Vladimir Putin did not openly criticize his long-suffering defense minister during the war in Ukraine, but the Russian president seemed to make his feelings for Sergei Shoigu very clear during a visit to a hospital for wounded soldiers.
Putin and Shoigu visited the Vishnevsky Central Military Clinical Hospital in Moscow yesterday to greet several servicemen who suffered a variety of horrific injuries during the Kremlin chief’s war in Ukraine.
Upon their arrival at the medical facility, Putin quickly circled the group, awkwardly shaking hands — and in some cases bandaging stumps — of the medically discharged veterans, asking them how they were doing and thanking them for their services.
As is typical for such visits, most of the soldiers could not look their leader in the eye and instead stared straight ahead, their bodies frozen in fear. No one smiled or seemed particularly pleased to meet their president.
After finishing his round of pleasantries, Putin returned to rub shoulders with Shoigu who waited silently at the entrance to the hospital.
As the president approached, Shoigu leaned in and seemed to utter a few words, but was met with a wall of silence as Putin promptly turned around and stood with his back to the defense minister, ignoring his every word in a typical icy maneuver.
It comes as Russian forces continue to falter on the front lines in Ukraine, with Kyiv’s forces successfully retaking territory in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions amid their long-awaited counter-offensive.
Shoigu was appointed Russia’s defense minister in 2012 and has been one of Putin’s closest allies for the past decade.
The pair are known to have regularly vacationed together and are believed to have shared a close personal friendship outside of their respective roles.
But Shoigu has no military background, trained as a civil engineer and served as emergency minister for many years before heading up Russia’s defense ministry.
Furthermore, Shoigu was never part of Russia’s state security apparatus – experience held by many of Moscow’s political elites – which is why his prowess as defense minister was questioned by many analysts even before Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border last February.
Since then, Shoigu has been one of the few prominent defense and military leaders to somehow retain his position.
Putin has gone through several army chiefs of staff positions, demoting or outright deposing military chiefs he deemed incompetent amid the surprise losses and failures of his troops.
Shoigu also faced an outpouring of angry criticism from Wagner chief Prigozhin, who routinely lashed out at the Russian military’s failure to support its mercenaries in the battle for Bakhmut and accused the Russian defense minister of withholding ammunition from his troops.
Prigozhin’s Wagner group managed to snatch Bakhmut from Ukrainian hands last month after months of brutal fighting reminiscent of World War I trench warfare that left tens of thousands dead on both sides.
The mercenary figurehead released a video a few weeks ago in which he berated Shoigu and army chief Valery Gerasimov, taunting them and urging them to go to the front lines and see the failures for themselves.
‘Now part of the settlement of [Berkhivka] is already lost, the troops are slowly falling back. What a shame!
“Shoigu, Gerasimov, I urge you to come forward, point your pistols at your men to make them advance. Come on, you can! And if you can’t, you’ll die heroes.”
