Appointed in 2008, Patrushev has become the longest-serving secretary of the Security Council. Since then, the council has changed a lot from its 1990s status as a way to redeploy aging security forces veterans. Patrushev has transformed it into a dynamic institution that deals with all matters related to Russia's security, and has positioned himself as Putin's top adviser.
By Susanne Sternthal
Nikolai Patrushev is one of the closest advisers to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has a great influence on the policy of the Russian government, in the capacity of the head of the Security Council of Russia. The council is where Russian security policy is formulated, and the center where information is received from sources and agency networks outside of Russia.
Patrushev is the one who interprets the data coming from Russian agents around the world. Patrushev frequently gives interviews to Russian state media about his conspiratorial views of the West, and what the Kremlin still describes as Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine.
There is no way to refute his disinformation, as all independent media outlets in Russia have been shut down. And that should be worrying for the US and other Western allies. As a long-time scholar of Putin and his inner circle, it is clear to me that Patrushev's close relationship with Putin, which began more than 50 years ago, has given him a strong influence over the president.
Both deplore the collapse of the Soviet Union, and both are deeply distrustful of the West, a sentiment fueled by absurd conspiracy theories. Patrushev has emerged as one of the leading voices in Putin's inner circle, who want to wage a merciless war in Ukraine, with the ultimate goal of conquering Kiev.
Mark Galeoti, a British expert on Russian security services, says Patrushev is Putin's most right-wing ideologue and is called the "Hawk of Hawks" within the Russian president's inner circle. This includes those who, like Patrushev, continue to repeat the disinformation that Ukraine is a country full of Nazis, and that Russia must be protected from the evil plans of the West.
Patrushev does not hesitate to give interviews. I have read many of his interviews and essays, and they never disappoint, revealing his conspiratorial way of thinking. On April 26, 2022, Patrushev gave an interview to the Russian state newspaper "Rossiskaya gazeta".
He began with his favorite topic: the evil intentions of the West in general, and the United States in particular. Patrushev said that while other countries are afraid of the US and "can't even raise their heads", Russia "has not only dared, but has publicly declared that it will not play by the rules set" by America.
In fact, the Russian government has not lied in what it has said, as evidenced by the brutal war it is waging against Ukraine and its people, which is in flagrant violation of all conventions of war. During the interview, Patrushev talks about a "community of criminals who escaped from Ukraine, who are now engaged in the widespread business of selling orphans who have left Ukraine."
Meanwhile, the West, Patrushev asserts, "has already revived the black market of buying human organs to the detriment of socially vulnerable segments of the Ukrainian population, for clandestine transplant operations for European patients."
The West, Patrushev continues, "is giving support to the Ukrainian neo-Nazis, continuing to supply Ukraine with weapons." Patrushev then quotes Putin, who called the West an "empire of lies" after sanctions were imposed. According to Patrushev's worldview, the West aims to reduce "in various ways the population of the world".
Putin and Patrushev have known each other since 1970. Both come from Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, and worked together in the Leningrad KGB in different departments. Also, both served in Boris Yeltsin's government. In 1998, Yeltsin appointed Putin to lead the FSB, the successor to the KGB, with Patrushev becoming his first deputy.
When Yeltsin appointed Putin as 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 acting president. Putin won the presidential election on March 26, 2000.
Shortly before Putin won the election, the close Putin-Patrushev relationship was on display when the two decided on New Year's Eve 2000 to go to Chechnya with their wives to meet the Russian troops fighting there. . This happened during the Second Chechen War of 1999-2009.
Despite the daily massacres on the ground by Russian troops against Chechen civilians, Putin and Patrushev opened 2 bottles of champagne, and both couples drank while riding in a helicopter over the combat zone. After spending an hour with a unit of Russian soldiers surprised by their presence, they returned to Moscow.
A week before Putin's inauguration as president on May 7, 2000, the Russian newspaper Kommersant noted that Putin was filling his new administration with former officials from the FSB, Russia's main security agency, along with the SVR, the Service of Foreign Intelligence, which had also been part of the KGB during the Soviet period, but was now a separate agency.
In a subsequent article, Kommersant wrote that the agents put "political life in Russia under the complete control of the Kremlin, through the methods of the KGB." In an interview given to the media in December 2000, Patrushev also clarified the dominance of former FSB and SVR officials in the Kremlin, the presidential administration and in the peripheral regions of the Russian Federation.
"They have been placed at the highest levels of power, as they have had leading roles in national security institutions," he said. Patrushev added that there was a "vital need to revive the Russian administrative body with 'fresh blood'... not with naive idealists, but tough pragmatists who understand international and domestic political developments, contradictions and emerging threats."
Appointed in 2008, Patrushev has become the longest serving secretary of the Security Council. Since then, the council has changed a lot from the 1990s, when it was a way to put aging veterans of the security forces into work. Patrushev has transformed it into a dynamic institution that deals with all matters related to Russia's security, and has positioned himself as Putin's chief adviser.
Galeoti believes that Patrushev is dangerous because of his “paranoid, conspiracy-oriented mindset.” This is essential to understanding today’s Russia, because Patrushev’s conspiratorial ideas and his worldview are the lens through which his friend Vladimir Putin also sees the world. /
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