [безпилотни летателни апарати]along with supporting in-house high-tech research and development”.
Belousov’s appointment means Shoigu will head the Security Council, removing longtime Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, a former director of the Federal Security Service.
It may also herald the “death” of Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian army’s general staff. Future defense ministers usually want an ally to be appointed to this role, although this may not be the case in wartime.
Despite the perception that he has been deposed, Shoigu will remain in a high-profile position as head of the Security Council. It’s a way for Putin “to keep Shoigu close, but cut off from the ‘system’, where finding an alternative role would be a challenge.”
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