Andrei Belousov
| Photo Credit: Illustration: R. Rajesh

Vladimir Putin’s inauguration as Russian President for a fifth time has spawned a slew of political moves in the country. Andrei Belousov was made Defence Minister, replacing Sergei Shoigu, who was sent away to head the National Security Council — a position held by Mr. Putin’s key ally Nikolai Patrushev, who will oversee shipbuilding going forward.

Russia’s official position regarding the Cabinet reshuffle is that with the war in Ukraine under way for two years now, military spending resembles Soviet-era levels of the mid-1980s. This calls for a better integration of the defence Budget into the overall economy, which will be achieved by having a civilian economist, such as Mr. Belousov, at the helm.

However, from the outset, things seemed to be going in favour of Mr. Shoigu, for the Ukraine war had finally gathered momentum. After remaining largely stagnant since December 2022, the Russian Army began advancing on the battlefront, capturing close to 800 sq. km this year.

What then would have prompted Mr. Shoigu’s transfer? Parse through the history and the full picture emerges. Like Mr. Belousov, Mr. Shoigu, too, hails from a civilian background. A civil engineer by profession, the 68-year-old started at the Emergency and Disaster Relief Department in the 1990s. Having proved his mettle there, Mr. Shoigu took over as Defence Minister in 2012. He orchestrated the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and masterminded Russia’s military campaign in Syria to help Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Inner circle

His stature had grown by then and Mr. Shoigu became part of Mr. Putin’s inner circle, even accompanying him on fishing trips. Speculation was rife that he would be considered a possible successor to Mr. Putin.

The first signs of trouble for Mr. Shoigu were visible with Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine that was launched on February 24, 2022. What was expected to be a quick campaign has dragged on for more than two years.

The period also witnessed economic sanctions by the West and a mutiny at home by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin against Mr. Shoigu and military chief Valery Gerasimov. The final nail came in April with the arrests of Mr. Shoigu’s deputy Timur Ivanov on corruption charges and another senior official from the Defence Ministry.

This may lead to the impression that graft and inefficiency on the battlefield led to Mr. Shoigu’s removal. But then not every head rolled, and Mr. Gerasimov remains unaffected by the Cabinet shake-up, continuing to serve in his role; forcing analysts to think Mr. Shoigu’s increased clout could also have contributed to his ‘demotion’.

Taken together with the Prigozhin episode, the clout factor is likely to have played a part in Mr. Putin’s decision. A look at the other appointments further underscores this. Mr. Patrushev’s son, Dmitry, has been promoted from Agriculture Minister to Deputy Prime Minister, and so is Mr. Putin’s main financier Yuri Kovalchuk’s son Boris, who is assigned to lead Russia’s audit chamber.

By tying the prospects of next-generation leaders to the current political dispensation, analysts believe Mr. Putin is trying to neutralise potential threats from various quarters.

This makes Mr. Belousov, a civilian with a relatively low profile, the ideal candidate for Mr. Putin. The 65-year-old’s stints, first as an Economic Development Minister and then as a Deputy Prime Minister, lend him enough heft to take on the role of Defence Minister. His interest in drones paints the picture of a technocrat, who can bring about the required ‘innovation’, which Russian officials believe is crucial to winning the war. His economic background should also help plug corruption and ensure money is allotted efficiently and effectively.

Most important, the fact that Mr. Belousov and Mr. Putin possess a set of shared beliefs, chief among which is an increased state role in the economy, solidifies his case. Mr. Belousov’s efforts to this end — such as an increase in VAT in 2019 and a proposal to seize excess profit from 14 large metallurgical and chemical companies — must have caught the Russian President’s attention.

By appointing an economist at the helm, the Russian President realises the role played by the economy during wartime. This means Mr. Belousov has his task cut out and will have to straddle the economy and the war optimally.

A mansion on the Black Sea coast, often linked to Russian president Vladimir Putin, has been refashioned to include a church equipped with a throne, according to a report by Russian investigative outlet Proekt. It published the videos of “Putin’s palace”, which were recently renovated. The existence of the mansion was first revealed in 2021 by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who had said that it has a wine cellar, a casino and an ice rink. Russia has not official reacted to the Proekt report.

