Nikolai Patrushev | |
|---|---|
Николай Патрушев | |
 Patrushev in 2023 | |
| Aide to the President of Russia | |
| Assumed office 14 May 2024 | |
| President | Vladimir Putin |
| Secretary of the Security Council of Russia | |
| In office 12 May 2008 – 12 May 2024 | |
| Chairman | Vladimir Putin Dmitry Medvedev |
| Preceded by | Igor Ivanov Valentin Sobolev (acting) |
| Succeeded by | Sergei Shoigu |
| Director of the Federal Security Service | |
| In office 9 August 1999 – 12 May 2008 | |
| President | Boris Yeltsin Vladimir Putin |
| Preceded by | Vladimir Putin |
| Succeeded by | Alexander Bortnikov |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1951-07-11)11 July 1951 (age 74) Leningrad,Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Children | 2, includingDmitry |
| Education | Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute |
| Awards | Hero of the Russian Federation |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Soviet Union Russia |
| Service | KGB Federal Security Service |
| Service years | 1975–2008 |
| Rank | General of the Army |
Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev (Russian:Никола́й Плато́нович Па́трушев; born 11 July 1951) is a Russian politician, security officer and former intelligence officer who served as thesecretary of theSecurity Council of Russia from 2008 to 2024. He previously served as the director of theFederal Security Service (FSB) from 1999 to 2008.
Belonging to thesiloviki faction of presidentVladimir Putin's inner circle,[1] Patrushev is believed to be one of the closest advisors to Putin and a leading figure behind Russia's national security affairs.[2] Patrushev has spoken favorably of the rise of KGB stalwarts to the highest echelons of power of Russia, referring to them as the "new nobility."[3]
He played a key role in the decisions to seize and thenannex Crimea in 2014 and toinvade Ukraine in 2022.[4]
Born on 11 July 1951 in Leningrad,Soviet Union (nowSaint Petersburg,Russia), Patrushev is the son of aSoviet Navy officer who was also a member of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union.[5]
Patrushev studied atsecondary school No. 211 in the same class with the future chairman of the Supreme Council of theUnited Russia party,Boris Gryzlov.[6][7] Patrushev graduated fromLeningrad Shipbuilding Institute in 1974, and initially he worked as anengineer in the Institute's shipbuilding design bureau, but very soon afterwards, in 1975, he was recruited by theKGB.[8]
He attended intelligence and security courses at the KGB School inMinsk, and later at the Higher School of the KGB in Moscow (the present-dayFSB Academy).[5]
Patrushev has knownVladimir Putin since the 1970s, when the two men worked together in the Leningrad KGB.[9]
Starting as a KGB security officer in the city of Leningrad, Patrushev eventually rose to become head of their local anti-smuggling and anti-corruption unit.[10]
After thecollapse of the Soviet Union, Patrushev continued to work in the security services and from 1992 to 1994 he was Minister of Security of theRepublic of Karelia while in 1994 he was brought toMoscow as head of the Directorate of Internal Security of theFederal Counterintelligence Service (FSK).
In June 1995, Patrushev became deputy chief of the FSB's Organization and Inspection Department. From May to August 1998, he was chief of the Control Directorate of the Presidential Staff; from August to October, he was Deputy Chief of the Presidential Staff; in October 1998, he was appointed deputy director of the FSB and chief of the directorate for Economic Security. In April 1999, he became FSB First Deputy Director.
On 9 August 1999, a decree by PresidentBoris Yeltsin promoted him to director, replacing his close friendVladimir Putin.
