The Duran Podcast
Putin's new administration & the Security Council of Russia
All right, Alexander, let's talk about Russian President Putin's new administration. It has to go through the approval of the do my belief tomorrow, May 14th, is when they're going to look over all the names that Putin has suggested for his new administration. I imagine that they're all going to be approved. Not many changes, to be honest. It wasn't anything that was shocking or any big changes except for the defense ministry. And contrary to what the collective West is saying, Shoygu was not fired, he wasn't sacked, he wasn't demoted, he's not in a fight with Putin, he was promoted. He was promoted to Secretary of the Security Council and from what I understand everything that I've read about the person taking over the defense ministry is that we're looking at a very intelligent and very capable manager, administrator, economist, someone who understands the Russian government very well because he was the deputy prime minister, so someone who has a very clear understanding as to how the entirety of the Russian government functions and operates, Lavrov is going to remain as far in minister. I don't know if you want to say something quickly about that. That's good news for Russia because I would say that Lavrov is the best diplomat in the world today. The one question mark that I do have is what's going to happen with Patricia? I think that's going to be interesting to see what happens with Patricia. I believe Peskov said in a couple of days that will be revealed as well. Anyway, let's discuss Putin's new administration. Absolutely. Now, this is actually a very interesting reshuffling, reshuffle if I can say, and again, it's a good example of how Putin never does things that you can expect and they're never quite the way they, when anticipated that they would happen and they don't look, they look different from the way some people in the West think. Now, the important thing to understand with this reshuffle is in order to understand what has happened to show you, you have to actually go and do the one thing that in my experience where some commentators never do, which is actually look at the role he's been given. First, he's being made Secretary of the Security Council. Now, that puts him, as you correctly say, it's an actual, technically, it is a technical promotion. It puts him in a position where he is now in effect Putin's national security adviser. So, he's become, he's filling the role that Jake Sullivan, incompetently executes in the United States. But it's more than that, because show you has also been given a very important executive role. He has been appointed, at the same time that he's been appointed Secretary of the Security Council, he's also been appointed Deputy Chair of the Military Industrial Commission. Now, that replaces Medvedev, Medvedev, who's the Deputy Chair of the Security Council, had that role, Shoigu has now been given it. And in addition to that, he has also been appointed head of the Federal Service for Military Technical Coordination. Now, that used to be an agency within the Russian Defense Ministry. And a couple of days ago, before this reshuffle, Putin transferred it from the Defense Ministry to the Executive Office, in other words, to the Secretary of Russia's Security Council. So what Shoigu has been given, and it's important always to remember about Shoigu, that he's a civilian engineer, contrary to the fact, the impression many people have, the fact that he wears a uniform, that he has the rank of general, he's actually a civilian. He's never served in the military before he was appointed Defense Minister. He's never had a military, he doesn't have a military background. He is a civilian engineer and technocrat and manager. What these appointments do is they put him in charge of the military industrial economy. They give him the role of coordinating military procurement and production and also development of new systems for the Russian military. That's what the Military Technical Department is about, that's what the Military Industrial Commission is about. Now, it's actually been interesting because that's the role that Shoigu has in fact been fulfilling for some time. Medvedev back in 2022 was appointed Deputy Head of the Military Industrial Commission. But over the course of the year, this year, and last year, it became obvious to me that it was actually Shoigu, not Medvedev, that was visiting the factories, meeting the engineers, discussing things with the scientists, working out the kind of weapon systems that the military needed, ensuring the uninterrupted supply of these weapon systems to the front lines and things of that kind. So what's now happened is he's been relieved of the administrative functions that come with being Defense Minister, which are extensive, by the way, and he's now been given the specific role of running the military industrial complex. And of course, he's now reporting directly to Putin, which he always was, because the Russian Defense Minister is able to report directly to Putin. But he's also given the role of acting as Putin's major key advisor on national security issues, including, by the way, foreign and intelligence policy. So you can see what's actually happened with Shoigu. I haven't seen a single commentary anywhere in the Western media that refers to the fact that he's been appointed deputy chair of the military industrial commission, or that he's also going to head the federal service for military technical cooperation. Just saying. So that's Shoigu. Now the other man that people are talking about at the moment is Belusif. Now I want to make it very clear, I've never had any