2023-06-28 20:30:05
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has appeared on television again. On June 24, during the armed insurrection of the private army Group Wagner, directed against him, and the next day, he kept himself out of the public sphere. Only on Monday did the national media show images of him: in the morning allegedly in the combat zone in Ukraine, and in the evening at a meeting of security officials with President Vladimir Putin. To this day Shoigu has not commented on the mutiny.
“He’s following his instincts,” says Brian Taylor, a Russia expert at Syracuse University in New York. “When he was Minister of Civil Defense, he liked to show up at disaster sites. He stressed that he was the boss there, and he gained a confidence bonus. Now that this is a catastrophe for which he himself is responsible, he does not want to be seen in public. But behind the scenes he is working closely with Putin and others to secure his position.”
The conflict between the founder and leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the head of the Ministry of Defense has escalated in recent months. First Prigozhin blamed Shoigu and the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, for the lack of ammunition in the fighting in Bakhmut. The ministry’s press department countered, and Shoigu did not join the conflict.
Good reasons to fire Shoigu
However, the mercenary leader has sharpened his criticism not only of the way the war is being fought and at what price, but also of how the Kremlin justifies the invasion of Ukraine. In Taylor’s opinion, the accusations against Shoigu and Gerasimov are “justified to a certain extent, and the war is going very badly for Russia”, however many of Prigozhin’s accusations “expressly target Putin”, who would have invaded the neighboring country under false pretexts .
The Kremlin chief must decide whether to keep Shoigu in office. Taylor notes that much of what the defense minister told his superior about the new army “proved to be untrue, and so it would be logical if Shoigu were fired.” But these untruths were already obvious a year ago, right after the invasion of Ukraine.
The analyst recalls that Shoigu is a civilian Minister of Defense, while the military are responsible for fiascoes at different levels. On the other hand, the president is responsible for bad calculations and unattained goals, such as a change of power in Ukraine. But if Putin sacked Shoigu immediately that would be a sign of weakness, it would be giving in to Prigozhin, who he has accused of treason, argues Taylor.
Also for Fabian Burkhardt, an expert on Russia at the University of Regensburg, a resignation soon after the insurrection would be “an unmistakable sign of weakness”: “Even though it has become clear that Shoigu’s unpopularity is extreme, also in the Army, there may be good arguments for if you wait and announce the removal at a later time.”
Putin’s Close Ally
It is known that Putin does not fire those he considers his people. If only because Sergey Shoigu is a special case, as his biography shows. Now 68 years old, he comes from wealthy backgrounds in the Soviet nomenklatura: his father was secretary of the Communist Party in Tuva, now an autonomous republic.
After training as a civil engineer, Sergey made a fast career of himself, directing important construction projects at a young age. In the last years of the Soviet Union, he moved to Moscow, where he founded and headed the state Rescue Service. This would become the Ministry of Civil Defense, which Shoigu led for nearly 20 years.
In the late 1990s, he counted as Russia’s most valued minister, and led the newly formed Kremlin party, Unity, the forerunner of today’s United Russia. In 2012, as soon as Putin switched back from prime minister to president, Shoigu was appointed governor of the Moscow region.
A few months later, he took over the Defense portfolio and started with reforms. The Soviet practice of unannounced combat readiness checks soon resumed in the Russian army. In the 2021 elections, Shoigu once again occupied the top position on his party’s list.
In the second and fourth quarters of 2021, just before Russia mobilizes troops to the borders with Ukraine, the president and defense minister retreated to the boreal taiga forests. Photos from the time show the special relationship between the two.
Could Shoigu’s stalemate be to Kiev’s advantage?
So Shoigu was considered to be Putin’s successor, but for Brian Taylor this is unlikely to happen. In addition to the fact that “the whole logic of Putin’s highly personalized system does not foresee an alternative or successor”, the analyst points to two other reasons: first, both are almost the same age, and a new president would have to come from the younger generation.
Second, “Shoigu’s potential to become president is also constrained by the fact that he is not an ethnic Russian.” Instead, he remains “a very secure defense minister and an ally of Putin who is both prestigious and appreciated”.
A biographical detail adds an emotional note to the conflict with Yevgeny Prigozhin: in the early 1980s, Shoigu ran a Siberian construction firm, with more than 10,000 inmates under two orders. And now, 40 years later, the Wagner Group – to which numerous ex-prisoners today belong, including Prigozhin himself – has launched an armed uprising with the aim of expelling Shoigu from office.
Putin’s stalemate is a tough one, Taylor notes: exonerating Shoigu would be a sign of weakness; keeping it could exacerbate dissatisfaction in the Armed Forces with the Ministry of Defense. So it would not be surprising if, within a few weeks, the president dismisses the minister, granting him another honorable post.
In the expert’s opinion, “Ukraine can also benefit from the consequences of the insurrection”: the reaction of the Russian army to the Kiev counteroffensive could be less organized, and the combat morale, weakened. As fighting continued even during the mutiny, however, a collapse of Russian forces at the front is not to be expected.
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