Russian President Putin dismisses four deputy ministers and appoints relatives to their positions.
The ongoing revamping of Russia's Defense Ministry is in full swing. Following the resignation of Shoigu as head of the department, four deputy ministers now find themselves out of a job. One of the empty positions will be filled by a woman who's the daughter of Putin's cousin.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, has axed four deputy defense ministers as per an official decree. Nikolai Pankow, Ruslan Zalikow, Tatyana Shevzova, and Pavel Popov owe the Kremlin their resignations. This overhaul is said to be the final phase of a restructuring that Putin kickstarted in May. At that time, he unexpectedly fired his long-time defense minister, Sergei Shoigu.
Leonid Gornin, formerly a deputy finance minister, has been appointed as the First Deputy Defense Minister. According to the state-owned news agency Tass, Gornin will now oversee the financial resources allocated to the Russian military. One of the other vacant positions has been filled by Anna Zhivaleva, a relative of Putin. The 52-year-old woman, who's Putin's cousin Yevgeny Putin's daughter, used to head the state funding agency "Defender of the Fatherland," supporting veterans and families of Russian soldiers involved in the conflict with Ukraine. Her brother Mikhail Putin was named as deputy chairman of the state-owned Gazprom conglomerate in 2018.
New Defense Minister is an Economics Whiz
Reports suggest that Zhivaleva and Putin were chums during their childhood. In 2007, she married businessman Sergei Zhivalev, who took up the post of Russian Energy Minister that very same year. The Defense Ministry claims that Zhivaleva will now manage social support and housing for military personnel, aiming to elevate it to an entirely new level.
Oleg Savelyev and Pavlo Fradkov, the son of the ex-prime minister Mikhail Fradkov, have also been appointed as deputy defense ministers. Fradkov will handle all real estate, land, and construction projects related to the military.
Putin revealed in mid-May that he wouldn't reprise his role as defense minister in his next term. Instead, he chose Andrei Belousov as his successor. Belousov, who's 65, used to be the Minister of Economics and recently served as First Deputy Prime Minister. With increased military spending on the horizon, Putin expressed his desire for an economic prodigy to lead the Defense Ministry, according to Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov at the time of the shuffle.
The personnel changes at the ministry's leadership began with the detainment of the former deputy defense minister Timur Ivanov on bribery charges on April 23. Rumors abound that Shoigu and Ivanov were close allies. In the context of the biggest corruption scandal to shock the Russian government in years, four other senior officials from the department and the General Staff have also been taken into custody for the same offense. Onlookers viewed these arrests as a sign of power tussles within the Russian leadership.
