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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s post-inauguration cabinet reshuffle and military purge has raised speculation that he’s looking to consolidate power as he prepares for a much longer war in Ukraine.
Putin named economist Andrei Belousov as Moscow’s defense chief, replacing long-serving Sergei Shoigu. Shoigu, in turn, was made secretary of Russia’s security council, replacing ousted security chief Nikolai Patrushev — a key player in Putin’s security apparatus who will now serve as the Russian president’s aide.
Also included in the reshuffle was Lt. Gen. Yuri Kuznetsov, a high-ranking military official responsible for personnel matters who was arrested “on suspicion of criminal activity,” according to Russia state media.
Taken together, the shakeup promotes economic over military minds to sustain Putin’s war machine across several years, as well as stamping out any threat of a possible usurper, experts told The Hill.
“We will see more arrests, really as a signal more than anything else, saying ‘Look, doesn’t matter what the old rules were new, the new rules are different,’” said Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert and head of Mayak Intelligence consultancy firm in London.
Galeotti also said the changes indicate that Putin is “digging in for the long term” on Ukraine, already more than two years into fighting.
“Essentially, this is pointing to a strategy of attrition and a willingness to take risks, take losses, while waiting for Ukraine to no longer have the capacity to fight and the West no longer the will to keep supporting it,” he said.
Putin earlier this week was sworn in as president for a fifth term, ensuring he will be Russia’s leader until at least 2030.
Among his first orders of business was replacing Shoigu, the defense minister since 2012, a shake-up of the Kremlin’s national security team for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Replacing him is Belousov, a deputy prime minister and economic advisor to Putin who has never served in the military. The changeover has been portrayed as a move to streamline the country’s defense spending.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Moscow’s security budget had swelled to more than 6.5 percent of GDP and officials were looking to bring it back down under Belousov.
“This demands special attention,” Peskov said. “It’s very important to put the security economy in line with the economy of the country, so that it meets the dynamics of the current moment.”
He added that Putin also decided a civilian should run defense matters because “on the battlefield, he who is more open to innovation . . . wins.”
Shoigu’s reassignment is notable given his close relationship with Putin, with the two in the past going on fishing and hunting trips.
Likewise, outgoing security chief Patrushev has long been seen as a close confidant of the Russian president, and his move is widely viewed as a demotion. Patrushev, a former K.G.B. colleague of Putin, was a key player in the assassination of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin last year, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman told NPR this week that he interpreted the “sidelining” of Patrushev as being more about consolidating power in the Kremlin, rather than directly related to Ukraine war efforts.
“I see the fact that the second most powerful person in the country, Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the National Security Council, was removed and replaced with another loyalist, both weakening, let’s say, opposing factions,” he said.
“I think this is a way to insulate Putin more concretely in his second term, give him a freer hand,” added Vindman, who now heads the Institute for Informed American Leadership think tank.
Shoigu, along with the head of the Russian military Valery Gerasimov, have drawn the ire from Russian officials over Moscow’s failures on the battlefield in Ukraine, even as it’s slowly gained ground in recent months.
“Shoigu was not exactly performing to the standard that was needed. He’d been a good civilian peacetime minister but as a catastrophically bad wartime one. And so I think it was time for him to be moved on,” Galeotti told The Hill.
There has also been a public charge to stamp out corruption within Russia’s defense apparatus, with Russia’s security services last month arresting one of Shoigu’s deputy defense ministers, Timur Ivanov, on corruption charges.
But that was also viewed by the West as a ploy to weaken Shoigu.
Asked Monday about Russia’s personnel changes, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh declined to comment beyond a dig at their current war effort.
“Given where the war has started that Russia launched, you know, over two years ago, they’ve certainly not had successes on the battlefield and had some pretty big defeats. So I’ll let the Russians speak to their own personnel changes,” she said.
Others see the timing of the changeovers — ahead of Putin’s arrival in Beijing this week for the first state visit of his new term — as an aim to further integrate Russia’s economy more deeply with China for the sake of long-term military capabilities.
