Shoigu has no power as Secretary of Russian Security Council - Piontkovsky

He said this in an interview with the host of the Studio West program, Antin Borkovskyi.

Piontkovsky noted that the appointment to the position of Security Council Secretary, which Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu was transferred to, means nothing.

“This position of Patrushev, the position of the Security Council Secretary, is an empty position. It was important because Patrushev played this crucial role as a war ideologist, he had been instilling in Putin for 10 years this concept that we can defeat states that are much stronger than us by blackmailing them with nuclear weapons. And now this Security Council is a bunch of pensioners, Medvedev and Shoigu will make some strange speeches there, it doesn't matter,” he explained.

The political scientist also commented on the arrests of high-ranking officials such as Ivanov and Kuznetsov, which he believes are related to Russia's failures in the war against Ukraine.

“Putin understands that this is due to his realization that blackmail has failed. Now he is thinking about how to stay in power. Now he will try to impose on the West and Ukraine some version of what he calls Korea. And yet he will have to publicly admit that the main goal of the war-the destruction of the Ukrainian state-has failed and will never be realized. He will have to name the culprits, the Defense Ministry will be named guilty, and there will be a huge trial of generals. And he still has some personal close relations with Shoigu. And if Shoigu cannot be put in the dock, because everyone remembers their joint trips to the Tuvan taiga and how close they were, then he simply put Shoigu in a warm place on his retirement - he took traitors and thieves in the Defense Ministry out of the upcoming trial. This is my explanation. This is an empty place, Shoigu has no power there,” Piontkovsky emphasized.

Piontkovsky's comments lift the veil on the complex internal maneuvers within the Russian government and make it clear that even within the Kremlin itself there are doubts about the success of their aggressive foreign policy.

“He needs a long war, he repeats this every day. That this fool Belousov, who is supposedly, as we are told, the only person in Russia who does not steal (although this is highly questionable, as data on Belousov's palaces have already emerged), has been put in charge. But now he has a double task, he has realized that the victory over Ukraine in the sense in which he wanted to achieve it-the destruction of Ukrainian statehood-will never happen, and now he needs to crawl away. He wants to preserve the Korean version of territorial gains as much as possible and sell it as a draw. But a draw is not a victory, because the thieves and traitors of the Ministry of Defense were in the way, and there will be a huge trial of them. That's what Putin is doing now and what is the meaning of these two sensational resignations,” the political analyst concluded.

• On May 12, Russian dictator Putin announced personnel changes in the Kremlin government - Sergei Shoigu is to be replaced as Russia's defense minister by Andrey Belousov, who was the first deputy prime minister in the previous government.

• According to ISW, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin has replaced Sergei Shoigu with Andrei Belousov as Russia's defense minister, and moved Shoigu to the post of secretary of the Security Council to replace Nikolai Patrushev, in preparation for a protracted war in Ukraine and a future confrontation with NATO.  

• UK intelligence doesn't foresee any changes in the course of the war in Ukraine on Russia's part after Sergei Shoigu’s resignation as Defense Minister.