In his final public appearance as Russia’s defence minister on Thursday, Sergei Shoigu saluted Vladimir Putin atop Lenin’s mausoleum on Red Square, clad in a major-general’s uniform bedecked with medals.
Andrei Belousov, appointed as his successor on Sunday, is cut from a different cloth. A Soviet-trained economist, Belousov has never served a day in the army and has served Putin, Russia’s president, in various roles as a civilian adviser on economics.
Putin’s surprise tapping of Belousov to run the defence ministry indicates Putin wants a major shift in the handling of his two-year invasion of Ukraine, according to people who know both men, as well as Russian analysts.
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