About us

“The fact the daughters were going to become more public with time was to be expected,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, said. “It would be more unnatural for them to remain in the shadows.”

The provenance of several other delegates at the economic forum is clear from their names: Ksenia Shoigu, Roman Rotenberg and Alexander Vaino. They are, in turn, the daughter of Putin’s long-serving defence minister, the son of one of Putin’s oldest oligarch friends and ice hockey partners, and the son of Putin’s chief of staff.

The removal of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who had become a toxic figure for the elite, is supposed to increase the efficiency of Russia’s war machine.

Vladimir Putin’s first staffing decision after his formal inauguration for a fifth presidential term was to re-appoint Mikhail Mishustin as prime minister (Russia’s constitution obliges the government to resign ahead of a presidential inauguration). Indeed, most ministers were returned to their former positions. But Putin generated some surprise by offering the post of defense minister to Andrei Belousov, an economist and former deputy prime minister. The incumbent defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, was moved to head up the Security Council, replacing the powerful Nikolai Patrushev.

Russia analysts stress that Belousov will have little to do with Russian military tactics and strategy in Ukraine in any case, with that task largely resting on the shoulders of Russia’s top general, the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, who will remain in his job, the Kremlin press secretary noted Sunday.

“First of all, Belousov will not manage military combats, he will not get engaged in military planning tactics,” Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and the founder of analysis firm R.Politik, told CNBC Monday, saying military planning would be left to military officials like Gerasimov, although his replacement could also not be ruled out.

Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said in an online commentary that Shoigu’s new appointment to Russia’s Security Council showed that the Russian leader viewed the institution as “a reservoir” for his “‘former’ key figures — people who he can’t in any way let go, but doesn’t have a place for.”

Pour la politologue Tatiana Stanovaya, l'arrivée de M. Belooussov à la Défense ne viserait pas un changement de leadership militaire - son expérience en la matière étant a priori faible - mais concernerait plutôt la gouvernance du complexe militaro-industriel, un domaine clé au moment où la priorité absolue est donnée à la production d'armements pour la guerre en Ukraine. «L'essentiel est maintenant de savoir si le général Valeri Guerassimov va rester à son poste», s'interrogeait dimanche Tatiana Stanovaya à propos du chef d'État-major des armées russes et principal maître d'œuvre des opérations en Ukraine.

In March, a group of terrorists attacked the Crocus City Hall, a music venue and vast shopping complex on the outskirts of Moscow. Four gunmen shot into crowds indiscriminately and started a fire that caused the building to collapse, killing over 140 people. Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, an Afghanistan-based branch of the militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack. But the Russian government blamed Ukraine for the carnage, and, by extension, the West.