2024-05-14 12:15:41
Vladimir Putin unexpectedly intervened in the fate of his two closest and most loyal associates. He made Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu secretary of the powerful President’s Security Council at the time of Russian aggression in Ukraine. However, he removed Nikolay Patrushev from this position. He will eventually become Putin’s advisor and oversee the production of ships.
Who is Nikolai Patrushev? He hates the West and should have had Agent Litvinenko poisoned. | Video: Reuters
The boxes in the most influential positions in the Kremlin surprised the former officer of the British intelligence service (MI6) Christopher Steele: “It is clear that Putin was recently re-inaugurated as the president of Russia and at that time you would expect maybe some changes in the leadership. But not these two and not like this interconnected,” Steele told the Associated Press.
Until now, Patrushev was considered one of Putin’s biggest hawks and the gray eminence of the Kremlin, even with regard to the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. “Shoigu and Patrushev, two of the four highest-ranking people in the country, were transferred at the same time without any prior warning, at a time when the Russian offensive is underway in northern Ukraine, so I find that really quite impressive and surprising. We’ll see in the coming days, how it turns out,” Steele added.
On Tuesday, Putin appointed Patrushev as his adviser. He will oversee the construction of the ships. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a strategic and complex industry. “Nikolai Platonovich’s enormous experience will play a big role here,” he added, according to the Interfax agency.
In the past, Patrushev was considered as Putin’s successor, especially in the event of a crisis or a palace coup, writes the author of an opinion piece in the Ukrainian daily Kyiv Post.
According to him, Patrushev’s sidelining would be an effective way to neutralize a potential challenger to Putin and at the same time moderate an extremely aggressive faction of the Kremlin that is constantly pushing for an escalation of the conflict with the US and the West.
Patrushev was a very close ally for Putin. According to Bloomberg sources, he was one of four Russians who knew in advance the date and method of launching the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Patrushev was referred to by experts in Russian politics as the man Putin listened to and trusted the most. It was not surprising, they have known each other for a long time. From the mid-1970s, both worked in the Leningrad branch of the Soviet secret police, the KGB, in a building known as the Big House.
In an interview published by the Argumenty a fakty weekly shortly after the start of the full-scale invasion, Patrushev declared: “All the goals set by President Putin will be fulfilled. The historical truth is on our side.”
In a comprehensive interview, Patrushev lived up to his reputation as a hawk who hates the West and sees only the enemy in it. “The style of the Anglo-Saxons has not changed for centuries. And so today they continue to dictate their terms to the world and trample on the rights of sovereign states. Covering their actions with the words of fighting for human rights, freedom and democracy, they are actually practicing the doctrine of the golden billion, according to which in this world it can flourish only a limited number of people. The fate of others is to bend their backs,” he claimed in the first reply.
“The Americans are trying to humiliate Russia through their henchmen in Kiev. They are cynically using Ukraine to divide essentially one nation,” was one of his answers in this interview. In a pre-invasion speech, Putin justified the invasion of the country by theorizing that Russians and Ukrainians are an artificially divided nation and that Ukrainian nationalists are oppressing the Russian-speaking population.
British investigators also came to the conclusion years ago that Patrushev personally ordered the poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, to whom two Russians in a London hotel put polonium poison in his tea.
Litvinenko fled the country and accused Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev of preparing terrorist attacks on residential buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk in 1999, in which over 300 people died. Moscow attributed them to the Chechen rebels, thereby justifying the invasion of Chechnya. According to Litvinenko, Patrushev gave the order to carry out these explosions.
The editor asked Shoigu if Russia would win. Putin will probably not praise him for his reaction. (Full article with video here)
Sergei Shoigu was embarrassed in front of the cameras, the reporter’s question took him by surprise. | Video: Rossiya 1, Twitter/Anton Gerashchenko