At the time of recording, Sergei Shoigu still held the title of Defense Minister in Russia. Shortly after this video was recorded, Putin confirmed my suspicions and removed Sergei Shoigu from office.
Well, I hate to say it, but Putin might actually be making a solid strategic move by removing Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu from office.
Like most things in Russia, getting a seat at the table is all about who you know; that’s exactly what happened with Putin’s ole buddy Shoigu. Since he became Defense Minister, he’s been widely criticized as a significant hindrance to Russia’s success in the Ukraine War – you know, mostly because he didn’t have any military experience and was shelling out defense budget to his cronies.
It appears that removing Shoigu from office is part of a broader trend of Russia becoming a more conventional power, so maybe they’ll even learn their lesson and put someone with experience in office.
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Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Poland. the news today is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is apparently publicly musing about the idea of right to flee. Seen the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu. Somebody else. I can’t emphasize enough that this would be the single biggest shift in the Ukraine war to date, because Shoigu is arguably be the least competent public servant in the world at the moment.
The only reason he got the job as defense minister is because he’s a buddy of Putin’s going back to his days in East Germany. he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has no military experience. the only he’s good at is stealing maybe one third of the appropriation budgets for the years of he’s been defense minister had gone to him personally, and a third have gone to his cronies.
so he is probably the single biggest factor in clay right now. Why the Russians have not been doing well in Ukraine war. And if he were to be sacked and replaced with, like an average third grader who doesn’t even speak Russian, there would probably be a significant increase in Russia’s capacity to prosecute this war. So it’s Russian cronyism in many ways, has been helping the Ukrainians consistently.
And we’re now at the beginnings of seeing the Russians kind of turn the page and become more of a normal power. every, every, every Russian war in history starts is a disaster, just as the corruption is endemic to the Russian system, crushes a system. There’s no morale. There’s no sense of camaraderie. And the logistics are awful. And then, bit by bit by bit, the Russians tend to rally slowly, sloppily, never even reaching what you would consider to be the global average, but improving nonetheless.
And we’ve seen that in tactics. We’ve seen that in logistics. We’re seeing that in weapons systems, that it’s very possible that we will now see that in leadership first tonight.
