He is the “shadow” man behind the Moscow strongman, almost … a voice constantly whispering in his ear behind the closed curtains.
By Miltos Sakellaris
Nikolai Patrushev is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest advisers and wields significant influence over government policy as head of Russia’s powerful Security Council. He is the “shadow” man behind the Moscow strongman, almost … a voice constantly whispering in his ear behind the closed curtains.
The “hawk’s hawk”
The council where Russia’s security policy is formulated is the center where information is received from Russian sources and networks from abroad. He frequently gives interviews to state media about his conspiratorial views on the West and what the Kremlin describes as Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
In Russia there is no one to refute what he conveys to journalists, as all independent media in Russia have been silenced. This should be of concern to the US and other Western allies. According to Mark Galeotti, a British expert on Russia’s security services, Patrushev is Putin’s most right-wing ideologue and is referred to as “the hawk’s hawk” in Putin’s inner circle.
As international analysts write, the two Kremlin strongmen deplore the end of the Soviet Union and share a deep distrust of the West fueled by nonsensical conspiracy theories. Patrushev has emerged as one of the leading voices in Putin’s inner circle who wants to wage a merciless war in Ukraine, with the ultimate goal of seizing Kiev.
His “special” interviews
Patrushev is a man who is not shy about giving interviews. On April 26, 2022, he gave an interview to the state-run Russian newspaper “Rossiskaya gazeta”.
And in this interview he started with his favorite topic – the bad intentions of the West in general and the United States in particular. According to him, while other countries are bullied by the US and “can’t even raise their heads”, Russia “not only dared, but publicly stated that it will not play by the rules” imposed by the US.
Indeed, the Russian government has been true to its word, as evidenced by the brutal war it is waging against Ukraine and its people, which is in flagrant violation of all the conventions of war. During the interview, Patrushev speaks of a fabricated “criminal community that fled Ukraine” and “now engaged in the widespread business of selling orphaned children who came out of Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, according to the West, the Moscow strongman behind Vladimir Putin “has already revived the shadow market for the purchase of human organs from the socially vulnerable sections of the Ukrainian population for secret transplant operations for European patients.” Moscow’s security adviser has from time to time claimed that the West and European countries have supported the… Ukrainian neo-Nazis by supplying them with weapons.
In his worldview the West seeks to reduce the “population of the world in various ways”. One of which is the creation of “an empire of lies, entailing the humiliation and destruction of Russia and other unacceptable states.”
Meeting Vladimir Putin
Putin and Patrushev have known each other since 1970. Both hail from Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, and worked together in the Leningrad KGB in different departments. Putin has said he feels a “comradeship” with Patrushev.
Both men served in Boris Yeltsin’s government. In 1998, Yeltsin appointed Putin to head the FSB, the successor to the KGB, and Patrushev became Putin’s first deputy. When Yeltsin appointed Putin acting prime minister on August 9, 1999, Patrushev replaced Putin as director of the FSB .
On New Year’s Eve 1999, Yeltsin made the surprise announcement that Putin would replace him as deputy president. Putin won the presidential election on March 26, 2000. Shortly before Putin won the election, the friendly relationship between Putin and Patrushev emerged when the two decided on New Year’s Eve in 2000 to fly to Chechnya with their wives to strengthen Russian troops.
This happened during the second Chechen war that took place between 1999-2009.
Despite hostilities and bloody attacks on civilians by Russian forces on the ground, Putin and Patrushev opened two bottles of champagne and the two couples drank straight from the bottles as they flew by helicopter over the combat zone.
After spending an hour with a unit of stunned soldiers, the team flew back to Moscow.
Putin’s power base
A week before Putin was sworn in on May 7, 2000, the Kommersant newspaper noted that he was building his new administration with former officials from the FSB, Russia’s main security agency, along with the SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service, which it was also part of the KGB during the Soviet period but is now a separate agency.
In a subsequent article, Kommersant wrote that the recruitments put “Russia’s political life under the full control of the Kremlin” using “KGB methods.” In a December 2000 interview, Patrushev explained the preponderance of former FSB officers and of the SVR in the Kremlin, the presidential administration and the remote regions of the Russian Federation.
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