By dismissing the Russian Defense Minister and launching a purge among the leaders of this department, Vladimir Putin has satisfied two of his staunch critics who are now missing, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, and the opposition politician Alexei Navalny. . The first accused Minister Sergei Shoigu of incompetence and requested his dismissal due to the precarious conditions of the Russian army in Ukraine. The second focused more on the phenomenon of corruption in the upper echelons of the military establishment and the Russian elite.
Putin has not explained the motivations for the changes in the military hierarchy, attributed by analysts to the need to better manage the war and rationalize the multiplied expenses due to corruption. Formally, the changes do not appear linked to the demands and complaints of Prigozhin and Navalni, who died in a traumatic manner; the first, in August 2023 in an aviation accident, and the second, in February 2024 in a harsh regime prison.
Putin has indicated on different occasions that he dislikes being pressured and presents his decisions as sovereign acts unrelated to the complaints he receives. The formation of the new Russian Government, after taking office as president, has given him the opportunity to make changes as part of an institutional procedure. On May 12, Shoigu, who had headed the Defense portfolio since 2012, was transferred to the Russian Security Council as secretary. At the same time, there have been dismissals of another nature in the ministry. Timur Ivanov, deputy defense minister since 2016 and responsible for the ministry’s construction activities, was arrested in late April on suspicion of accepting bribes. Lieutenant General Yuri Kuznetsov, head of the personnel section since May 2023, has also been dismissed, also accused of corruption and linked to the ministry’s construction activities.
The Foundation for Fighting Corruption (FBK, in its Russian acronym), headed by Alexei Navalny, had carried out investigations into Shoigu and Ivanov. Already in August 2013, a documentary by that organization maintained that the minister owned land in a luxurious area on the outskirts of Moscow valued at more than five million euros at the then exchange rate. Later, the researchers showed the minister’s ostentatious residence, an architectural complex with a mansion stylized as a pagoda from his native region of Tuva (on the border with Mongolia). The land on which it was built had been officially acquired by Ksenia, Shoigu’s daughter, in 2009, when she was an 18-year-old student and her father was still serving as Minister of Emergency Situations.
Regarding Ivanov, the FBK exposed the alleged squandering of his family, who, according to its investigations, had spent the summer on the Côte d’Azur since 2010, where he rented a huge villa, for which he paid 120,000 euros per month in 2013. The deputy minister’s family also had two Rolls-Royces, one in France and the other in Moscow, and a nineteenth-century mansion in the center of the Russian capital that was owned by a company registered in the name of the family’s chauffeur. pointed out the FBK. Furthermore, according to the publication Project, the Ivanovs also owned a 1,600-square-meter mansion in an elite residential area near Moscow. Neither Shoigu’s nor Ivanov’s salaries were enough to justify the purchases of the properties that Navalni’s and Ivanov’s investigations Project attributed to them. According to the Dossier Center, the companies supervised by Ivanov profited by inflating expenses to rebuild the city of Mariupol and other occupied towns in Ukraine.
Unlike Navalny, who was opposed to the invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin aspired to perfect the Russian attack and sometimes rudely accused the minister of skimping on ammunition for the Wagner group fighters. “Listen to me, bastards, these (their mercenaries killed in combat in Ukraine) are someone’s fathers and sons (…). Wagner’s ammunition hunger is 70%. Shoigu!, Gerasimov!, where are the ammunition? ”Prigozhin shouted in front of a landscape full of corpses in May 2023. The chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, remains in his position. But the Tass agency reported this Tuesday the arrest of General Ivan Popov, the popular former head of the 58th Army of the Russian Armed Forces, who in 2023 confronted Gerasimov for his management of the war and who is now accused of “fraud.” on a large scale.”
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Prigozhin led a rebellion against the Ministry of Defense on June 23, 2023, but called off his men’s march to Moscow and reached a deal with Putin, despite the fact that he had accused him of “treason.” The episode served to highlight the dissatisfaction then existing in military sectors with Shoigu’s management. Two months later, Prigozhin perished when the plane he was traveling in exploded in mid-air over Tver province.
Putin had a close relationship with Shoigu, with whom he had shared his leisure on several occasions since at least 2009. Their trips through the beautiful and lonely landscapes of Tuva were reflected in photographic reports in which the president and the minister fished, camped or They walked through the forests. In 2017, both were photographed with a naked torso and camouflage pants, and in 2021 they rested in the taiga on two occasions.
Given their personal relationship, Putin could have seen his own image damaged if he had dismissed Shoigu without a compensatory position. The position of secretary of the Security Council is important, but he is removed from the day-to-day management of state affairs. The president’s image would have been even more damaged if the minister had been arrested or accused of corruption, since such a thing could have created insecurity for other figures in Putin’s immediate entourage. Removing the friend from office while continuing to protect him and punish his subordinates and bureaucratic officials seems a less risky formula to try to make the Ministry of Defense more effective. Putin’s actions indicate that he knows how to wait to do things his way, how he wants and when he wants.
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