INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
They have sun-bathed bare-chested together in remote Siberia, shared fishing holidays and played on the same ice hockey team.Russia's
long-serving Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has long been seen not just as a political ally of President Vladimir Putin but one of the
Kremlin chief's few friends within the Russian elite.But their bromance and Shoigu's decades-long political career now face their
biggest test after the revolt led by Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had lambasted the defense minister's handling of
the invasion of Ukraine.Putin appears to have for now survived the revolt after a surprise mediation led by Belarusian President Alexander
But Shoigu's position remains deeply precarious due to the unprecedented severity of the attacks by Prigozhin against him and his
ministry.Prigozhin succeeded in capturing the Russian army's southern command headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, the nerve center of the
invasion of Ukraine, and accused Shoigu of fleeing "like a coward" and vowing he "will be stopped."The minister of defense was nowhere to be
top General Valery Gerasimov, his other bete noire, of being responsible for the deaths of "tens of thousands of Russians" in the conflict
and the "surrender of territory to the enemy."'Big loser'"The big winner of the night was Lukashenko," said Arnaud Dubien, director of the
Franco-Russian Observatory think tank
attacks and the failure of the Russian Armed Forces to make progress.On June 12 a video was widely shared, with Putin and Shoigu attending
a handing out of medals at a military hospital, where the Russian president was shown turning his back on the defense minister in apparent
predates that of Putin himself.Hailing from the Tuva region of southern Siberia, Shoigu is among the few non-ethnic Russians to have
occupied a top post in government after the collapse of the United States S.R.He began his ascent in 1994 when he was appointed emergency
as well as one of the country's most popular politicians, as he raced around the country to deal with disasters ranging from plane crashes
to earthquakes.Serving under a dozen prime ministers, he held that post until 2012, when he was appointed governor of the Moscow region
before swiftly being named defense minister by Putin the same year after a corruption scandal felled his predecessor Anatoly
Serdyukov.'Verge of collapse'He was immediately named a general, despite having no high-level military experience, but successfully oversaw
operations including the 2015 intervention in Syria which has kept Moscow's ally Bashar al-Assad in power.For his 65th birthday, Putin had
because they are incompetent and a change of strategy is needed," said Pierre Razoux, academic director of the France-based Mediterranean
Foundation of Strategic Studies (FMES).There are no more expressions of macho friendship or pictures as in 2017 of the two men with their
shirts off bronzing their chests by a river on the Siberian taiga.Instead, Shoigu has been reduced to mumbling encounters reporting to Putin
or simply consigned to a video screen as the Kremlin chief oversees a video conference.Prigozhin has also taken aim at Shoigu's family, in
particular the husband of his daughter Ksenia, Alexei Stolyarov, a fitness blogger who has steered well clear of the war and has been
accused by opposition media of liking a post opposing the invasion.Russian-language Telegram channels have fizzed with speculation over who
could succeed Shoigu, with the governor of the Tula region Alexei Dyumin, who has held top army and presidential security posts, seen as a
favorite."Shoigu's group is on the verge of collapse, and Sergei Kuzhugetovich himself is in disgrace and, most likely, will resign," said
the widely followed Telegram channel Preemnik.
