Following his fifth presidential inauguration, Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a new government. The most significant change is to the Defense Ministry, which will now be led by Andrei Belousov, a Keynesian economist and former deputy prime minister. Coming amid the ongoing war in Ukraine and notable arrests within the Defense Ministry, the reshuffle has prompted questions about Kremlin priorities.
What will Belousov's first moves as defense minister be? How will his predecessor Sergei Shoigu’s role evolve, and how might it impact the frontline in Ukraine?
This transcript was not edited prior to publication:
Alexander Gabuev. Welcome to Carnegie Politika podcast. My name is Alexander Gabuev. I'm director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. And today we're going to talk about Vladimir Putin's war cabinet. Vladimir Putin has won re-election, heavily managed, but accepted by a majority of Russians. He went through his another inauguration on May 7th, and immediately two days after that has announced that Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin will keep his job. And then the rosters of the new deputy prime ministers and Russian ministers were rolled out. Many of the people kept their jobs. So that's a pretty new-old cabinet, but there were some very significant surprises. So what does personnel changes mean for Putin's hold of power for the way that Russia is managed? And first and foremost for Russia's criminal war against Ukraine. Today I'm happy to discuss these issues with my colleagues, Alexandra Prokopenko, who is a fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin and is in charge of research on the Russian economy. Welcome Alexandra.
Alexandra Prokopenko. Hi, Sasha. Hi, Dara.
Gabuev. And my colleague Dara Massicot, who is one of the leading military analysts and now is part of the Carnegie Endowment. She was on this podcast about a year ago, but back then we were not formally colleagues. We were still at RAND [Research organization]. We are very happy to welcome you, Dara, both to the podcast and to the Carnegie Endowment.
Dara Massicot. Thank you. Thanks for having me in this new capacity.
Gabuev. That's a thrill. Okay, let's go straight away to that. The big shiny object there is the new Minister of Defense, Mr. Belousov. Sergei Shoigu was removed from his position and put in charge of the Security Council. He is now Secretary of the Security Council. It's not like the US role of the National Security Advisor, that's just a very different job. He has been replaced by an economist, Andrei Belousov, who up until recently has been the first Deputy Prime Minister and Putin's aide on national economy and Minister of Economy before that. So, Dara, how do you explain that move? What are the major reasons? Putin is changing his defense minister in year three of this war. Why?
Massicot. I think it says two things. The first one being that Putin is sensitive to some of the criticism about Shoigu's performance as a wartime Defense Minister. We've seen various tensions among factions within the officer core among some of the leadership there or potentially others in the defense industrial base over time. I do think that it shows on one hand some sensitivity to understanding that. Shoigu and Putin are very close. This was done, I think, in probably the most gentle way possible. They waited until a new administration changed. They slotted him into a respectable job. It was all very managed publicly. Everybody sat at the table. They did it after Victory Day so they could have him one more time as Defense Minister doing it. So, the method in which they are transitioning him out is probably the gentlest way that the Kremlin can do that. And I think that's a testimony to his relationship with Putin. But two, I think the larger question in terms of what it signals and what all of these changes signal is that the Kremlin is thinking about the future, about how to rebuild the Russian military once this war is over, but also how to improve the performance of the defense industrial base. And so now he's moving in people who have a little bit better background with some of the financial pictures going on. So, that's how I interpret it. The recognition that he needed to go, but gently, and then also a recognition that something needs to change for the next phase.
Gabuev. Shoigu’s deputy, Timur Ivanov, was arrested before that. And I think that that's where some analysts, including in our team, thought that Mr. Shoigu next? And what will happen there? And I will reveal no secret that if we're looking at the ranking of corrupt ministries inside Russia, Ministry of Defense will score very, very high. It was very clear in the early weeks of the war, that so much that the Russian defense industrial complex claimed that they have provided, and the ministry claimed that they have purchased, was not there, was malfunctioning and so on. Timur Ivanov was in charge of a different branch that was capital building, but still nevertheless, he was arrested. And that's the guy, which is like interesting with Brioni, made to measure suits that are military uniform, who is civilian, but pretended to be a real military general with a giant star. So, should we expect more purges in the ministry, and will that affect Shoigu's fate, Dara?
