As Russian Revolt Fizzles, Putin’s Bodyguard and Point Man on Crimea Sees His Star Quietly Rise

Nothing like a little rebellion in the ranks to reshuffle the deck. Now that most of the dust has settled over the short-lived, almost cartoonish revolt of Wagner’s mercenary chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, another man about Moscow could be the next big league Russian to make himself a household name.Alexei Dyumin, 50, a “Hero of the Russian Federation” who once used a shotgun to fend off a bear from President Putin, is no Mickey Mouse. He’s not widely known outside Russia. He is, though, a bona fide silovik, a powerful member of Mr. Putin’s — which is to say Russia’s — innermost circle.The murmurs at Moscow are that he is tipped to replace the current defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, a man essentially detested by Mr. Prigozhin. A former speech writer for Mr. Putin, Abbas Gallyamov, writes on his Telegram channel: “It seems that Dyumin is now the favorite.”A leading pro-Kremlin political analyst, Sergei Markov, states on his Telegram channel that he thinks it “highly likely that Alexei Dyumin will become Minister of Defense, and General [Sergei] Surovikin will become Chief of the General Staff.” None of that, though, is likely to happen right away, lest the Russian president be perceived as caving to any part of Mr. Prigozhin’s political wish list. A look back deeper in the past could show the direction of game-changing things to come. In 1999, when President Boris Yeltsin appointed Mr. Putin, a former KGB officer, as prime minister, Mr. Dyumin became the latter’s bodyguard under the aegis of Russia’s federal protective service. He continued in that role for Mr. Putin’s first two terms as president, between 2000 and 2008, as well as during the interval between 2008 and 2012 , during which time Mr. Putin handed over the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev. When Mr. Putin returned to the Kremlin, it was with Mr. Dyumin in a top position in the presidential security followed by promotion to the rank of general and, in 2014, to deputy head of Russia’s military intelligence agency. It was in 2014 that Russia seized and then illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula, in what turned out to be a precursor to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that was in fact an escalation of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. Significantly, according to multiple Russian accounts, it was Mr. Dyumin who was tasked with spiriting the Russian-backed former Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, out of Kyiv in February 2014 following the Maidan revolution. In true Russian fashion, he subsequently denied any involvement in those events, calling them “myths.”Yet while it was Mr. Putin who willed the Crimean land grab, it was widely acknowledged in Russia that Mr. Dyumin served in effect as mastermind of the operation that saw the strategic Ukrainian peninsula annexed the following March. Shortly after the actions in Crimea, Mr. Putin bestowed upon his formerly invisible leading man the Russian Federation’s highest military honor. After that he was made deputy defense minister — answering only to Mr. Shoigu. Before that meteoric rise, though it is not clear exactly when, there was the incident with the bear. One of the animals approached the front door of one of Mr. Putin’s residences in a mountainous area while the strongman was asleep. Mr. Dyumin was on duty, and according to previous statements he and the bear “looked into each other’s eyes” and then he started shooting, “aiming close to his feet, but without hitting him.” The gunshots sent the blasted bear scrambling into the woods and awakened Mr. Putin, who praised Mr. Dyumin for his pluck. It is good, after all, not to be mauled by a bear. It could seem odd, given the sort of loyalty that springs from long years of protective service, that in 2016 Mr. Putin made Mr. Dyumin the governor of Russia’s Tula region, which abuts the Moscow region. If on the surface that seemed like a demotion, in fact it might have been more of an insurance policy. Mr. Putin, as recent events have shown, is not one to be knocked off his perch easily. He is too shrewd to brook such antics, but not always as inscrutable as he was trained to be in his KGB days. By placing one of his top loyalists outside the Moscow bubble, he also kept Mr. Dyumin away from the intrigues and rivalries of competing factions within the Kremlin. He is Mr. Putin’s insurance policy of sorts. On top of that, Mr. Dyumin has had, since the Crimean annexation, virtually no role in the debacle that is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His hands are not spotless, but they are cleaner than Mr. Shoigu’s. So, as the Wagner coup that wasn’t begins to recede, look for Mr. Putin to bide his time a bit before dealing his trusty bear repeller the defense minister card.The impact of such a development on the course of the war in Ukraine is impossible to know. As is what could yet happen in Russia should, in time, Mr. Dyumin emerge as a possible successor to Mr. Putin himself.

As Russian Revolt Fizzles, Putin’s Bodyguard and Point Man on Crimea Sees His Star Quietly Rise

As Russian Revolt Fizzles, Putin’s Bodyguard and Point Man on Crimea Sees His Star Quietly Rise

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