Who Is Russia’s New Defense Minister?

Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed his former economic advisor, Andrei Belousov, as defense minister on Sunday in the latest sign that the country’s economy is being placed on a war footing in anticipation of a drawn-out fight in Ukraine. 

Belousov, who most recently served as first deputy prime minister, replaces longtime Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who was appointed secretary of Russia’s Security Council amid a cabinet reshuffle following Putin’s inauguration to a fifth term in office last week. 

Belousov takes the helm of the country’s Defense Ministry amid record military expenditure; spending on the war is set to account for almost one-third of the state’s budget this year. 

Putin’s decision to tap an economist with no military background to lead the closely scrutinized Defense Ministry in wartime came as a surprise to many analysts, who noted that the 65-year-old is not part of Putin’s inner circle of security hawks. His appointment speaks to the Kremlin’s thinking about the future of the war in Ukraine as it grinds into its third year, said Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services and the director of the consultancy firm Mayak Intelligence. 

“There is clearly a sense that Putin’s Russia is digging in,” he said. “It’s going to be an attritional conflict, and to that end, national resources have to be concentrated.” As first deputy prime minister, Belousov oversaw efforts to ramp up Russia’s domestic production of unmanned drones, which have plagued Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. 

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin opted to tap a civilian economist for the role in the hope of better integrating defense spending with the wider economy and fueling innovation. “Today on the battlefield, the winner is the one who is more open to innovation,” Peskov said. “Therefore, it is natural that at the current stage, the president decided that the Russian Ministry of Defense should be headed by a civilian.”

During wartime, the Russian defense minister’s role is to ensure that the generals have the resources they need to press ahead in the war—a cross between “comptroller and political advocate,” Galeotti said. “These are roles that Belousov can absolutely fill.”

Analysts broadly divide the Russian elite into two camps: the hawks, drawn from the country’s security services, and the technocrats who have helped keep the country’s economy afloat amid increasing international isolation and punishing financial sanctions. 

Belousov, a Soviet-educated economist who supported the annexation of Crimea in 2014, is seen as straddling the two worlds as a skilled technocrat and statist who sees the government as having a large role in managing economic affairs. 

“He has always been a sort of a strange combination,” said Konstantin Sonin, an economist at the University of Chicago who has known Belousov for 20 years. “He was old school ideologically, but he was basically modern methodologically.”

In 2000, Belousov founded the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting, Russia’s first homegrown macroeconomic think tank, Sonin said. Having held a range of roles in government since 2006, including as minister of economic development, Belousov is known and trusted by Putin, but his otherwise low profile and lack of a power base pose little challenge to the Russian president’s grip on power. “Putin is extremely careful about not elevating anyone who could be seen as any kind of successor,” Sonin said.

With extravagant corruption rife among Russia’s political elite, Belousov is regarded to be relatively clean “by Moscow standards,” Sonin said, something that will likely be welcomed by Russia’s patriotic military bloggers who have long accused the Defense Ministry of being hamstrung by corruption.

“The appointment of a figure trusted by the president from a different agency will disrupt the rigid system of corrupt ties inside the Defense Ministry,” the nationalist blogger Dmitry Seleznev wrote. “It’s obvious that this reshuffling is being done for the purpose of strengthening the economic component of the military bloc.”

A tax on windfall profits of large corporations, proposed by Belousov and signed into law by Putin last year, succeeded in raising $3 billion for the country’s war-strained economy.

Shoigu, a shrewd political operator who had served in the role since 2012, was routinely singled out for scathing criticism by former Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who incited a short-lived military rebellion last year before dying in a plane crash in August. 

The dramatic arrest of Shoigu’s deputy and close ally Timur Ivanov in late April was widely interpreted as a shot across the bow at Shoigu ahead of the government reshuffle. 

Shoigu’s appointment as head of the Security Council speaks to Putin’s desire to remove Shoigu from the scene while preserving his dignity, Russian analyst Tatiana Stanovaya wrote in a post on Telegram. “Not because he is a friend but because it is safer for Putin himself,” she wrote, noting that the Security Council has become a place to park former political heavyweights who “have nowhere to settle but cannot be thrown out.” 

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has served as deputy chair of the council since 2020.

The secretary position had been held since 2008 by one of Putin’s closest friends, the ultra-hawkish Nikolai Patrushev, who forged the role into a hybrid of national security advisor and director of national intelligence, Galeotti said.

Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said Patrushev would be appointed to a new role set to be announced this week.