Massicot. That was really an interesting method in which they did that to Timur Ivanov, because he was arrested and the rumors are that he was arrested at work at the Ministry of Defense, but that he was allowed to leave in civilian clothes. But then the next day when he was in court, he was in full uniform, which I thought was a very interesting signal and a little bit of table setting that many changes were coming in the Ministry of Defense, because typically they try not to have senior officials, you know, wearing their uniforms when they're arrested because it looks like it's negative against the military. So that was interesting. I think that there is another deputy defense minister. Is it Kuznetsov? Who was arrested from their house?
Gabuev. That's right. That's the head of the personnel.
Massicot. Yes. Yes. He was arrested from his home. And there's all sorts of rumors that he had a lot of money, a lot of luxury goods. About those two events, you know, Sasha, you're correct. If the Ministry of Defense is going to try to purge every senior officer that has luxury clothes and nice houses on Ryblovka, like there's not going to be many people left. So I know how many more corruption charges that we're going to see. I do think we'll probably see some staff changes specifically with some of the civilian defense ministers. And I think a large part of that is normal. It’s a new regime and he'll want his people in there with him.
Gabuev. So, while a lot of senior officials at the defense ministry are notoriously corrupt, Andrei Belousov is somebody who's known to be notoriously non-corrupt. He is arguably one of the cleanest senior Russian officials. And like the scandals that you hear around him and his family practically don't exist. Like there is one thing where his son's company allegedly run a contract for a Rossoboronexport, but that was worth 20,000 euros. I don't think that anybody in the Russian government in this positions, like cabinet level positions would move a fingernail for a 20,000 euro paycheck. So that was most likely a normal contract. But anyway, Andrei Belousov is somebody who's been with Mr. Putin for quite some time. They worked together in Putin's government when he was prime minister and Dmitry Medvedev pretended to be the all-powerful Russian president. He then was minister of economy and then was Putin's aide on the economy sitting in the Kremlin and then became the first vice premier, which is basically alter ego of the prime minister. Sasha, you worked in Bank of Russia. You were one of the leading economic journalists. You have the benefit of knowing Belousov personally. So do I. It just so happened. So, what do we know about his management style and what should we expect in terms of the way he will run the ministry, work with his peers? My impression all the time is that Andrei Remevich really doesn't have the team. There is no such team. For example, with Shoigu, there was this traveling circus of people who were already in very expensive made to measure clothes, when they were back at the Ministry of Emergencies. And they became arguably richer, when they were at the Ministry of Defense. But Belousov is not known to have his team. So, what do we know? What do you think? How will he run the ministry?
Prokopenko. So yeah, you're correct. There is no Belousov team known and there is no Belousov team existed. So well, for Belousov, it would be a challenge to win the war against corruption in the Ministry of Defense. And probably he will remain the only person not corrupted in this ministry. And that's all. This also can happen. So far, we know that Belousov's assistants, most part of people who worked with him as his aides, as Deputy Prime Minister aides, are now moving with them to Ministry of Defense. We will see if they will get the position of his deputies. It will require some more time. So speaking about Belousov's management skills, actually, he's not a man of decision, to be honest. I cannot recall any successful idea of Belousov, which became something significant, something substantial.
Gabuev. Collecting windfall tax from the Russian resource exporting company. I remember that. And the businesses didn't like that.
Prokopenko. Let's go back for a while. And let me probably say some words about Belousov. We know him personally. Dara knows him and read a lot about him because he was appointed as a new defense minister. I'm not sure that our listeners know his past that great. So as Sasha correctly mentioned, Belousov worked directly with Putin since 2008, and he worked in the government as director of finance department. This is a department which basically making reports, collecting data from Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Finance, and providing an independent analysis of what's going on in the economy. He's not distributing money. He's not making decisions, but his analysis is quite helpful for Putin's decisions. Belousov as an economist, and he has very sophisticated understanding on how economy works. There is some common misinterpretation. He's a big fan of Auguste Blanc as he was an academic. He comes from family; his father was an economist who worked there. But Belousov, he's not a market minded person, but he has a very sophisticated understanding on how economy works. And he still thinks that the stimulating of demand from the budget, what’s going now with the Russian economy, because of military spending is good for economy since its GDP grows, brings impulse to economy. It brings some certainty on the ground and firms and households are more sure in how much money they can get. And this domestic demand can push GDP and the economy forward.
Belousov was the sole economist supporting the Crimea annexation, deeming its repercussions for Russian economy. And he always believed that Russia is circled by enemies. And he had a picture on how Russian economy, more broadly, the Russian state, can survive being surrounded by enemies. So I think, a pairing of Rostech protégé [Denis] Manturov, who became a first deputy of [Mikhail] Mishustin, and Belousov with his Stolypin mind, they will successfully circle the economy around a military industry complex, who is now already, as Putin says, direct spending on defense, exceeded 6% of GDP. And Putin repeatedly says that it's correct to count this combined with other security spending, and it's exceeded 8% GDP, and probably it will increase in 2025. Well, depends on how the situation is going on at the front line.
