Sergei Shoigu, a refractory minister thanks to his friendship with President Putin

Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, the country’s oldest minister is a great friend of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, who has chosen him as his much-hyped holiday partner on several occasions, and until now has had an aura of fire resistance. but his lack of response to the mercenary rebellion of Wagner’s group It was a blow to Shoigu, arguably more severe than the failure of the Russian military in Ukraine, for which he and the military leadership were sharply criticized by ultra-patriotic sectors.

Without serving a single day in the ranks of the Armed Forces, the 68-year-old Minister of Defense, a construction engineer by profession, has the rank of general of the land army, the highest in Russian ranks, which is why detractors call him “cardboard in general”.

Originally from the Republic of Tuva, in southern Siberia, on the border with Mongolia, he grew up in the family of a local official of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, of which he himself was a member and which became the springboard for his meteoric career.

In 1990, at the age of 35, he was transferred to Moscow, where he assumed the position of vice president of the State Committee for Architecture and Construction Russiabut the following year he was appointed head of the Russian Rescue Corps, a position that catapulted him as one of the most popular figures in the country.

In the midst of the collapse of the USSR, accompanied by floods, forest fires and other disasters, Shoigu monopolized space in the media, and in 1994 his work was rewarded with the creation of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which he held until 2012, when after almost six months as governor of the Moscow region, was appointed to the defense front.

Since then, the closeness of Putin and Shoigu has only strengthened, and the Kremlin itself insisted on this, spreading pictures of their joint vacations, both in summer, where they are seen fishing bare-chested, and in winter, when they are walking through a snowy forest.

No other member of the Russian government has been the subject, at least publicly, of highlighting such a level of familiarity with the head of the Kremlin.

He did not escape Shoigu accusations of corruption which formulates the opposition against high-ranking Russian officials.

Already in 2015, the banned Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK) of the currently imprisoned opposition leader Alexéi Navalni published research stating that Shoigu’s daughter Ksenia just stick with it 18 years bought two pieces of land in the most elite sector periphery Moscow for 9 million dollars.

FBK pointed out that the fact that the purchase was made after Ksenija became of age allowed Šojgu not to include these lands in his declaration of heritage, which is mandatory for public officials.

Shoigu professes to be orthodox, but his detractors say he believes in shamanism, which is well-established in Tuva, and has influenced Putin’s beliefs.

Failures in 16 months war in UkraineDespite the Kremlin’s claims that “everything is going according to plan”, they provoked sharp criticism of its administration and Chief of the General Staff Valery Guerasimov.

And it was the head of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the aborted rebellion last weekend, who led the attack against the Russian military leadership.

During the rebellion, he said that he would not step down until he had Shoigu and Gerasimov in power, whom he demanded to remove.

He spared no insults against them, accusing them of not giving credit to the mercenaries for their achievements at the front, accusing them of incompetence and deploring the defense’s lack of supply of ammunition and weapons to his men.

Shojgu responded to the challenges of the leader of Wagner’s group by ordering all units the “volunteers” who fought in the neighboring country had to submit to their command from July 1something he would finally achieve with the Wagner family after the Kremlin and Prigozhin agreed to stop the rebellion.

Whether this will help him survive as the head of the Ministry of Defense and as Putin’s friend remains a question.