direct contacts with Belusif. But I have actually met people who've known him. It's the only official of the Russian government. I could say that all by the way. And this was from a time some years ago, when he was not a minister in the Russian government, but was actually Putin's economic advisor. Now the thing I heard about from these people is that he's an exceptionally capable man, and also a very likable man. He's somebody who makes people work well, and who people like working for. And that he's both extremely good at technical forecasting, we'll come to all of that in a moment, but also an outstandingly good manager, and of course the defense ministry, which is a sprawling organization, always needs a good manager. Now a number of things, firstly it is a misconception that in Russia, the defense minister is a military officer. If you go back all the way to the Russian Revolution of 1917, far more often than not, all the defense ministers have been civilians. All of Joseph Stalin's defense ministers were civilians. Just saying, people like Roshilov, Bulganin, Stalin himself for a time, they've always been civilians. There was a period during the Cold War when it became accepted that there should be military officers, but then in the 1970s a decision was made that it should be a civilian post again, and an important tackle crack called Dimitri Ustinov, who was again a civilian took over. And that's generally been the pattern since then, in Putin's case, it's always been a civilian, always been a civilian administrator who runs the defense ministry. Now people are talking about Bulusov as an economist. This is not exactly the case. What he was, was for a long time he was an official, an agency called the Central Economic Mathematical Institute, which was a institution under the Russian Academy of Sciences, set up in the 1960s, which was intended primarily to introduce mathematical and economic forecasting mechanisms into the planning system. And then it seems at some point, and we know about this from Putin, it was, it's not in Bulusov's official bio, but I've heard it as well, at a certain point in time he actually became an official within Gosplan, which is the Soviet Union's principal planning agency. And you know, this happened apparently sometime in the 1980s. Subsequently, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Gosplan became the economics ministry, which is why Bulusov worked closely for a time with a man called Garmon Gref, who is the, who was Putin's economics minister during the first term, the first two terms of Putin's time as president. And but since then, he has been, Bulusov has been, first Putin's economics advisor, and then as deputy prime minister, the man in overall charge of the economy. Now, the Russian economy is booming, it is doing extremely well. He is doing, he is done by all accounts, a superb job. And he is an extremely good manager as well. And as I said, his strengths are in planning and forecasting. So he's been transferred to the defense ministry at a time when defense procurement, the footprint of the defense industries in Russia has expanded enormously. And he's there to make sure that the situation is managed efficiently, even as the man who's now taken over from him as head of, overall head of the Russian economy is a man called Montorov, who was previously Russia's industry minister and worked, again, directly under Bulusov and is therefore in charge of civilian economic planning. So what we will see basically is a strengthening of management and of planning agencies right across the, you know, right across the government, Shoigu acknowledged to be a very, very good manager, put in charge of the military industrial economy. Bulusov running things at the defense ministry itself and working very closely with Shoigu, undoubtedly he will know well, and Montorov, an industry chief close to Bulusov in overall charge of the civilian side of the government. So it makes sense. Yeah, I think this makes sense. Absolutely. I mean, the more you look at it, it's clear that it makes sense. You know, Shoigu, for 12 years from 2012 to 2024, you've got to give him credit. He took the Ministry of Defense to a point where it is out producing the entirety of the collective West. Exactly. That's no small feat. Exactly. You know, I understand there's people that have a poisoned view. I think it is a poisoned view of Shoigu, and I think a lot of it comes from pergosion, to be quite honest, but whatever you may think of, Shoigu, you can't question the fact that he has taken the Russian defense industry, the Ministry of Defense to a point where it is out producing the United States and Europe combined, and where there was a weakness, which was in the drone manufacturing, which we pointed out in the beginning of the Special Military Operation, Russia quickly ramped up in that area as well. And now they're producing more drones, and then all of the collective was combined. I mean, so there's no doubt he's an effective. Shoigu has been an effective and very capable manager and administrator. And when you look at Belusov, it's clear that he's going to come in and they're going to ramp things up even more, and they're going to innovate even more. It's obvious. And so you look at the team, you have a Shoigu in the Security Council. You have Medvedev in the Security Council. You have Belusov at the Ministry of Defense. Atushev, what happens to Padrudya Rasimov is staying in place as well. Oh, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. And they're still staying in place. That's important. They made that very clear that he's not moving. I mean, he's going to -- he's still the Chief of General Staff. I