I couldn't say that Belousov is a skillful manager. Well, in 2018, he tried to get extra money, to get windfall tax from Russian businesses, and he failed. This attempt was failed. Back then, he worked as a presidential aide, and he wrote a letter that there is some extra money that can go to the budget, and what has the big business done? They immediately leaked this letter to the media, and the story became public, and not comfortable for Belousov, and he even sweared on business, calling them idiots publicly. But he called them this way, not because they are not going to pay this windfall tax, but the way how they act. So he's, from there, I can say that he's in favor of closed-door politics. He's not a very public person. So yeah, well, business in Russia paid windfall tax in 2023, but the ground reason for this was the war. So, but probably Belousov would be quite good in putting any kind of justification why military expenses should increase. And of course, I think that there would be more efficacy in defense spending, since Belousov is not a big fan of fancy military toys, like tank biathlon, or “Patriot” construction, or other stuff, that Shoigu played with, enjoyed playing.
Gabuev. Well, Shoigu came to kind of influence, in a way, through PR, and kind of showing up at every major disaster, but also as a travel agent to Mr. Putin. He oversaw bringing Putin around to remote corners of Russia, where Ministry of Emergency has its bases, including some luxury compounds there, and like all these photoshoots in Taiga, bear chested, fishing, and so on. So, it's not only a friend, but also a travel agent.
Prokopenko. Well, Belousov, sorry for interrupting, but Belousov is a big fan of wandering. He also does rafting. Ministry of Defense has a large fleet of different planes and helicopters. So probably we can see in the future photoshoots of new defense minister and old president in Taiga, or in some kind of setting.
Gabuev. Another fan of rafting in the government is Sergei Lavrov, obviously. I don't know whether they go rafting somewhere in Crimean rivers. But that's one of the key questions, Dara. How much can we expect that the Russian military performance on the battlefield will change because of the changes in the leadership of the Ministry of Defense? Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary, said that Valery Gerasimov, the chief of general staff, will stay and will keep his job for now. So the most senior military uniformed person is there, and it's only the civilian leadership that's changing. So, what do you expect, let's say, till the end of this year?
Massicot. There is a division of labor where the general staff plans the operations and thinks about military science and considers all of that. Gerasimov oversees the war, although there's quite a bit of authority, that is delegated to his operational group commanders in Ukraine. Where things went wrong for the Russian military a few times is actually when Shoigu inserted himself in the planning process early on. So if the news reports are to be believed, Shoigu had a hand 10 years ago in the operation in Crimea and Donbass, saying it was possible, it would all go well. And now nearly 10 years later, it is said to say that he told Putin, yes, “Operation Z” will go well, this will all work out.
He's not a military man. He's in his background, but when he inserted himself using his privileged position with Putin, we know the end result there, at least in year one of the war for the Russian military. I don't know Belousov, but he doesn't strike me as that type of person who would, you know, insert himself in that kind of conversation about military operations in the way that Shoigu has done in the past. In terms of what any one person can do right now in the middle of the war, this is not necessarily the time for a massive military reform project. The Kremlin is very clear about it. What it wants from him is for the defense industrial base to provide for the war, to feed the war. And when that's your guidepost, you are not going to order a full stand down so that a thorough auditing can be complete. You might do some auditing, but there's limitations in what he's going to turn off as he gets in there. This is not a situation, at least right now, where we're looking at when Anatoly Serdyukov was brought in, in 2000, you know, mid 2000s, late 2000s. He was also not a military man. He came, I believe, from the tax industry or finance world. And that was part of a very comprehensive effort after the war in Georgia called the New Look Defense Reforms. And there was a lot of standing down. They reduced the force, they changed the military education system, they did several things. And those were actually quite disruptive temporarily. And Belousov's not in that position. So right now he's going to be looking for efficiencies, early, early speeches from him anyway, suggest that he took a look into the entitlements for wounded soldiers and casualties or deaths and is pretty appalled at the bureaucratic snarls that families are experiencing. That seems to be something that he wants to address right away.
