Putin's latest reshuffle has seen long-serving Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (68) "kicked upstairs" and replaced by Andrei Belousov (65), formerly a Deputy Prime Minister. Shoigu had been the Head of the Armed Forces since 2012.
His successor Belousov is generally known as a bean counter and economic shakedown merchant, who is expected to push new strategies for extorting additional resources from Russian companies and individuals to support the war. This, rather than military matters, is expected to be his focus.
The move can be interpreted as an admission that sanctions are having an increasingly debilitating effect on the Kremlin's faltering war machine, and a signal that Putin is determined to pass the squeeze on to ordinary Russian citizens.
Shoigu meanwhile will occupy the purely ceremonial post of Head of the Security Council, an advisory talking shop that has no real power. This is almost as big a drop as that experienced by former Wagner group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin when Putin arranged for his plane to plummet from the sky a few months ago.
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