When the news broke a few days ago that Putin had removed his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and replaced him with an economist, Andrey Belousov, it rightly caught the attention of the media and pundits. To my mind that was not surprising considering that a week or so earlier, Timur Ivanov, one of Shoigu’s top aides and Deputy Minister of Defense had been unceremoniously arrested and charged with some major crimes including bribery and corruption. It was an obvious and huge left hook to the solar plexus of Shoigu’s power base within the Kremlin establishment. Shoigu, whether he saw it coming or not must have been stunned. His own bosom buddy Putin did this to him? But he of all people should know … something about swimming in a shark tank and all that.
But I believe the most consequential part of the announcement was the news about Nikolai Patrushev. To many Kremlin observers, Patrushev, often dubbed “Putin’s Executioner” was considered the most powerful man in Russia after Putin himself. It has been suggested, without a rebuttal from the Kremlin, that it was Patrushev who ordered and supervised the thinly-veiled public killing of the late Kremlin insider and malcontent Yevgeny Prigozhin and the subsequent dismembering of his Wagner PMC after their ill-fated run on Moscow.
Patrushev is the keeper of Putin’s secrets. So for him to be now relegated to an inconsequential and humiliating position of Nautical Engineering Advisor is truly telling. And there’s not even a mention of General Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defence who nominally is in charge of the Russian War in Ukraine. But some observers have long believed his role had been diminished and that he’s kept around to keep the very much admired former military wunderkind’s large number of supporters in the military and general staff from becoming restive.
So Putin now suddenly heads to China just after Xi returned home from a less than stellar visit to Europe. What did the now seemingly awake and confrontational Europeans tell Mr. Xi? The art and science of what was once known in the Soviet era as Kremlinology is seemingly now once more in vogue as the wheels of intrigue turns in Putin’s Russia.
But as the wheels turn, I am inclined to agree with Professor Andrei Piontkovsky’s analysis in the Kyiv Post(see link below). The recent re-up of American supplies to Ukraine and Europe’s standing up must have sent a message to Putin … you’re not going to win … in spite of your propaganda machine saying otherwise. Get ready for the show trials and blame casting in Moscow for why the wheels are coming off the 3-day Special Military Operation. It is coming.
www.kyivpost.com/…