But all in all, it's my impression that a lot of the key factories that are producing relevant equipment right now, whether it's tanks, or armored vehicles, new production is operating pretty much at capacity. So unless he plans on initiating the construction of brand new factories and finding magically all of the trained labor to staff those factories, there's not a near term magic button that he's going to press, that is going to dramatically change this year. Now he can put things in place right now, which will, if done efficiently, can really benefit production two or three years down the line, which I think may be what they have in mind.
But the one final point I'd make about him is that there's one word, there's one word that no one in the military wants to hear from a new defense minister with an economic background, and that's “optimization”. Because they have like, they have some flashbacks to the Serdyukov era and optimization meant 30% of the officers were fired, most of the tanks were put into strategic reserve, the force was cut by, you know, huge portions in the army. Belousov actually said “optimization” and I went,” Oh, gosh, that's not the way to make friends in the military first week on the job”. But then he very quickly said after that, I don't mean optimize in the sense of making cuts. I mean, optimize in the sense of finding efficiency. We'll see what he can do. But there are a lot of larger problems, that he can't resolve on his own.
Gabuev. It doesn't look like it's going in the optimization, meaning cuts, it looks like Russia is gearing up for a longer and maybe even larger war. And that this cabinet to me looks militarized. The fact that the first deputy prime minister's role was usually reserved for an economist, who was alter ego of the prime minister who was overseeing macroeconomic policy, first and foremost, and was kind of coordinating for the sake of the national economy. So was Belousov's role, so was Igor Shuvalov's role before him and Anton Siluanov, who combined this role of deputy prime minister and minister of finance. Now it's Mr. Manturov, Denis Manturov, who used to be long term minister of industry, including military industry in charge. And before that he worked for Rossoboronexport and Rostech, like the major defense.
Prokopenko. It was so far ago. So before he was appointed as a minister, he was a deputy minister of defense. And there he started his career.
Gabuev. Of industry.
Prokopenko. Yeah, yeah.
Gabuev. Deputy minister of industry. That's right. But he's widely seen as somebody who listens to all powerful Sergei Chemezov, head of long term, head of Rostech, Putin's friend from KGB days in Dresden. So the fact that he is deputy prime minister, the first deputy prime minister is interesting. And then the economic portfolio has gone to Alexander Novak, the deputy prime minister, regularly in charge of energy. But now it's in his hands. But this is interesting. And it's where I want to pick your brain, both Sasha and Dara.
Now there is a very interesting situation where we have a couple of people in charge of the defense industry. Let's count them, follow my logic. There is Minister Belausov, who will be in a way in charge because he puts out demand. There is First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, and then his patron Sergey Chemezov. There is a new Minister of Industry, Anton Alekhanov, former governor of Kaliningrad, that's also part of the mix, that's government. And then we have the Military Industrial Commission created by the war, chaired by no one else but President Putin himself. His first deputy there is former president, a former prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, whom I hear sometimes is like very much involved and tries to carve out a role in current government structures by doing defense. Now the new Secretary of the Security Council, Shoigu, is also made Putin's deputy in this very commission. And on top of that, we have a new presidential aide, Alexei Dumin, who was governor in Tula, who started as Putin's trusted bodyguard, and then was promoted to be Minister of Defense, also in charge of special forces, played some role in Crimea annexation. So we have so many people with complex relationship between them, with a lot of access to the president, managing the Russian defense industry. And then Putin on May 15th has gathered them all in the Kremlin and said like, “Okay, let's figure out division of labor, how are we going to work?” So, do you expect that it can work out, or it will be a struggle for resources, access and so on, that might derail the Russian military reconstitution, the industrial part of that, which is probably good news for Ukraine? What do you think, Dara?
Massicot. I agree. There's a lot of people who have their hand in this. And I think overall, it's an important signal that rebuilding the Russian military and expanding it is a really key priority for the Kremlin in the years to come. And I always try to think about indicators that the Russian government is trying to pivot even more into mobilization, moving from partial to something that is quite larger, all the way up to general mobilization. And this is a soft indicator. Maybe not soft is not the right word, but this is an indicator that they're drifting in that way. I would like to see after this personnel reappointment, if there's creation of new structures anywhere within the Ministry of Defense itself, or at the Kremlin level, other than the commission that they've already created since the war began. There are several steps that the state needs to do if they are going to ramp all the way up to even more of a mobilized wartime economy. I think those things are really important to keep our eyes on. In terms of just all the interlocking histories here among all these men and all their relationships and their different influence, I think it's interesting that you still have the Chemezov-Manturov connection, and they have various tensions with Shoigu. There's the Dumin angle. Dumin and Surovikin are like social media fan favorites. I would call them the dream team, according to Russian social media and military bloggers. They wanted him to be the defense minister, and there was this outburst of, “Boy, we wish Surovikin was back as the new chief of general staff”. We'd have this dream team if that was the case. Shoigu pays attention to these things, and Shoigu has a lot of pettiness into him. I feel like there are tensions there as well. I thought that the meetings that Putin televised between all of these men at the table, and then he had a separate meeting with all of his operational group commanders. This is typical, “Look, we're all here. This is a managed transition. We're all on the same team. This is going to be great”. We all know that that's not how it works overtime. These powerful competing coalitions, they take a process that should flow better, and they throw sand into the gears. I'll be very interested to see how this works in practice, because I see a lot of different blocks here, which are not natural allies.
