Russia?s ultimate political survivor faces a wartime reckoning

Questions persist about how much blame Shoigu should bear for the Russian force’s failures — as opposed to Russia’s military leaders and intelligence chiefs, widely seen to have miscalculated how much Ukrainians would resist.“There are reports that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is very disappointed in how Shoigu prepared for this war, how he carried it out,” Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said.Russia is gearing up for Victory Day celebrations on Monday, traditionally the biggest annual holiday for the Russian military, amid fears Putin could use the commemoration of the World War II victory over Nazi Germany to announce an intensification of his war against Ukraine.The ultimate outcome on the battlefield may determine the future of Shoigu, the longest-serving minister in Russia, who regularly squires Putin around his native Siberia and in recent years has arrived at Red Square on Victory Day saluting the troops from a convertible. “If you cannot have a transparent conversation about your serviceability rates, about how proficient your soldiers are or about how old some of your field rations are — if you can’t have some of those debates, the battlefield will show you.”The Russian military that Shoigu and Gerasimov built can generate a certain amount of military strength on short notice but ultimately needs a mobilization to obtain additional manpower to fight a major war, said Michael Kofman, a Russian military analyst at the Virginia-based research group CNA, who remains puzzled why they agreed to launch a full invasion of Ukraine without a mobilization.“Shoigu built a military that looked good in scripted exercises, and proved effective in limited wars, but when thrown into a large conflict, showed that it couldn’t scale operations and revealed the extent of rot in the system,” Kofman said.An outsider among Russia’s urban elite, Shoigu grew up in southern Siberia in the Tuva Republic, a remote and impoverished region on the border with Mongolia.His father, an ethnic Tuvan, served as a newspaper editor and secretary of the regional Communist Party committee. The autofill suggestions from search engines Google and Yandex conveyed the intrigue:“Sergei Shoigu missing.”“Sergei Shoigu heart attack.”“Sergei Shoigu coup.”Putin publicly ordered military prosecutors to look into how Russian army conscripts ended up being sent into Ukraine, fueling expectations of a political bloodletting.When Shoigu finally surfaced, the Kremlin said the defense minister had simply been busy.On March 29, Shoigu claimed Russia had achieved the main goals of its initial campaign by degrading Ukraine’s military and now would focus on “liberating” Donbas — in actuality, a retrenchment after embarrassing battlefield failures.Still, when Shoigu arrived at the Kremlin on April 21 dressed in a black suit identical to Putin’s, he received plaudits from his boss for taking control of Mariupol. Slouching and gripping the table with his right hand, Putin ordered Shoigu to blockade the city’s Azovstal steel plant — a final Ukrainian holdout — rather than storm the facility.In Mariupol, echoes of history, utter devastation and a last standStanovaya, the Russian political analyst, said it was clear from the meeting that Putin was treating Shoigu with leniency, which means the Russian leader probably isn’t prepared to punish him publicly.At some point Putin may look for scapegoats, but only once the war is over, predicted one Russian billionaire familiar with Putin’s behavior, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.“As for whoever developed this plan to attack from 10 different directions at once, someone will be made responsible for this,” the billionaire said.Even if Putin were to set his sights on Shoigu, the minister is known for his loyalty.“If Shoigu has to take the fall for this, he will,” Kofman said.