If your boss gives you one job, and you aren’t able to accomplish that one job in two plus years, there’s an excellent chance of your ass getting canned.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose military has been criticized at home for a perceived lack of progress and heavy losses during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, announced that he was replacing longtime ally Sergei Shoigu as defense minister.
The Kremlin said that Shoigu, 66, would be replaced by former First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, 65, a little-known politician who specializes in economic matters.
Replacing a 66 year old with a 65 year old? That’s some mighty fine youth movement you’ve got going on there, Vlad…
Shoigu, who has been defense minister since 2012 and has been leading Russia’s military through its full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022, has been named to head Russia’s Security Council, which advises the president on national security matters.
The Kremlin said that as part of Shoigu’s Security Council duties, the former defense chief will advise on matters involving military-industrial issues.
He will replace Nikolai Patrushev as head of the Security Council. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Patrushev’s next position will be announced in the coming days.
Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Federation Council — which also announced the changes — said Putin has proposed reappointing Sergei Lavrov as Russia’s foreign minister.
British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said Russia’s next defense chief will be another Putin “puppet.”
Ya think?
“Sergei Shoigu has overseen over 355,000 casualties amongst his own soldiers & mass civilian suffering with an illegal campaign in Ukraine,” he wrote on X.
“Russia needs a Defense Minister who would undo that disastrous legacy & end the invasion – but all they’ll get is another of Putin’s puppets.”
The buck for Russia’s persistent inability to conquer the much smaller Ukraine ultimately stops at Putin, so sacking Shoigu will probably be as effective at winning the war as shuffling the deck chairs on the Moskva. Vast incompetence, corruption and general military rot was allowed to fester under Shoigu’s watch, but Russian military problems predate not only his tenure, but even the Soviet Union. Traditionally Russia got its ass kicked in the first year of a war, learned from its mistakes, and used an endless supply of canon fodder to wear its enemies down.
Russia no longer has that endless supply of manpower. The Russian way of war was wasteful and incompetent long before the current slaughter, and now it’s unsuccessful and unsustainable. Ukraine is destroying a half-century of stockpiled Soviet weapons using largely NATO surplus equipment, and however the war ends, Russia will no longer be seen as a great military power, much less a near-peer to the US and NATO. Russia occasionally seems to act more competently than they did in the early phases of the war, but they’re still using meatgrinder tactics that slaughter their own troops. Their notorious lack of NCOs means institutional knowledge has been hard to retain and transmit in the best of circumstances, and these are not the best of circumstances.
In a normal society, the Russian military obvious dysfunction would fall squarely on the head of Shoigu, but Russia is not a normal society. The Russian military needs reform, but it’s needed reform for pretty much the entirety of its post-Soviet existence (and much of its Soviet existence to boot). Shoigu was appointed Minister of Defense precisely because he wasn’t a reformer, as predecessor Anatoly Serdyukov had attempted to reform the military, and had stepped on far too many well-shod corrupt toes in the process.
Shoigu’s successor Andrei Belousov doesn’t exactly have typical profile you’d expect from a Minister of Defense:
He studied economics at Moscow State University and graduated with honors in 1981.
From 1981 to 1986, Belousov was probationer-researcher and then junior researcher in the simulation laboratory of human-machine systems of the Central Economic Mathematical Institute.
If you were a full-time student in the Soviet Union during the period, you could avoid compulsory military service by going straight into the reserve officer services without actually doing any actual military duty. That timeline suggests Belousov went that route.
From 1991 to 2006, he was head of laboratory in the Institute of Economic Forecasting in the Russian Academy of Science. He was external advisor to prime minister from 2000 to 2006.
Belousov served as deputy minister of economic development and trade for two years from 2006 to 2008.
From 2008 to 2012, he was director of the finances and economic department in the Russian Prime Minister’s office.
Belousov has the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation.
On 21 May 2012, he was appointed minister of economic development to the cabinet led by prime minister Dimitri Medvedev. Belousov succeeded Elvira Nabiullina as minister of economic development.
On 24 June 2013, he was appointed as Putin’s Presidential Assistant in Economic Affairs.
On 21 January 2020, Belousov was appointed as First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia in Mikhail Mishustin’s Cabinet. From 30 April to 19 May 2020, Belousov was appointed by Vladimir Putin as Acting Prime Minister of Russia, temporarily replacing Mikhail Mishustin, after the latter was diagnosed with coronavirus. According to Politico, he is one possible successor to Putin.
So he’s a Putin toady with no military background. He will probably come in with considerable authority, but no knowledge of where the bodies are buried, or which members of the general staff are lying to him (probably all of them). The thermocline of truth is a danger for any organization, especially a national military, especially for a dictatorship where regime critics suffer alarmingly high rates of defenestration.
Can a career political functionary with no military experience successfully reform a vast national military? It’s within the realm of possibility, but no examples spring to mind. Both Casper Weinberger and Donald Rumsfeld had served in the military. Belousov could be the second coming of Henry L. Stimson, and it would still take him a minimum of 6-12 months to find all the levers he needed to actually reform the Russian military. And I would wager money that Belousov isn’t the second coming of Henry L. Stimson.
I think the most likely outcome of replacing Shoigu with Belousov will be a period where Russia switches from its current course of slow, grinding stupidity for a few months of much quicker and more disasterous stupidity.