Three experts have told VOA's Russian Service that the appointment of Andrei Belousov as Russia's defense minister suggests President Vladimir Putin is preparing his country for a protracted war against Ukraine.
Putin reshuffled his government Sunday, tapping Belousov, an economist who had been serving as Russia’s first deputy prime minister, to replace Sergei Shoigu.
Shoigu, the only Cabinet member replaced by Putin, was appointed secretary of Russia’s Security Council, a powerful Kremlin advisory body, replacing Nikolai Patrushev, a longtime Putin associate.
Like the president, Patrushev previously headed the Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet KGB.
The entire Cabinet resigned following Putin’s May 7 inauguration for a fifth presidential term.
The Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, must approve Putin’s choice of Belousov, a move that's all but certain.
Speculation about Shoigu
Richard Weitz, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, noted that there had been speculation for some time that Shoigu, who served as defense minister for 12 years, was slated for removal from that post.
“There had been some concerns about the pace of military reform under him, and then the poor performance of the Russian military in the first few months of the war in Ukraine. And last year's rebellion by [Yevgeny] Prigozhin and the Wagner Group was directed primarily at Shoigu and [Valery] Gerasimov, the chief military officer,” Weitz told VOA.
Weitz said he thought Putin had decided that the Russian military was performing well for the current phase of the conflict, "but it's clear the war is going to last several years. He apparently wants to bring in someone who knows more about economics. That makes sense — if it's going to be a long war, you're going to mobilize sufficient resources to sustain that.”
Mykola Sunhurovskyi, director of military programs at the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv think tank, said that a recent scandal involving Shoigu’s deputy, Timur Ivanov, who was accused of receiving a $12 million bribe, may have played a role in Shoigu’s removal. But he agreed that the move was mainly connected to Putin’s prediction that the war with Ukraine will be long and his corresponding call to put Russia’s economy on a wartime footing.
“Shoigu is basically not capable of this. He is not a military man. He is not an economist. He is not an industrialist,” Sunhurovskyi told VOA. “But Mr. Belousov is a man who has worked for a long time in the economic bloc of Russia. He has roots in the Central Economic and Mathematical Institute, which at one time was a leading institution that formed new standards for the Russian economy since the mid-’70s. He worked there sometime in the mid-’80s in senior positions ... [and] was Putin's assistant at one time.”
Likewise, Ukrainian military analyst Alexei Getman told VOA that the move to replace Shoigu was made because Russia is “preparing for a long war” and thus needed a new defense minister who could organize the country’s economy accordingly.
Still, Getman said, Shoigu’s removal should not necessarily be seen as a demotion or punishment.
“After all, he was not sent to a well-deserved rest or to prison, as is often the case in Russia,” he said. “He became secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation instead of Patrushev.”
This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service.
