Vladimir Putin’s ousted security chief Nikolai Patrushev will instead serve as the Russian president’s aide, according to a decree published by the Kremlin.
The announcement came amid Putin’s post-inauguration reshuffle of the Russian defense ministry and as his forces intensify their barrage of Ukraine.
Putin earlier replaced his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who had held the post for 12 years, with Andrei Belousov, an economist who has never served in the Russian military. Shoigu, in turn, was named secretary of Russia’s Security Council, replacing Patrushev — who is considered one of Putin’s closest confidants and is a key player in his security apparatus.
After 16 years at the top of the Russian security hierarchy, Patrushev’s new role as an aide assigned to shipbuilding matters looks like a demotion.
“It is of course somewhat of a different nature,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists. “But it is absolutely a strategic sphere, huge and very complicated.”
Analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov told POLITICO it is possible that as an aide, Patrushev would continue to wield some influence.
But he added that he thought this unlikely, especially in light of the recent promotion of Nikolai Patrushev’s son, Dmitry Patrushev, from agriculture minister to deputy prime minister.
“It looks like Putin has decided that by appointing the younger Patrushev as a deputy prime minister, he’s fulfilled his obligation and can now with a peaceful mind send off his father to honorable retirement,” Gallyamov said.
If this amounts to a demotion, that would hint at the Kremlin’s displeasure with Patrushev over the slow capture of Ukraine along with domestic security lapses, such as the mutiny by warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin — and, more recently, the Crocus terror attack. In that case, “Patrushev has long stopped being of practical use,” Gallyamov said.
Putin also announced he had appointed Alexei Dyumin, his former bodyguard-turned-Tula governor, as an aide. Dyumin had been tipped as a potential successor to Shoigu as defense minister.
This story has been updated.