The palace is sealed off from rest of the Russia by 17,000 acres of forest and a special no-fly zone.

“Many viewers of Navalny’s video remembered the entertainment areas – with a pole, a casino, as well as a room with toy cars and a railway,” Proekt said in its report, adding that none of these areas exist anymore.

It also said that renovations suggest Putin “seems to be obsessed with war and religion”.

The photos show a home church featuring a triptych and a wooden throne. The walls of the room are decorated with crosses, and the triptych appears to depict a “Saint Prince Vladimir”, two art historians and one icon painter said, Proekt further said.

The outlet made a particular mention of a chandelier, which it said has been made using red crystals from the French manufacturer Baccarat and costs $1 million.

In his 2021 video, Mr Navalny had claimed that the property costs $1.3 billion and alleged it was paid for via an elaborate corruption scheme in which Putin gave top jobs and lucrative government projects to his allies at partially state-owned energy giants.

Thousands of Russians had come out on the streets in 2021 when Mr Navalny published the expose on Mr Putin’s Black Sea complex.

But Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov had dismissed the claims in the report at the time, calling it “pure nonsense”.

Just a few months short of a quarter-century as Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin will put his hand on a copy of the constitution and begin another six-year term as president on May 7.

Since becoming acting president on the last day of 1999, Mr. Putin has shaped Russia into a monolith — crushing political opposition, running independent-minded journalists out of the country and promoting “traditional values” that pushed many in society into the margins.

His influence is so dominant that other officials could only stand submissively on the sidelines as he launched a war in Ukraine despite expectations the invasion would bring international opprobrium and harsh economic sanctions, as well as cost Russia dearly in the blood of its soldiers.

With that level of power, what Mr. Putin will do with his next term is a daunting question at home and abroad.

The war in Ukraine, where Russia is making incremental though consistent battlefield gains, is the top concern, and he is showing no indication of changing course.

“The war in Ukraine is central to his current political project, and I don’t see anything to suggest that that will change. And that affects everything else,” Brian Taylor, a Syracuse University professor and author of The Code of Putinism, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It affects who’s in what positions, it affects what resources are available and it affects the economy, affects the level of repression internally,” he said.

Russia’s war in Ukraine

In an address in February, Mr. Putin vowed to fulfil Moscow’s goals in Ukraine, and do whatever it takes to “defend our sovereignty and security of our citizens.” He claimed the Russian military has “gained a huge combat experience” and is “firmly holding the initiative and waging offensives in a number of sectors.”

That will come at huge expense, which could drain money available for the extensive domestic projects and reforms in education, welfare and poverty-fighting that Putin used much of the two-hour address to detail.

Mr. Taylor suggested such projects were included in the address as much for show as for indicating real intent to put them into action. Mr. Putin “thinks of himself in the grand historical terms of Russian lands, bringing Ukraine back to where it belongs, those sorts of ideas. And I think those trump any kind of more socioeconomic-type programs,” he said.

If the war were to end in less than total defeat for either side, with Russia retaining some of the territory it has already captured, European countries fear that Mr. Putin could be encouraged toward further military adventurism in the Baltics or in Poland.

“It’s possible that Putin does have vast ambitions and will try to follow a costly success in Ukraine with a new attack somewhere else,” Stephen Walt, Harvard international relations professor, wrote in the journal Foreign Policy. “But it is also entirely possible that his ambitions do not extend beyond what Russia has won — at enormous cost and that he has no need or desire to gamble for more.” But, he added, “Russia will be in no shape to launch new wars of aggression when the war in Ukraine is finally over.”

Such a rational concern might not prevail, others say. Maksim Samorukov, of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that “driven by Putin’s whims and delusions, Moscow is likely to commit self-defeating blunders.”

