FLASH
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In a ministry now headed by a civilian tasked primarily with overseeing investment and spending, Gerasimov will be much more than a chief of staff...
Barring further Putin surprises, the recent purge of the Ministry of Defense (veteran minister Shoigu was transferred to another position, three deputy ministers were liquidated within two weeks, an academically trained economist like Andrej Belousov was chosen as the new minister) leaves great space for a figure who is never too exposed, but able to withstand all blows: General Valery Gerasimov, chief of staff of the Russian armed forces.
His name is already known to many because of the phrase "Gerasimov doctrine", one of the many nonsense produced by the Western media system when it pretends to talk about Russia without studying it. The "Gerasimov doctrine" would theorize that way of developing the war even outside the battlefield, using media influence, disinformation, economic sabotage, psychological deformation, technology, special units organized outside the canons of traditional armies. A really fascinating theory.
It all started with a speech that Gerasimov himself had given in 2013 to a group of senior officers to show them how Western countries were waging a new kind of war, mixing tactics from the most diverse. Therefore, the "Gerasimov doctrine" should be called "NATO according to the Gerasimov doctrine", but this is not the first and not the last nonsense we hear about Russia.
Let's go back to the real Gerasimov, not the invented one. Born in 1955 in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, he has a face hardened by the long years spent as a Soviet officer in what were then the hot fronts: the Far East and the Baltic, and then ended up as an officer Russian who commanded the Caucasus Army in 1999, shortly before the latest war broke out in Chechnya. In this capacity, Gerasimov was perhaps the only officer who spoke well of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who had uncovered the horrors and miseries of the Russian campaign in Chechnya and who was later killed in Moscow in 2006. In fact, Politkovskaya wrote that, arresting Russian colonel Yuri Budanov, guilty of murdering a Chechen girl, Gerasimov had saved the honor of the Russian officers.
After that, for years, from district to district, from command to command, Gerasimov rose through the ranks and approached the centers of military and political power, first in St. Petersburg, then in Moscow. Until in 2010, he was appointed deputy chief of the cabinet and in 2012, a few days after Shoigu's arrival as minister, chief of the cabinet. In that role, he was one of the planners of the "special military operation" in Ukraine, and as such, especially between 2022 and 2023, when things seemed to be going badly for the Russians, he ended up in the eye of the storm.
Those most exposed to the attack on him and Minister Shoigu were the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and the founder of the private militia Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, respectively. Two Putin loyalists who loudly accused the "clique of generals" of incompetence and sabotaging the efforts of others at the front. We know how this all ended. Kadyrov returned under the wing of the Kremlin, Prigozhin attempted an uprising (June 2023) and was assassinated (August 2023). Shoigu and Gerasimov then remained in their seats, a clear sign of Vladimir Putin's choice of side.
Of course, the heads of the Ministry of Defense, where this year 110 billion investments (6% of Russian GDP) will flow to fight the war, are not a place for beautiful souls. In the great whirlwind of liquidated or transferred generals and deputy ministers arrested for corruption, Gerasimov has always cut the figure of a silent, loyal and reliable character.
In a ministry now run by a civilian tasked primarily with overseeing investment and spending, Gerasimov will be much more than a chief of staff. He will have to teach Belousov, introduce him to the world of the army, coordinate the generals involved in this field. And he will be the first to answer for the positive or negative results obtained on the battlefield. All with Putin's eye and judging him. Anything But Hybrid War./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Inside Over"
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