'Whipping Boy', 'SVO' Failure And Budget Crunch: What's Behind Resignation Of Shoigu

The former Russian Defence Minister turned out to be underqualified.

Putin dismissed Sergei Shoigu from the post of Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, transferring the general to the post of Secretary of the Security Council instead of Nikolai Patrushev. The post of Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation was taken by Andrei Belousov — a hereditary economist who did not serve and never dealt with the army.

Charter97.org asked experts what is behind the personnel changes in the Russian military department and what consequences this resignation will have.

"Whipping Boy"

Co-director of foreign policy programs, coordinator of international projects of the Razumkov Center, Ukrainian military expert Oleksiy Melnyk believes that Shoigu was chosen as a whipping boy:

— Shoigu's resignation was being prepared for a long time, especially after the failures in the Kupiansk and Kherson directions. I think one of Shoigu's functions at that time was, not without the highest permission, a whipping boy. At that time, he was blamed for everything, let's say, for all the failures. This was very intensively dispersed by Russian milbloggers, here you can recall Prigozhin's open speech, the main idea of his march was the removal of Shoigu from office.

Putin understood this perfectly well and was looking for an opportunity to somehow get rid of him, but at the same time not to send a signal to other loyal leaders that he could not protect Shoigu. Now just came a very good moment to shift Shoigu somewhere, and Putin took advantage of this.

Why did Putin appoint a person who is not related to military affairs to the post of the head of the Ministry of Defence? The Ukrainian expert believes that Shoigu also could not be called a full-fledged general.

— He can be called a general quite conditionally, because he did not receive a classical military education, Shoigu did not have such a career as the generals of the armed forces, although he has all these titles.

It will be interesting whether Putin will confer the rank of General to Belousov. I would not say that this is a big disadvantage of Belousov, rather it is an advantage. As a civilian, he does not have this corporate ethics. This is just such a classic of democratic countries, when an acting general is not appointed to the post of Minister of Defence. This ensures effective management, independent control over the law enforcement agency.

Similarity of personnel decisions of Putin and Hitler

Oleh Belokolos, Director of the Center for Studies of National Resilience in Kyiv, ex-counselor of the Embassy of Ukraine in Canada and Kenya, pointed out the similarity of the personnel decisions of Putin and Hitler:

— Obviously, as the head of the defence department, Shoigu did not fulfill the tasks that were assigned to him. This reminds me of when in Nazi Germany they put Speer in charge of the defence [Albert Speer was a special person close to Hitler and the most influential architect in the Third Reich — Ed.], hoping that he would be able to mobilize industry for military needs with the help of some of his knowledge and skills.

Was Shoigu demoted when he was transferred to the post of head of the Security Council? Oleh Belokolos does not think so:

— As far as I can tell, the position does not matter in Russia. In today's bureaucratic structure, you can be out of office at all. The level and status of a character in the Putin regime system is determined by the ability to "access the body". Whoever has access to it also has status, and if there is no access, then your position does not matter much.

Complete failure of the "SVO"

Ukrainian military-political observer of the Information Resistance group Oleksandr Kovalenko called the complete failure of the war with Ukraine [so-called SVO in Russia - Ed.] one of the main reasons for Shoigu's resignation:

— First of all, this is a complete failure of the so-called "SVO", this is the main reason. Shoigu is an absolutely incapacitated Minister of Defence, unprofessional, unsuitable for work, who gathered around him the same unsuitable generals. They have been engaged in "allocation" and "crunch" of the military budget for years, in fact, without making any efforts to somehow strengthen the Russian army.

This all manifested itself during the so-called "SVO", where the technical performance and characteristics of Russian weapons were not as outstanding as they were trying to show. The tactical and strategic "genius" of the Russian generals also leaves much to be desired. All this together served as further events – the removal of Shoigu.

Kovalenko draws attention to the fact that Putin is not characterized by high-profile resignations:

— After all, this is a demonstration that something is not going according to plan. Putin has had this KGB fixation since the days of the Soviet Union — when such replacements occur – this is negative for your department and your unit. Something doesn't work out for you if there is such a replacement.

Therefore, Putin has always tried to avoid such open and loud dismissals. And not just to avoid, even when they happened, it was done with demonstrative praise. They remove the general, hand him the "Hero of Russia" and send him to some other position, thus removing him from command, for example, of a group of troops or any unit, but at the same time seemingly with some honors.

In the case of Shoigu, everything happened somewhat differently — he received no praise, no reward. There were corruption scandals with his entourage in the information space. They began to finish him off informationally, actually with Putin's permission, because without his consent such pressure would not have been carried out. We can say that Shoigu very much annoyed Putin, very much "messed up". That's why there are such consequences.

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