In a commentary in Foreign Affairs, Mr. Samorukov suggested that Putin’s age could affect his judgment. “At 71 … his awareness of his own mortality surely impinges on his decision-making. A growing sense of his limited time undoubtedly contributed to his fateful decision to invade Ukraine.”

New power dynamics

Overall, Mr. Putin may be heading into his new term with a weaker grip on power than he appears to have.

Russia’s “vulnerabilities are hidden in plain sight. Now more than ever, the Kremlin makes decisions in a personalized and arbitrary way that lacks even basic controls,” Mr. Samorukov wrote. “The Russian political elite have grown more pliant in implementing Putin’s orders and more obsequious to his paranoid worldview,” he wrote. The regime “is at permanent risk of crumbling overnight, as its Soviet predecessor did three decades ago.”

Mr. Putin is sure to continue his animosity toward the West, which he said in his February address “would like to do to Russia the same thing they did in many other regions of the world, including Ukraine: to bring discord into our home, to weaken it from within.”

Putin’s resistance to the West manifests not only anger at its support for Ukraine, but in what he sees as the undermining of Russia’s moral fiber.

Role of church, opposition

Russia last year banned the notional LGBTQ+ “movement” by declaring it to be extremist in what officials said was a fight for traditional values like those espoused by the Russian Orthodox Church in the face of Western influence. Courts also banned gender transitioning.

“I would expect the role of the Russian Orthodox Church to continue to be quite visible,” Mr. Taylor said. He also noted the burst of social media outrage that followed a party hosted by TV presenter Anastasia Ivleeva where guests were invited to show up “almost naked.” “Other actors in the system understand that that stuff resonates with Putin. … There were people interested in exploiting things like that,” he said.

Although the opposition and independent media have almost vanished under Putin’s repressive measures, there’s still potential for further moves to control Russia’s information space, including moving forward with its efforts to establish a “sovereign internet.”

The inauguration comes two days before Victory Day, Russia’s most important secular holiday, commemorating the Soviet Red Army’s capture of Berlin in World War II and the immense hardships of the war, in which the USSR lost some 20 million people.

The defeat of Nazi Germany is integral to modern Russia’s identity and to Mr. Putin’s justification of the war in Ukraine as a comparable struggle.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the idea that Donald Trump had special ties with Russia was “complete nonsense”.
| Photo Credit: AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on September 12 that the prosecution of former U.S. President Donald Trump was politically motivated and demonstrated the “rottenness” of the U.S. political system.

Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is facing a series of criminal cases in which he is charged, among other things, with trying to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat by Joe Biden.

Explained | How will the indictments affect Donald Trump?

He has pleaded not guilty, while Mr. Biden, who is seeking re-election next year, has kept silent about the proceedings against his opponent.

Mr. Putin said what was happening to Mr. Trump was good from Russia’s point of view.

“It shows all the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,” he said at a forum in Russia’s far eastern city of Vladivostok.

“Everything that’s happening with Trump is politically motivated persecution of one’s political rival, that’s what it is. And it’s being done before the eyes of the U.S. public and the whole world. They’ve simply exposed their internal problems.”

Mr. Putin continued: “In this sense, if they are trying to fight us in some way, it’s good, because it shows who is fighting us. It shows, as they said back in Soviet times, ‘the bestial face of American imperialism, the bestial grin’.”

As President, Mr. Trump was investigated for possible collusion with Russia but an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller did not find sufficient evidence that Trump’s campaign had coordinated with Moscow to influence the 2016 election in which he defeated Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Putin said the idea that Mr. Trump had special ties with Russia was “complete nonsense”.

He also said significant changes in the U.S.-Russia relationship were unlikely regardless of who wins the 2024 U.S. election because the administration was “hammering into people’s heads” that Russia was an existential adversary.

“No matter who is elected, the vector of anti-Russian U.S. policy is unlikely to be affected,” he said.

Relations between Moscow and Washington, already strained during Trump’s presidency, have plunged to post-Cold War lows under Biden following Putin’s decision in February 2022 to send tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering sweeping Western sanctions and Western military aid to Kyiv.