Vladimir Putin and Sergei Shoigu have sunbathed shirtless together in faraway Siberia, shared fishing trips and played on the same ice hockey team.
The Russian defense minister has long been seen not only as a political ally of the president, but also as one of his few friends within the Russian elite.
However, their relationship and Shoigu’s long political career now face a considerable challenge after the revolt led by the leader of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Putin ended the revolt after a surprise mediation led by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. But Shoigu’s position, which has for the moment disappeared from public view, has become particularly precarious.
Prigojine pulled off the feat of seizing the headquarters of the Russian army’s southern command in Rostov-on-Don, the nerve center of the invasion of Ukraine. He also accused Shoigu of fleeing “like a coward” and swore that he “would be arrested”.
Wagner’s insufferable boss had earlier accused Shoigu and Russian Army Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov of being responsible for the deaths of “tens of thousands of Russians” in Ukraine and of having ” ceded territories to the enemy”.
“The big winner of the evening is Lukashenko and the big loser is Choïgou”, summarizes Arnaud Dubien, director of the Franco-Russian Observatory.
Even before the revolt broke out on Friday evening, Shoigu had suffered a myriad of attacks from Prigozhin and bore the brunt of the inability of Russian forces to advance in Ukraine, 16 months after the start of the invasion.
On June 12, a video of Putin and Shoigu attending a medal presentation at a military hospital showed the Russian president turning his back on him in apparent contempt. A cruel disgrace for the man who pursued a career of unequaled longevity in post-Soviet Russia, and whose presence in the heart of power in Moscow predates that of Putin.
Originally from the Tuva region in southern Siberia, he is one of the very few non-ethnic Russians to have held a high-level position in government after the collapse of the USSR.
He began his rise in 1994, as Minister for Emergency Situations in the early years of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency.
He becomes a familiar presence to Russians and one of the country’s most popular politicians, running around the country dealing with plane crashes and earthquakes.
Serving under a dozen prime ministers, he held this position until 2012, before being appointed governor of the Moscow region, then minister of defense the same year.
He was then named general despite his lack of high-level military experience. And successfully oversees complex operations, including the 2015 Russian intervention in Syria, which keeps Moscow ally Bashar al-Assad in power.
For his 65th birthday, Putin presents him with one of Russia’s highest decorations, the “For Merit to the Fatherland” medal, which completes an already well-filled chest of medals.
But the disastrous invasion of Ukraine – with which the Kremlin hoped to take kyiv within weeks – raised many questions.
“Prigojine wanted to send the message that Choïgou and Guerassimov should be dismissed because they are incompetent and that a change of strategy is necessary”, explains to AFP Pierre Razoux, academic director of the Mediterranean Foundation for Strategic Studies (FMES). ).
There is no longer any sign of manly friendship between him and Putin, nor photos like the one in 2017 of the two shirtless men sunbathing by a river in the Siberian taiga. Shoigu is reduced to mumbling reports during meetings with the Kremlin chief, when he’s not relegated to a corner while Putin oversees a videoconference.
Russian-language Telegram channels have even speculated about his possible successor, citing Tula region governor Alexei Dioumin, who has held high-level positions in the military and presidential security, as a favorite.
“The Shoigu group is on the verge of collapse, and Sergei Shoigu himself, in disgrace, will most likely resign”, assures Preemnik, a particularly followed Telegram channel.
25/06/2023 16:27:08 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
