Putin appointed an economist and close ally as defense minister, placing Russia onto a permanent wartime footing to fight a protracted war with Kyiv.
On Sunday, less than a week after his inauguration for the fifth six-year term, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, re-shuffled his entire cabinet, having launched a major offensive against Ukraine, as part of his war that crossed its third year mark earlier this year. The most significant change in this rare and unexpected move is Putin’s appointment, as the next minister of defense, of an economist, a civilian with no military background.
Here is a look at who Andrey Belousov, former deputy Prime Minister and the new Defense Minister is, his relationship with Putin, and my analysis of what Putin’s wartime reshuffle tells us about the KGB spy master's plans for the war in Ukraine and Russia’s future relations with the United States. Belousov is a veteran apparatchik in the Russian bureaucracy.
But as he embarks on a permanent confrontation with the West that risks, in the Kremlin’s assessment, a direct kinetic war with the United States, Putin likely feels the need for a more in depth economic expertise possessed by a male. As much as he respects Nabiulina, the former KGB operative is acutely aware that the Russian defense establishment cannot possibly tolerate being led by a female. The two men have utmost trust, which is the most valuable asset in Russian politics.
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