Vladimir Putin’s bulletproof vest

“What would you do if you were on a plane that crashed? asked a Russian television presenter in 2006 to Sergei Shoigu, the current Minister of Defence. “Nothing,” he replied. It would keep crashing anyway. »

Almost 17 years later, this little quote looks like a metaphor.

At the head of the Russian armed forces since 2012, Sergei Shoigu is the face of the military deployment in Ukraine. To the Russians, he is the pilot of the Kremlin’s “special operation” which was supposed to dislodge the Ukrainian government in a matter of days, but which looks more and more like a plane crash in slow motion.

And it was at this pilot that the boss of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigojine, fired red bullets during the mutiny which allowed his mercenaries to take control of the Rostov military base on Friday and to go to in the foothills of Moscow on Saturday.

The armed rebellion was quickly nipped in the bud thanks to a surprise intervention by the dictator of Belarus, but exposed huge flaws in the Russian security apparatus, which looked like a pound of butter in which any knife can cut through without resistance.

Since then, a question has been on the lips of all observers of Russia: what will the openly humiliated Vladimir Putin do? And why didn’t he immediately fire his defense minister?

On Monday, as if nothing had happened, we saw Sergei Shoigu appear in Ukraine inspecting his troops. In his address to the nation to review the events of the weekend, Vladimir Putin affirmed that he was going to punish those responsible for the mutiny – two days after having promised them immunity -, but remained in solidarity with his Minister of defense. At least for the moment.

In the Russian political universe, Sergei Shoigu is a rare species. First, because of its origins. He was born far from the power centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Instead, he grew up in the village of Chadan in southern Siberia, bordering Mongolia. Her father is from an indigenous Turkish-Mongolian group from Tuva, while her mother is a Russian raised in Ukraine.

A civil engineer, he rose through the ranks of the Communist Party in the regions in the 1980s and arrived in Moscow when the Soviet Union was collapsing. He befriended the new Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who made him Minister of Emergencies.

As part of these functions, Sergei Shoigu was always the first on the scene during natural disasters, plane crashes or explosions. While the country was going through a tough period of political and economic transition, his willingness to help civilians quickly made him popular.

It was thanks to this same ministerial function that he met Vladimir Putin in 1999.

When the former boss of the Russian secret service replaced Boris Yeltsin as head of the country, he kept Sergei Shoigu by his side. The latter gave him his favorite dog, the Labrador Konni, as a gift and quickly became his hunting and fishing companion. The two men have been repeatedly photographed shirtless in the Siberian taiga that Mr. Shoigu knows like the back of his hand. These holidays in the middle of nature helped the president to refine his image of “muzhik”, a Russian macho of the woods.

In the Kremlin, Sergei Shoigu survived all the backroom games and was appointed defense minister in 2012. Even though he had no military experience, Vladimir Putin made him a general overnight. Not without gnashing of teeth in the ranks.

In 2014, he was in office when Russia seized Crimea. He was also at the heart of the Russian intervention in Syria to preserve Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

For his good services, Vladimir Putin showered his friend with military medals and honorary titles. At the time, experts saw Sergei Shoigu as Putin’s successor.

This favorite status of the tsar has been largely weakened since the start of the invasion in Ukraine. In March 2022, he disappeared for 12 long days after reporting to Putin on the war, saying everything was going according to plan. We have also seen the Russian president keep his Minister of Defense at a distance during meetings around the huge Kremlin table.

From a distance, but always within reach, because in the stalemate of the war in Ukraine, Sergei Shoigu plays a crucial role.

It is he who takes all the insults from local politicians and warlords – like Yevgeny Prigojine and Ramzan Kadyrov – who fight for Russia. Not Vladimir Putin. It is to him that Russian failures on the battlefield are attributed. Not to the president.

In other words, the boyfriend hunting became the bulletproof vest of the master of the Kremlin.

However, all the soldiers will tell you, a vest with holes is absolutely useless.