In September 1999, aseries of explosions hit four apartment blocks in three Russian cities, killing more than 300. The bombings, together with theInvasion of Dagestan, triggered theSecond Chechen War. The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who wasprime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months.[11] A suspicious device resembling those used in the bombings was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city ofRyazan on 22 September 1999.[12] On 23 September, Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the inhabitants of Ryazan and ordered the air bombing ofGrozny, which marked the beginning of the Second Chechen War.[13] Three FSB agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police.[14] The next day, Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar, and freed the FSB agents involved.[15] FSB also issued a public apology about the incident.[16]
Although the bombings were widely blamed on Chechen rebels, their guilt was never conclusively proven. A number of historians and investigative journalists have instead called the bombings afalse flag attack perpetrated by the FSB to win public support for a new war in Chechnya and to boost the popularity of Vladimir Putin, the former head of the FSB, prior to the upcomingpresidential elections.[17]
Former FSB agentAlexander Litvinenko, who blamed the FSB for the bombings and was a critic of Putin, wasassassinated in London in 2006. The United Kingdompublic inquiry into the poisoning of Litvinenko found that "the FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin."[18]
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From May 2008 until May 2024, Patrushev had beenSecretary of theSecurity Council of Russia, a consultative body of the president that works out his decisions on national security affairs.[19][20]
Patrushev considers the 2014Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine to have been started by the United States.[21]
Patrushev believes that the United States "would much prefer that Russia did not exist at all."[21]
Following the October 2016coup d'état plot failure inMontenegro, Patrushev was cited by experts, such asMark Galeotti, as the Kremlin'spoint man for theBalkans, which was interpreted as indicating Russia's increasingly hardline approach to the region as well as the latter's growing importance inRussia's foreign policy strategy.[22][23][24]
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According toAnastasia Vashukevich, Patrushev, who had traveled to Thailand during late February 2018, was involved in her arrest inThailand during late February 2018.[25] Vashukevich claimed to have evidence linking Russian billionaireOleg Deripaska and Deputy Prime MinisterSergei Prikhodko toRussian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[26][27]
In June 2019, Patrushev said thatIran "has always been and remains our ally and partner".[28]
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In January 2021, he said that "the West needs"Russian opposition politicianAlexei Navalny "to destabilise the situation in Russia, for social upheaval, strikes and newMaidans."[29]
Patrushev was a leading figure behind Russia's updatednational security strategy, published in May 2021. It states that Russia may use "forceful methods" to "thwart or avert unfriendly actions that threaten the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation."[30][31]
On 19 September 2022, during his visit toChina, he described the "strengthening of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation with Beijing as an unconditional priority of Russia's foreign policy."[32] He said that both China and Russia are calling for "a more just world order".[33]
On 18 November 2022, he arrived inTehran and met with Iranian presidentEbrahim Raisi and top security officialAli Shamkhani.[34] On 21 November 2022, he invited Vietnamese Minister of Public SecurityTô Lâm to Moscow to strengthen security cooperation between Russia andVietnam.[35] On 31 January 2023, he metEgypt's Foreign MinisterSameh Shoukry in Moscow.[36]
In February 2023, he hostedCCP Politburo memberWang Yi in Moscow and prepared the ground for thevisit ofCCP General SecretaryXi Jinping to Russia in March 2023.[4] Patrushev said that "amid a campaign by the West to deter both Russia and China, it is particularly important to further deepen the Russian-Chinese coordination and cooperation in the international arena."[37]
In February and March 2023, he visitedAlgeria,Venezuela andCuba.[38] On 29 March 2023, Patrushev arrived in New Delhi and met with Indian prime ministerNarendra Modi.[39] In September 2023, he expressed support for China's policies regardingHong Kong,Xinjiang andTaiwan.[40] In February 2024, he met with the leaders ofNicaragua,Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela.[41]
Patrushev is considered as very hawkish towards the West and the United States, and in 2022 was seen by some observers as one of the likeliest candidates for succeeding Putin.[42][43][44][45]
In August 2021, during thewithdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, Patrushev toldIzvestia newspaper that the United States had abandoned its Afghan allies, and that the reason was the incompetent work of theintelligence services of the United States, Britain and other NATO countries and the misplaced belief of the West in the correctness of its decisions. He predicted that the United States would also abandon its allies in Ukraine:
"...Kyiv is obsequiously serving the interests of its overseas patrons, striving to get into NATO. But was the ousted pro-American regime in Kabul saved by the fact that Afghanistan had the status of a principal U.S. ally outside NATO? (No). A similar situation awaits supporters of the American choice in Ukraine."[46]
In early November 2021, CIA DirectorWilliam Burns and U.S. ambassador to RussiaJohn Sullivan met in Moscow with Patrushev and informed him that they knew about Russia's invasion plans.[47] Burns warned that if Putin proceeded down this path, the West would respond with severe consequences for Russia. Sullivan recounted that Patrushev was undeterred and "supremely confident" that the invasion was going to succeed.[48] However, in late January 2022, just beforethe invasion, Patrushev publicly denied that Russia was prepared to attack Ukraine.[49][50]