mean, again, just to reiterate, and we've discussed this in programs we've done on the DRAM, with people like Jackmall and with others, the major military figure in Russia is the Chief of the General Staff. And here's the person who is in overall charge of the actual uniformed military. He heads the uniformed military. Here's the one who makes the key appointments. Here's the one who plans the strategies. And well, Jackmall is widely considered to be extremely capable in this field. And well, again, you could see that he's running things very effectively in the war. After all, Russia is winning. So I mean, it is a winning team. And I think people need to understand that. And coming back to Belusov, he's not merely an economist. It's better to talk about him as a technocrat and a planner and a scientific technocrat as well. So he will -- he's someone who -- because he worked in the Central Mathematical Institute for such a long time and had all these contacts, he's also somebody who will be -- who's probably what undoubtedly is very close to the scientific establishment in Russia, which is very powerful and very well organized in a body called the Academy of Sciences, of which Belusov, by the way, for which Belusov worked at one time. So he's -- and apparently you mentioned drones. He's always taken a particular interest in drones. I mean, this has been a -- I mean, he's played a particular role in ramping up drone production helping the defense ministries, helping short ago, to increase drone production by making sure that the civilian economy was functioning alongside that. So it's a logical team to put together. Now, Petrushchev, it's intriguing what's going to happen to him. Now, one possibility, and I think we have to float this possibility, is that he could take over Medvedev's job. Medvedev has also been around in Russian politics for a very, very long time. There have been rumors that Medvedev -- what he really wants -- he's a lawyer, and his background is in law, and I have been told by several Russian lawyers that he's actually an outstanding lawyer, that he really wants to transfer to the Russian constitutional court and eventually to become its chair. Maybe -- maybe not. So it could be that Petrushchev will take over as deputy chair of Russia's Security Council. I think if that were the case, it would probably have been announced by this point already. Petrushchev is a former intelligence official. He's coordinating -- he's been coordinating intelligence matters for Putin for a long time, and I wonder whether his U-post will really be the old post, which is to act again as intelligence coordinator, as some kind of director of national intelligence for Putin. But we'll just have to wait and see. The important point to say about Petrushchev is that he has not been sacked. They say that he's going to have a new post, and I understand that his son, who's been a very successful agriculture minister, by the way, has been promoted in this reshuffle as well. So it's not as if Petrushchev is in any political trouble. I don't think anybody is in any kind of political trouble. I don't think this is a symptom of a power struggle or anything like that, this reshuffle. It's simply rearranging the pieces in order to make the whole system more streamlined as the special military operation in Ukraine has imposed a whole new range of disciplines and requirements on the way the government works. Here, I don't think this is much of a reshuffle or shuffle at all, to be quite honest. I mean, a couple of major positions have been changed around, but nothing major. No, not really major. It's just interesting to see the reaction. I was going to say, it's interesting to see the reaction from the collective vice. They make it as if Putin's government is in danger, and things are falling apart because this was a huge, big reshuffle. You look at the positions that have been changed, and you're looking at maybe a couple of positions here and there. Most of the main people and faces are the same. Well, exactly. A lot of office is staying where he is. And they always get the security, by the way, they always get the Security Council wrong, the collectivist media. They misunderstand the security council. I wonder why that is. It's so difficult to understand. They make it seem like the Security Council is a place where Putin dumps people that he's unhappy with. He dumps them into the security council. I don't understand why they have such a difficulty to understand the function of the security council. No. That's our concept. I completely agree, given that the Security Council is the central institution of the entire Russian political institutional and governmental system. I mean, it meets every Tuesday. It has -- it publishes readouts. It has a significant -- it has a large secretariat. It is the central decision-making party in Russia. The people who sit on it are the most important and most powerful people in Russia. And within the structure of the Security Council, sure, it was just being promoted. He's just been made its secretary. So I don't understand that. I've written about the Security Council in the past. I don't understand why people in the West disregard it to the extent that they do. But I'm going to make a guess, which is that in the Western conception, Russia is a dictatorship with Putin as the autocrat. The idea that there is an actually very, very powerful committee, which has an institutional reality distinct from Putin's own. I would obviously he chairs it. He picks its members. But he doesn't have complete freedom to pick its members. Some people who are members of the Security Council are members because of the positions they occupy. So