Gabuev. Sasha, what's your view? And generally, like, it's a very unusual role for Shoigu to be not a minister, but a secretary of the Security Council, which is a very interesting job because it has a lot of access to the president, but you are operating on a limited staff, you don't have your own budget, and then by law, you don't have interagency coordinator role the way Jake Sullivan has in the US. So how will that work? And what about Mr. Patrushev?
Prokopenko. So first, let me go back to these bunch of people and say that when Putin completed his reshuffles, for a moment, I felt like, okay, so there is one Putin's priority, and it is the war, it's now completely clear. And Putin wants to play the war with some people. And at the end of the day, they find, okay, so before us, there was a Soviet Union, there was Marshal Ustinov as a head of Soviet military industry complex. And one of the reasons of, as Putin called it, the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, the collapse of Soviet Union, one of the reasons of this collapse was enormously giant and ineffective military industry complex led by Marshal Ustinov. At the end of the day, I think they suddenly realized that, okay, we need to bring to our cannibal feast, since military industry complex now cannibalizing the whole other economy, the rest of other economy, we need to bring economists there, not to repeat mistakes of Marshal Ustinov. And I feel this is the major role of Mr. Belousov in this group. Trying to be some sort of commitment device or trying to put all these so called “khotelki”, things that a military industry complex wants for all of the budget expenses, put behind that some economic logic. Speaking about Shoigu, it is also interesting, since you're not correct, actually, Security Council can be coordinator, it's that there is a legislature behind that. But it all depends on who is the head of Security Council, and does he have an appetite to such kind of coordination. Has Shoigu this kind of appetite? I don't know. And we all don't know, since Shoigu as Minister of Defense was mostly known as PR King, rather than a good manager.
So, I completely agree with Dara, that everything was set very smoothly. Sergei Shoigu never felt himself insulted and offended by what's going on by the resignation, by his deputies going to prison. But it's also a sign for Shoigu that Putin's saving only his ass, but not his deputies, who are fully corrupted in Putin's eyes, and the eyes of other enforcement agencies who are bringing folders full of different interesting information about them. So, Putin is saving only Shoigu.
Speaking about Patrushev, it is interesting. I have no answer. So probably, maybe rumors about Patrushev's health are not rumors. And it is a real retirement. But in the whole picture about war as a priority and war as a distributional mechanism for the economy, it seems to me that it's very, it is a very bold bet. Since if you are putting the war at the center of the whole economy, it means that there should be a constantly growing demand on the production of military industry complex. There are two sources of this demand, it could be internal and external. If we're speaking about internal demand on production of military industry complex, it's army itself. Okay, the war with Ukraine is over in 2024, hopefully, but more realistic in 2025. Then it will take some years to replenish arsenals, to replenish stockpiles, to fill warehouses. But what's next? You don't need such extensive military industry complex anymore. The source of internal demand will dry up. And then there is a natural limitation of only internal source. If we're talking about external source, it's export contracts. And now we know that Rostech postponing its export contracts. And there is also a sanctions limitation, since we see that Russia can get necessary particles and chips for its own needs. But in export, it doesn't work. Russia will be able to produce, of course, still deadly, but less sophisticated weapons. And will there be a demand for this? I don't know, you tell me. So for our economy, and we don't know any good examples of conversion from when military industry enterprises suddenly will do some good civil stuff, I mean, for the mass market.
It's interesting that it was mentioned recently by Belousov, I think, that, you know, we should also prepare for that. And Putin was also kind of instructing them that, you know, once we don't need military production, they should be able to diversify and converge to producing something that ordinary people need, not only tanks or Kalibr missiles. I wonder what the late Evgeny Prigozhin would say about this constellation, because I think that Shoigu and Gerasimov were really immortalized by this guy.
