How Sergei Shoigu went from Putin's wilderness bestie to the scapegoat for Russia's failures in Ukraine

The town is close to the Mongolian border.

Shoigu's mother was Russian but born in Ukraine, while his father was Tuvan — an ethnic group that is indigenous to Siberia.

Source: The Moscow Times

In 1977, Shoigu graduated from the Krasnoyarsk Polytechnic Institute in Siberia with a degree in civil engineering. He went on to work on a variety of major construction projects in the region.

"Shoigu is the only figure within Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle who isn't either an old KGB buddy or an old friend from St. Petersburg," Mark Galeotti, who heads the Russia-focused consultancy Mayak Intelligence, told Insider.

Putin was born and studied in St. Petersburg and spent much of his early career there.

Source: The Kyiv Post

Shoigu's official profile lists a string of presidential and state awards for his time in government, while his Russian-language Wikipedia page lists more than 70 separate honors.

They include medals from his own defense ministry for implementing policies there, and also mass awards marking events like the 300th anniversary of the founding of St. Petersburg.

Radio Free Europe, the US-funded outlet, reported last year that Shoigu has a fascination with medals, and implemented hundreds of new ones for the Russian military, many of which are not to do with combat.

Source: The Moscow Times

In the Russian Rescue Corps, Shoigu was responsible for the rescue and disaster response system, The Moscow Times reported.

His career there soon took off.

"He had a big PR team, let's be perfectly honest," Galeotti told Insider.

He stayed on the job for 21 years, even after Russian President Vladimir Putin took over from Yeltsin.

Source: The Moscow Times

Shoigu's successful record and large public profile seemed to appeal to Putin.

In 1999, he picked Shoigu to be one of the leaders of his party, United Russia, giving him the opportunity to build a political base.

Thirteen years later, in 2012, Putin promoted Shoigu briefly to be the governor of the Moscow region, and from there to run the defense ministry.

This gave Shoigu a role on the world stage and a central place in Russia's clashes with the West.

Sources: Database of Free Russia Forum, Foreign Affairs

Their most recent vacation together appears to have been in March 2021.

Source: The Kremlin

"Putin and Shoigu are both throwbacks to Soviet times. They regard themselves as 'muzhiks' (real Russian men) who love sports and hunting," British magazine The Spectator observed in 2015.

This interest may have taken a surreal, even macabre turn.

Russian investigative news outlet Proekt reported in April that Putin has taken up bathing in blood extract from severed deer antlers as a form of alternative medicine. The bath is believed to improve the cardiovascular system and rejuvenate the skin

The unusual remedy was a suggestion made by Shoigu, the report said.

Source: The New York Times

Sources: MK.RU, Reuters

In the early days of his role as minister of defense, Shoigu was considered the second most popular public figure in the country and was even touted as Putin's potential successor.

Source: The Daily Beast

The investigative team of jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny photographed Shoigu's home using high-tech drones in 2015.

Shoigu presides over a culture of corruption and embezzlement in the Russian military, according to some reports.

An investigation by the independent Russian news outlet The Insider in 2019 claimed that he earned 6.5 billion rubles ($101.9 million) from deals with the ministries of defense and emergency situations.

(The Insider is a separate publication from Insider.)

Source: CNBC, Los Angeles Times

Other members of Putin's inner circle who were sanctioned alongside Shoigu included Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov and Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov.

Source: Department of State, Politico

This was despite Western intelligence services publishing extensive evidence of Russian troops amassing near Ukraine's borders, and claims from figures including President Joe Biden that an invasion was inevitable.

Source: Reuters

Russia seemed to expect it could take Ukraine's capital Kyiv in a matter of days, but failed to do so.

For months, their forces have struggled in the face of a staunch Ukrainian resistance that continues to receive more heavy weaponry from Western allies.

Russia's partial mobilization in October was also a sign that Shoigu's military was suffering from a severe lack of manpower.

One month after Russia's invasion, there was "persistent tension" between the two friends after it emerged that Shoigu and his subordinates were sugar-coating reports of the war for Putin, The New York Times reported at the time.

In March, Shoigu wasn't seen in public for 12 days, prompting concerns over his whereabouts, The Guardian reported.

In August, Putin started to bypass Shoigu, further embedding himself into the war's strategic planning efforts, The Telegraph reported.

Source: Insider

Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who founded the Wagner Group paramilitary, confronted Putin about the mismanagement of the war in Ukraine last month, two US officials familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

Prigozhin later denied that he had spoken to Russia's president and said he has no right to criticize Russia's army.

Source: Insider

"He is soaking up all the criticism that, otherwise, people might start leveling towards Putin as commander in chief," Galeotti said.

"He's been much less evident now," Galeotti told Insider.

"He knows that, when he goes into public, he either has to reassure people that everything's going fine, which is an increasingly untenable position to hold, or he'd have to acknowledge things are going badly, which would potentially sound like criticism of the commander in chief," he added.

Galeotti told Insider that it is difficult for Putin to fire Shoigu because it is "a card he can only play once."

"If Putin absolutely felt that the situation demanded it, I imagine he would be willing to sacrifice Shoigu," he said.

"However, given that it's obviously not going to have any substantive impact on the progress of the war ... it will be harder avoid the suspicion that it's not because of Shoigu, but because of Putin."

Shoigu told Putin that his goal to send 300,000 of Russia's reservists to fight in Ukraine, which he announced in October, "has been completed," Reuters reported.