They sunbathed bare-chested together in remote Siberia, shared a fishing vacation and played on the same ice hockey team.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has long been seen not only as a political ally of President Vladimir Putin, but also as one of the few friends of the Kremlin chief within the Russian elite.
But their “bromance” and Shoigu’s long political career now face their greatest test, following the uprising led by the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who criticized the defense minister’s handling of the invasion of Ukraine tackled.
Putin seems to have survived the unrest for the time being after a surprising mediation led by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. But Shoigu’s position remains extremely precarious, given the unprecedented severity of Prigozhin’s attacks on him and his ministry.
Prigozhin managed to capture the command headquarters of the Russian army in Rostov-on-Don, the nerve center of the invasion of Ukraine, and accused Shoigu of fleeing “like a coward” and vowed that he “will be stopped”.
The Defense Minister has completely disappeared from view since the events caused by Prigozhin.
The head of the Wagner group had already accused Shoigu and Russia’s chief general, Valery Gerasimov, his other “black beast”, of being responsible for the deaths of “tens of thousands of Russians” in the conflict and for the “surrender of territory to the enemy”.
“Big Loser”
“The big winner of the evening was Lukashenko,” said Arnaud Dubien, director of the Franco-Russo Observatory think tank. “And the big loser was Shoigu.”
But even before the uprising erupted on Friday night, Shoigu was already under enormous pressure from Prigozhin’s attacks and the failure of Russian forces to make progress on the ground.
On June 12, a video was widely shared showing Putin and Shoigu attending a medal ceremony at a military hospital, where the Russian president seemingly disdainfully turned his back on the defense minister.
Shoigu has had an unparalleled political career in post-Soviet Russia, and his presence in the center of power in Moscow predates that of Putin himself.
Hailing from the Tuva region of southern Siberia, Shoigu is one of the few non-ethnic Russians to hold senior government positions after the collapse of the USSR.
His rise to power began in 1994, when he was appointed Minister of Emergency Situations in the early years of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency.
Shoigu has become a trusted and unflappable presence for Russians, as well as one of the country’s most popular politicians, as he raced across the country dealing with various disasters from plane crashes to earthquakes.
He served under a dozen prime ministers and held this position until 2012, when he was appointed governor of the Moscow region, before being swiftly named defense minister by Putin the same year after a corruption scandal toppled his predecessor Anatoly Serdyukov.
“On the Verge of Collapse”
Shoigu was immediately named general despite lacking top-level military experience, but he successfully oversaw operations, including the 2015 intervention in Syria that kept Moscow ally Bashar al-Assad in power.
On her 65th birthday, Putin gave her a special gift, one of Russia’s highest awards, the “For Merit to the Fatherland” medal, to add to a suitcase already filled with decorations.
But the less successful invasion of Ukraine – which the Kremlin initially hoped would soon end with Russian tanks rolling into Kiev – continues to raise questions about Shoigu’s future.
“Prigozhin wanted to get the message out that Shoigu and Gerasimov should be fired because they are incompetent and a change of strategy is needed,” said Pierre Razoux, academic director of the France-based Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies (FMES).
Prigozhin also pointed to Shoigu’s family, in particular to his daughter Ksenia’s husband, Alexey Stolyarov, a fitness blogger who evaded the war call and was accused by opposition media of liking an anti-invasion post.
Telegram’s Russian-language channels are abuzz with speculation about who could succeed Shoigu, with Tula region governor Alexei Dyumin, who has held senior positions in the military and presidential security, as a favourite.
“Shoigu’s group is about to collapse,” says the much-followed Telegram channel Preemnik.
AFP journalist
Source: DN