Gabuev. Final question to you. I think that we've seen that this is a new-old cabinet. Mr. Putin is known for being pretty conservative about his choices of his most senior officials. Like there was this change of Medvedev to Mishustin, but by and large, like key people are more or less in the same jobs for many years. That particularly concerns people in charge of security and foreign policy. So Bortnikov, head of FSB is here. Minister of Interior, Kolokoltsev is here. Sergey Naryshkin still chairs the Russian intelligence. Sergey Lavrov is still competing with Mr. Gromyko to be the longest serving Russian Foreign Minister. All of these people are there. Do you expect that this is kind of for the next term, for the next six years? How much do these people have a kind of time horizon? Because like we all the time talk that the Russians are preparing for a long war. They have a kind of lengthy strategic plans to outproduce the West and really reconstitute a large military that will be menacing to NATO. But like do these people think in this kind of long-time horizon frames, Sasha?
Prokopenko. Frankly speaking, all these people don’t have even a one-year time horizon. And putting war at the center of the economy, Putin puts the mine under its own economy and on the long term, even in the midterm, it will create lots of tension and lots of structural problems within the economy. But it's not the major challenge for Mr. Putin in the next six years. I can remind you that in 2020, when there was the last government reshuffle, we spoke about Prime Minister Mishustin as a prime minister of transit. Well, basically, Vladimir Putin is quite an old man, and he will face the problem of transit of power. And that would be his major challenge, much bigger than building a multipolar world, denazification, demilitarization of Ukraine, or even creating the highest edge and technologically sophisticated military industry complex in the world. With COVID and with war with Ukraine, Putin, the great procrastinator, bought some time not to deal with the problem of transit with four years. But this problem will appear soon. And these people who still remain the same, obviously telling me that Putin is not looking forward, he's not going to face challenges. He wants to procrastinate. He wants to look back at his comfort with these people. He's not preparing any kind of changes. That's my sense of the situation.
Gabuev. Thank you. Well, that's partially encouraging, maybe, but worrying as well. What do you think, Dara?
Massicot. Well, I think just from the war right now, what they're doing to sustain it is pulling from strategic reserves, around 70-75% old equipment, fixing it up, and they're sending it in. And they're sending in a quarter or so new production tanks, new production armored vehicles. And that's sufficient for them right now. It's enough. But those resources are finite. Depending on how you count what's left, Russia at this rate has several more years that it could do this. So I think that right now Ukraine is the short term effort. It's the priority. And I see an appointment like Belousov, who is older, this is the last post he's probably going to get. He's 70. He's not the oldest anymore. I think Lavrov has the record right now, he's 74. But Belyusov, I think is a caretaker. And I don't know how long he'll be around, whether that's a year or two until things are stabilized in Ukraine, if that's what Russia is forecasting. And then they bring in a new, like a new team, a new defense minister and a new chief of the general staff who's now thinking about implementing those lessons that they've learned from this war, because that's a lengthy process and you must have a vision. Belousov does not strike me as the type who has a vision for the military. He is there to get the money together. Gerasimov, I know that Putin said he's not going to leave. I don't believe that's true. It's just to me a question of when and, you know, if there's a certain objective that they're trying to achieve in Ukraine first. No one will be sad that Gerasimov is gone. There's very little enthusiasm for him, except for maybe inside the Ministry of Defense headquarters itself.
So I do think he's gone. I will be curious to see if there's another interim appointment to Chief of the General Staff. Maybe you pick someone like him, like his deputy is Rudskoi, or maybe you pick someone traditionally from the main operations directorate. A surprise pull for Gerasimov to me would be one of the operational commanders that are in place right now. That to me, I think is more of a whatever post-war is defined as in Russia, that's a post-war appointment. People thought it was going to be Dumin. They were setting him up with the meetings and everything. And I do think that Dumin is being groomed for something. This is a great position for him to be in, to learn more of the ropes in Moscow and deepen his relationships with people. And I think his star is probably going to rise. I just don't know if that means over to the MOD or if that means somewhere else in the civilian side. So, you know, I don't see a lot of change on the horizon with this government, more of caretaking, really.
Gabuev. Thank you so much, Dara and Sasha. We will definitely need to reconvene at some point. We're going to have you back on the podcast. Thanks.
Massicot. Thank you.
Prokopenko. Thanks. Thank you.
