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An important motive of Putin for dismissing Shoigun and Patrushev may have been the fact that they are two heavyweights in the Kremlin, each with their own clans.
Vladimir Putin put Sergei Shoigu in charge of an invasion in 2022 with orders to capture Kiev within days. Two years later, Russia's president has ousted his defense minister to achieve an entirely different mission in Ukraine: to keep the menacing Russian war machine going as long as necessary.
The Kremlin's surprise shake-up this weekend, which installed an economic technocrat to lead the war effort, shows that Putin is betting on the power of Russia's military-industrial complex to outmaneuver Ukraine and its Western backers.
" Putin has finally realized that the war has entered a new phase, that of a battle for resources. . . about who has more and whose supply chains are better organized ," said Alexei Venediktov, journalist and editor of the Echo of Moscow radio station.
Putin has tasked Andrei Belousov with overseeing Russia's 10.8 trillion rubles ($117.2 billion) in defense spending, which the Kremlin said needed a responsible civilian to "meet the dynamics of the current moment."
It is a moment when Russia has taken the lead. Its forces have made advances in the eastern Donbass region and threaten an advance on Kharkiv against Ukraine's armed forces as it waits for long-overdue aid from the US.
When announcing Belousov's appointment, the Kremlin made it clear that he would focus mostly on building up Russia's defense sector, where factories are working multiple shifts to boost production of weapons and ammunition several times over.
The changes, made after Putin was sworn in for a fifth term that will extend his rule until at least 2030, are part of new appointments that show the priority of the defense sector over Putin's vision of how to win the war .
Denis Manturov, Russia's industry minister, was promoted to the role of senior deputy prime minister overseeing the defense sector. Manturov is close to Sergei Chemezov, a former KGB colleague of Putin's in East Germany at the time, who now heads the sprawling defense conglomerate Rostec.
Despite the Kremlin's triumphant claims of round-the-clock arms factories, signs of serious cracks in Russia's defense production have emerged in recent months. In March, Putin appointed Andrei Bulyga as deputy defense minister in charge of logistics, making him the fourth person to hold the post during the war.
Russia's rate of fire, while still far greater than Ukraine's, has also dropped from 60,000 shells per day in the first half of the war to 10,000 today. The Ministry is wearing out artillery barrels faster than it can produce new ones, and has admitted that it can produce at most half the shells needed for a major advance.
The ascetic Belousov is a major stylistic clash with Shoigu, who regularly appeared in the medal-studded general's uniform despite never having served a day in the army. A senior Western official said the main issue was that Russia was committed to a long-term build-up of the country's military-industrial complex.
" There is a clear perception that they want someone who has the ability to professionally run a war economy for a very long time. . . and someone who is not corrupt. It is worrying that they are preparing for such a long-term approach. Of course, he is not from a military background, but neither was Shoigu, despite the fact that he walked in camouflage all the time , "said the official.
As Russia's war worsened in the fall of 2022, Shoigu became a target of rare, officially sanctioned anger from hardliners. Putin ultimately supported Shoigu over Yevgeny Prigozhin, the hardline leader who died in 2023 after leading a rebellion to oust Shoigu and other military leaders.
But discontent continued to bubble within the military, as prominent commanders clashed with Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. Putin has kept Gerasimov in his post for now, but expectations were that he too would eventually be fired, a person close to the defense ministry said.
Last month, Russian security services arrested Timur Ivanov, one of Shoigu's closest aides and the deputy defense minister responsible for construction. The move was widely interpreted as a blow to Shoigu and an admission that Moscow has little control over how its growing military funds are spent.
But despite being replaced as defense minister, Shoigu's new appointment as head of Russia's Security Council appears to be a promotion — replacing Nikolai Patrushev, one of Putin's oldest confidants and the crusade's most prominent ideologues. of Russia against the West.
The Kremlin has said that Patrushev will take up an unspecified new post in the coming days. A senior Western diplomat said Patrushev's fate was being watched closely to see if Putin's reshuffle of the two men was influenced too much by Russia's war performance, or if it had more to do with corruption allegations against Shoigu.
" A sign that Patrushev was stepping aside would suggest that the Kremlin was actively trying to address the problems in its security services exposed by its failures in Ukraine ," the diplomat said.
Patrushev attended a security council meeting with Putin on Monday, while his son Dmitry was named deputy prime minister, indicating he remains somewhat in favor.
An important motive for Putin to dismiss Shoigu and Patrushev may have been the fact that they are two heavyweights in the Kremlin, each with their own clans.
" They may have had plans for the inevitable post-Putin era. Late personalist autocracies fear such things ," Schulmann said. "
The Kremlin was not focused on how best to run the country. It's not being thought about. It is thinking about how to stay in power./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Financial Times"
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