the heads of the Russian parliament, the Speaker of the Duma and the Speaker of the Federation Council, for example, are members of the Security Council simply by virtue of being that. Anyway, I think that the idea that there is an institution in Russia that Putin works with and works through and that it is this institution that collectively makes the key decisions in Russia, rather than Putin doing it all by himself, talking to his cronies as people pretend. Well, I think that is something that is so contrary to the whole Western narrative about Russia that they never talk about it. So this vital institution is completely ignored, which is really astonishing. By the way, just to get a sense of how important the Security Council is, its offices and its Secretariat is located in a building on Staraya Plorsch at Old Square in Moscow near the Kremlin, which before the collapse of the Soviet Union was where the Secretariat of the Communist Party Central Committee used to work from. So given that buildings matter in the sense that if a building comes to represent power and this building in Old Square, that I applaud it, does for many Russians represent power. Well, the fact that the Security Council works from that building, its Secretariat works in that building ought to be a sign that it is an institution to be taken extremely seriously, but in the West they never did. Yeah, I think you explained it. Well, it blows apart their Putin's dictator narrative. So they prefer to downplay it makes perfect sense. To their detriment. Absolutely. Absolutely, because it means that they simply do not understand how Russia is governed. As I said, I said this many times, contrary to what people in the West believe that it's all, you know, Putin making his decisions and making things up as he goes along and consulting with very few people. On the contrary, the governmental system in Russia is extremely structured far more so than the system in the United States, for example. There is no analogue to the Security Council in the United, the Russian Security Council in the United States. The National Security Council, which, you know, was created back in the 40s, was expected when it was created to fulfil something like that role, but it never has done. It's a bureaucracy, but it's never really a council. The Security Council is an actual committee that makes decisions on a weekly basis and where, you know, the top people in Russia come together and talk things through. And all you have to do is go to the Kremlin's website and you can see that. And by the way, the Security Council has its own website and very informative it is. And it's a council that's made up of officials from the military sphere, from the economic financial sphere, from the planning sphere, the legal tradition, I mean, it covers all the basis. Exactly. I think that's the other thing. Its name is misleading. It gives the impression that it's only concerned with foreign security policy, whereas it deals with everything. It deals with the UN. Or confused with the UN. I think it gets confusing with the UN Security Council. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. I mean, it covers everything. It covers the overall direction of economic policy, of domestic policies, all kinds of things. I mean, and it regularly, you know, hears reports. You know, when Putin gets, you know, when people want to report to Putin, even people who are not members of the Security Council, often their reports are given to the Security Council with Putin, obviously, chairing. So I mean, it's an absolutely crucial institution within the government. All right, do you have any other thoughts about the new government or should we wrap it up? Well, I mean, it is. It's an interesting change. I mean, I think the other point I would make is that it's been most interesting that the decision was made to make Dennis Montouroff, first Deputy Prime Minister in overall charge of the civilian economy, because he before was in charge of Russian industry. So it again highlights the fact that the overall priority now is reindustrialization. I mean, they've put an industrial manager, a person who's, you know, been responsible for industrial management and planning in overall charge of the civilian economy as well. So it's, I mean, that is a significant change in all other respects. The economic team, which has been extraordinarily successful in the building at the Central Bank, and Celawano for the finance ministry, are a shetly go for the economics ministry. They all remain in place as they were expected to, and why wouldn't, and why not, given that they're doing their job very well. And the same holds for the foreign ministry team as well. And the same plaviro for staying exactly. And Lavroft, Lavroft, apparently once upon the time, a couple of years ago, keen to retire, he's seen as indispensable at the moment. I think that in the reality is that Putin won't part with him until the special military operation is over. He needs Lavroft, the Chinese like him, the Indians like him. They want to work with Lavroft. And so Lavroft stays. And he will be there at least for a while. And I'm afraid he's again had to put off his retirement plans. I believe he's 74, I want to see him. Yeah. Yeah. And in spite of being, you know, apparently a smoker, he looks very hell, very sprying healthy. He looks super healthier. You know, absolutely. Yeah. It's very healthy, very active. Okay. We will, we will enter there the daran.locals.com. We are on rumble, Odyssey, Bitchew, telegram, rap fin, and twitter X and go to the daran shop. Pick up some limited edition merch. The link is in the description box down below. Take care. (upbeat music)