Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu was once among Vladimir Putin's most trusted advisers but, as his military campaign in Ukraine falters, there may be a target on his back.
abc.net.au/news/putin-ally-sergei-shoigu-faces-criticism-over-ukraine/101524134When Vladimir Putin ascended to the Russian presidency in 2000, he immediately set about assembling a core of loyalists.Most hailed from Putin's hometown of St Petersburg or were colleagues from the old days at the Soviet-era spy agency, the KGB.To Russian journalist and Putin critic Masha Gessen, his government has long resembled a Mafia family.
"He rapidly rose to prominence in the early 1990s as an all-around troubleshooter, becoming the minister of emergency situations, a cabinet-level position that he himself invented," Putin once interrupted a security briefing to ask the deputy prime minister if he could arrange a special collar for Konni that would allow her master to track her movements by satellite.
Together, the two men appeared in a string of photo ops, dressed in matching cowboy hats as they collected mushrooms, marvelled at the landscape and dined side by side on fur-lined benches under the trees. But like every member of the family, he learned how cold it could be when the patriarch turned on them.In the early years of Putin's presidency, the power dynamics within the Kremlin were shifting, paving the way for the toxic infighting that would last for decades to come.
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