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Sources say Putin's decision to invade Ukraine was influenced by a small group ofwar hawks around him,[51] including Patrushev and Russia's defence ministerSergei Shoigu.[52] According to Putin-regime expertCatherine Belton, it was "Patrushev who's always been the leading ideologue of using capitalism as a tool to undermine the West to buy off and corrupt officials and so on. And he's certainly very much painted the West as a hostile enemy of Russia and something which is kind of debauched and decrepit, and it's time to attack [Ukraine in 2022]."[53] According to sources close to the Kremlin, most of Putin's close advisers opposed the invasion, and even Patrushev advised Putin to give diplomacy another chance three days before the invasion, but Putin overruled them all.[54]
On 26 April 2022, after two months of war, Patrushev predicted that Ukraine would collapse and bebroken into several states because of what he cast as a U.S. attempt to use Kyiv to undermine Russia. He repeated the "denazification"trope and claimed:
"Using their henchmen in Kyiv, the Americans, in an attempt to suppress Russia, decided to create an antipode of our country, cynically choosing Ukraine for this, trying to divide essentially a single people. The result of the policy of the West and the regime in Kyiv can only be the disintegration of Ukraine into several states."[55]
Patrushev claimed that "Ukraine, saturated with weapons, poses a threat to Russia".[56] He downplayed thesanctions against Russia and said that "Russia is reorienting itself away from the European market to the African, Asian and Latin American markets."[56]
In April 2022, he addressed theglobal food crisis, caused in part by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying that "Tens of millions of people in Africa or the Middle East, through the fault of the West, will be on the verge of starvation. To survive, they will rush to Europe. I'm not sure that Europe will survive the crisis."[56]
In May 2022, he speculated thatPoland "is already taking actions related to the seizure of western Ukrainian territories."[56] He claimed that the West "has already revived the shadow market for thepurchase of human organs from the socially vulnerable segments of the Ukrainian population for clandestine transplant operations for European patients."[57]
On 17 August 2022, Patrushev met withNarendra Modi's National Security AdvisorAjit Doval to discuss measures to strengthen the strategic partnership across sectors including defense ties and energy security. Russia appreciatedIndia's neutral position on Ukraine.[58]
In October 2022, Patrushev accused the United States and its allies of wanting to "fight to the last Ukrainian".[56] He said thatAnglo-Saxons "are exploiting Ukraine as an instrument of struggle with our country ... The goal is to suppress Russia, retain their imaginary supremacy, keep their unipolar world, ensure themselves the opportunity to live at the expense of others.[56]
In November 2022, Patrushev accused the West of inciting Ukraine to attacks on theZaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and of assisting in the production of a "dirty bomb". He also accused the United States of wanting to recruitterrorists fromAfghanistan and use them in the fight against Russia in Ukraine. He claimed that the West wants to destabilize the world to maintain its global dominance, saying that the "reckless policy of Washington, London, and their allies resulted inbloody adventures in the Balkans,Iraq,Libya,Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine, which have already claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people."[59]
In January 2023, he claimed that Russia was fighting NATO in Ukraine and that the West was trying to destroy Russia.[60]
In February 2023, during a meeting withCCP Politburo memberWang Yi in Moscow, Patrushev claimed that "the bloody events in Ukraine staged by the West" are just one example of the West's attempts to maintain its global dominance.[37]
In May 2023, Patrushev blamed the United States and Ukraine for the number ofattacks in western Russia and said that "the terrorist attacks committed in Russia are accompanied by an information campaign prepared in advance in Washington and London, designed to destabilise the socio-political situation, and to undermine the constitutional foundations and sovereignty of Russia."[61]
On 15 September 2023, Patrushev claimed that Russia had identified and "neutralized" hundreds of foreign spies in recent years.[62]
In September 2023, he met the Chinese foreign minister in Moscow for the annual security talks.[63] On 10 October 2023, he arrived in Baku,Azerbaijan, where he met with Azerbaijani PresidentIlham Aliyev.[64]
On 22 December 2023,The Wall Street Journal cited sources within the Western and Russian intelligence agencies as saying that theWagner Group plane crash was orchestrated by Patrushev.[65] The paper alleged that Patrushev presented to Putin a plan to assassinateYevgeny Prigozhin in August 2023, which led to intelligence officials inserting a bomb under the wing of Prigozhin's plane during pre-departure safety checks.[66]
In March 2024, Patrushev claimed that Ukraine was behind theCrocus City Hall attack in Moscow.[67]
On 12 May 2024, Putin nominated outgoing defense ministerSergei Shoigu to replace Patrushev as the secretary of theSecurity Council of the Russian Federation,[68] effective as of 14 May 2024. Patrushev was appointed as a Presidential Aide.[69]
On 16 August 2024, Patrushev claimed, without providing evidence, that theUkrainian invasion of theKursk Oblast was "planned with the participation of NATO and Western special services",[70] calling the incursion "a desperate act, driven by the impending collapse of theneo-Nazi regime in Kyiv."[71]
Patrushev was offered to become presidential aide in charge of shipbuilding afterPutin's fifth inauguration.[72][73] According toAbbas Galliamov, this was a demotion because Putin felt that Patrushev had misled him by his hawkishness on Ukraine,[73] but Galliamov may not have accounted for a presidential decree published one day earlier that re-enlisted Patrushev to the Security Council.[72]