“Putin has brought this delegation of both cabinet members and the heads of Russian banks and energy companies — and shaken up his cabinet just before his visit to the economic patron of his war in Ukraine, the Chinese Communist Party,” Jonathan Ward, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., told The Hill.
“This suggests that Putin is trying to bring China deeper into his war effort and trying to align the Russian and Chinese economies in such a way that would enable him — with China’s help — to win the war.”
War said China’s economic support for Russia has already “laid the foundations for their war in Europe,” and that making an economist the defense minister shows Putin’s determination to the “further transformation of Russia into a wartime economy.”
Cumulatively, the cabinet shifts mark a turning point in Russia’s more than two-year war in Ukraine, essentially militarizing the whole structure of government and turning it into a warfighting institution.
Unlike Russia’s war effort, its economy has defied expectations over the past two years. Even under the cloud of major economic sanctions imposed by the West, as well as being cut off from most global markets, the Kremlin in 2023 outpaced both the United States and Europe in terms of growth. That gain seems to have been largely driven by increased military spending, with significant ramp ups of Russia’s defense industry, according to economists.
Belouso’s appointment appears to be an acknowledgment of that new normal, shoring up Moscow for a long-haul conflict with Ukraine as Russian forces mount a new offensive in the country’s northeast. The battle plan looks to be a slow push forward to retake smaller towns, rather than major assaults on big cities as Moscow attempted unsuccessfully at the start of the war.
“Russians learn lessons,” Galeotti said of the shift. “Sometimes their responses are not the same as ours, ones we would expect or they’re sluggish or wasteful, but the Russians do learn and I think this is what we’re seeing. It’s actually a lot of the lessons of the past couple of years, particularly in terms of how you manage your system for a long-term war of attrition beginning to be applied.”
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With reports that the infamous private military company Wagner was attempting to recruit Serbian volunteers to fight for Russia in Ukraine, Serbia’s controversial relationship with Russia is once again making international headlines. The news sparked alarm in Western capitals, which pressured Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to put an immediate end to Wagner’s efforts.
Ostensibly, that pressure was successful. Vucic not only condemned Wagner’s activities, reiterating that mercenaries are illegal under Serbian law, but also publicly stated that Serbia does not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and considers Crimea and Donbas part of Ukraine. Such an outcome is widely being viewed as Belgrade’s long-awaited attempt to start distancing itself from Moscow and its brutal war. But is it?
As is often the case in Serbia’s relations with Russia, the standoff between Belgrade and Wagner was more about PR stunts and media coverage than real developments on the ground. Both sides skillfully manipulated popular stereotypes about the affinity between Russia and Serbia to their own ends and achieved the desired effect.
It is difficult to determine who initiated the whole story, but the media storm started to gather back in December 2022, when two right-wing Serbian activists visited the newly inaugurated Wagner headquarters in St. Petersburg. They represented tiny fringe groups consisting of just a few members, but the visit was apparently part of a propaganda campaign orchestrated by Wagner’s owner, the shady businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin.
He has always been keen to demonstrate that Wagner is capable of doing more than just fighting, and that it can also further Russia’s interests around the globe by other means if the Kremlin provides it with more powers and resources. The reception of two Serbs in St. Petersburg was publicized by media outlets also owned by Prigozhin with the aim of making the Russian leadership take notice of his efforts and growing international outreach.
The resulting publicity surpassed all expectations. Given Wagner’s international notoriety, a number of media misinterpreted the visit as a sign that Prigozhin was opening an office in Serbia to recruit volunteers to fight against Ukraine. The misinterpretation fitted the stereotype of Russian-Serbian brotherhood in arms so well that it persists to this day, despite having been refuted on numerous occasions. It was further bolstered in January by a few minor episodes that acquired disproportionate significance in the already charged atmosphere.
In early January, the Serbian version of the Russian propaganda mouthpiece RT ran an article openly promoting Wagner as an attractive employer. The text did not address Serbs directly and was soon rescinded, but still made waves. It was followed by news of several Serbian volunteers already training to fight in Ukraine, while on January 14 a mural celebrating Wagner appeared in Belgrade. It was painted over on the next day, but enough Wagner-related noise had built up in Serbia in the preceding weeks to secure the company’s activities a spot on the agenda of Vucic’s talks with Western diplomats.
