MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly nominated a new defense minister, appointing civilian Andrei Belousov, a former deputy prime minister who specializes in economics, to the post more than two years after the start of the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.
Below are some facts about Andrei Removich Belousov:
* Belousov, 65 years old, graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University in 1981 with honors. He defended his dissertation on the topic “A simulation approach to modeling the interrelated processes of formation and use of working capital.”
* In 2000, Belousov was appointed as a freelance adviser to the Russian Prime Minister, and six years later he moved to the Ministry of Economy as deputy minister. In 2008-2012, he was director of the department of economics and finance of the government apparatus, during the same years Putin served as prime minister.
* In 2012 he was appointed Minister of Economy. From 2013 to 2020, Belousov served as Advisor to the President of Russia. Since 2020, he has worked as first deputy prime minister. When Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin fell ill with COVID in 2020, Belousov briefly took over as prime minister while Mishustin recovered.
* In 2017, Russian media outlet RBC reported that Belousov was one of the officials who convinced Putin that the digital economy and blockchain were critical to the future.
* “I can say that what a country with sovereignty must have is the possession of its own meanings. Who are we, where are we from, where are we going?… We have no other choice for our country except to acquire or reproduce this identity,” Belousov told RBC in an interview in 2023.
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* According to RBC, in his youth he practiced sambo and karate and did not serve in the armed forces. He is believed to be close to Putin.