After the 2014annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, Patrushev was placed on theEuropean Union's list of sanctioned individuals in Russia.[74]
Patrushev was personally sanctioned by theUK government in 2014 in relation toRusso-Ukrainian War.[75]
In April 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on him and 23 other Russian nationals.[76][77]
Following the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, theUnited States imposed sanctions against Andrey Patrushev, son of Nikolai Patrushev.[78]
He was sanctioned by New Zealand in relation to the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[79]
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Patrushev belongs to thesiloviki of Putin's inner circle.[80][a]Mark Galeotti, an expert in the field of Russian politics and security, said that Patrushev, one of Putin's closest advisers, is the "most dangerous man in Russia" because of his "paranoid conspiracy-driven mindset."[57][81] For his ability to control information reaching Putin, Galeotti compared him toSir Humphrey from the British television seriesYes Minister.[4] According toAndrey Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Patrushev speaks for Putin and is "allowed to explain and clarify Putin's thoughts."[56]
In December 2000, on the anniversary of the founding of the Bolshevik secret police, theCheka, an interview with him was published inKomsomolskaya Pravda. In defence of the emerging trend of co-opting officers in the security and intelligence apparatus into high government posts, Patrushev noted that his FSB colleagues did not "work for money [...] [they] are, if you will, modern 'neo-nobility'." ("современные «неодворяне»")[82][83] The term "new nobility" gained currency afterwards, as in the eponymous bookThe New Nobility.[84][85]
Ben Noble, Associate Professor of Russian Politics atUniversity College London, describes Patrushev as "the most hawkishhawk, thinking the West has been out to get Russia for years".[86] He was quoted as saying, "The Americans believe that we control [our natural resources] illegally and undeservedly because, in their view, we do not use them as they ought to be used."[21] Patrushev has referenced "Madeleine Albright's claim 'that neither the Far East nor Siberia belong to Russia.'" According to theNew York Times, this remark can be traced back to a psychic employed by the FSB who claimed to have read the thoughts in Albright's mind while in a state of trance.[87][88] In June 2020, he said that a "shameful page in history for all NATO countries was and will forever remain the barbaric"NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.[56]
Patrushev believes in variousconspiracy theories and often gives interviews to state-controlledmedia in Russia.[57] In April 2022, he said that Washington "tried to force Russia to give up sovereignty, self-consciousness, culture, an independent foreign and domestic policy."[56] He claimed that the West is seeking to reduce "the world's population in various ways," including creating "an empire of lies, involving the humiliation and destruction of Russia and other objectionable states."[57] In June 2022, he accused the United States, Britain, the EU and Japan of an "increasingly adventurous and aggressive policy" that "is based on a complete detachment from reality, the desire to construct their own imaginary world, which they will rule. Such an escape from reality is a real threat to all of humanity."[56] In his interview in an official government paperRossiyskaya Gazeta, he said that theRusso-Ukrainian War is only part of a wider war withNATO and the "collective West".[4] He warned that Russia "has modern, unique weapons capable of destroying any adversary, including the United States, in the event of a threat to its existence."[4]
According to Russian expert at theCarnegie Center, Alexander Sorkin, Patrushev andFSB directorAlexander Bortnikov were formed by theCold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and "believe that abloc confrontation with the West is a reasonable and correct world order. And in order to return to a predictable and manageable confrontation, it is necessary to divide thezones of influence through war, even with the risk of a clash with NATO. According to Patrushev and Bortnikov, Ukraine should be in the Russian zone of influence".[51]
His eldest son,Dmitry, is a banker and thedeputy prime minister for Agriculture since 2024, he previously served asMinister of Agriculture of Russia from May 2018 until 2024.[89][90] His younger son, Andrey, graduated in 2003 from theFSB Academy where he studied law with his classmatePavel Fradkov, who is the son ofMikhail Fradkov, and has worked in leadership roles atGazprom Neft.[91][92][93]
In January 2007, Nikolai Patrushev and his brother, Viktor Platonovich Patrushev (Russian:Виктор Платонович Патрушев), joined the expedition of polar explorerArthur Chilingarov, that flew on two helicopters toAntarctica and visited theSouth Pole and theAmundsen-Scott station.[94][95]
The evidence provided in The Moscow Bombings makes it abundantly clear that the FSB of the Russian Republic, headed by Patrushev, was responsible for carrying out the attacks.
The evidence provided in The Moscow Bombings makes it abundantly clear that the FSB of the Russian Republic, headed by Patrushev, was responsible for carrying out the attacks.
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| Government offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Head of the Internal Security Department ofFSB 1994 – 31 May 1998 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chief of the Control Directorate of theRussian presidential administration 31 May 1998 – October 1998 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Director ofFSB 9 August 1999 – 12 May 2008 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Secretary of the Security Council of Russia 12 May 2008 – 12 May 2024 | Succeeded by |
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