The Serbian president appeared eager to react. He publicly reproached Russia for abusing his goodwill, and emphasized that Wagner was not welcome in Serbia, since the country had outlawed mercenary fighting. Dispelling any remaining doubts, Vucic stated that Belgrade does not support Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine and will not recognize Crimea, Donbas, or the other newly annexed Ukrainian territories as part of Russia. The strong statements of the Serbian leader were welcomed in the West and earned him favorable coverage in international media.
We should not, however, exaggerate either the courage required for Vucic to take such steps, or the impact they will have on Serbia’s relations with Russia. There is no evidence that Wagner was systematically targeting Serbs in its recruitment campaign, never mind establishing an office in the country. Given the ease with which Prigozhin has been recruiting Russian convicts into his private army, which is currently estimated to number 50,000 fighters, it makes little military sense for Wagner to invest in recruitment efforts in Serbia for the sake of a few dozen volunteers.
Causing a media stir appears to have been Prigozhin’s priority from the very beginning, and far from the Serbian leadership hindering him in that aim, it actually assisted him. Leading world media ran the story about Wagner expanding to the Balkans, allowing the businessman to show the Kremlin that his nimble company can bolster Russia’s international clout more efficiently than the bloated and corrupt state apparatus. Commenting on the scandal, Prigozhin refrained from his usual harsh language, instead respectfully stating that he holds no grudge against the Serbs, who are able to manage on their own.
The Kremlin is also unlikely to take offense at Vucic’s statements, since there is nothing new in them. Serbia prohibited its nationals from volunteering to fight in foreign conflicts back in 2015, reacting to reports about Serbian citizens fighting in Syria and Ukraine’s Donbas region. Since then, several dozen Serbs have been sentenced under that law, prompting no reaction from Russia. Why, then, would it be nettled by Vucic now, when he is simply maintaining the status quo?
The same is true of Vucic’s statements that Serbia respects the territorial integrity of Ukraine. This has been Belgrade’s official stance since Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008, repeatedly reiterated since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Moscow is well aware of this position and has never objected to it, understanding that Serbia cannot afford to waver over the principle of territorial integrity in its ongoing attempts to prevent full recognition of its breakaway province of Kosovo.
Nor is Russia troubled by Vucic taking advantage of the scandal to portray himself to the West as a constructive pro-Western leader regrettably constrained by an unholy alliance between the Kremlin and Serbian right-wing radicals. Moscow understands perfectly that cooked-up “concessions” such as closing down the nonexistent Wagner office in Serbia help Vucic to evade Western pressure on more substantial issues, such as energy cooperation with Russia, joining in with anti-Russian sanctions, or recognition of Kosovo. Similar scandals in the past, when Vucic accused Moscow of stoking anti-Covid protests in 2020 or bribing a Serbian official in 2019, left no trace on the two countries’ relations.
There is no indication that the outcome of the Wagner row will be any different. There will be no arrests or crackdowns on pro-Russian groups in Serbia. On the contrary, the scandal has demonstrated how firmly they remain under Vucic’s thumb. RT Balkan swiftly rescinded the publication that had evoked the authorities’ ire, while the creators of the Wagner mural have made no attempts to replicate it since the first one was painted over. The pro-government tabloids will not tone down their rabid pro-Russian narratives: in any case, they gave only cursory attention to the Wagner story, which targeted Western audiences, not domestic ones.
The scandal has helped both countries to gain the kind of publicity they strived for without damaging their relations. Russia and Serbia will continue to utilize their cooperation for various propaganda purposes. Their readiness to treat each other’s needs with tolerance and understanding, along with their ability to prioritize issues of substance over PR stunts, are precisely what make this relationship so resilient.
Maxim Samorukov is currently a visiting fellow at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. This article is also published with Carnegie Politika and with the weekly newspaper NiN (in Serbian).
What the Wagner Mercenaries’ Row Reveals About Serbia’s Relations with Russia Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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