MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed a surprise appointment of a new defense minister, nominating civilian Andrei Belousov, a former deputy prime minister and economics specialist, for the post more than two years after the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.
Here are some facts about Andrei Removich Belousov:
* Belousov (65 years old) graduated from the Faculty of Economics at Moscow State University in 1981 with distinction. He defended his thesis on “A mimetic approach to modeling interrelated processes of formation and use of working capital.”
* In 2000, Belousov was appointed non-staff advisor to the Russian Prime Minister and joined the Ministry of Economy as Deputy Minister six years later. From 2008 to 2012, he was Director of the Department of Economics and Finance in the government apparatus, the same years in which Putin served as Prime Minister.
* In 2012, he was appointed Minister of Economy. From 2013 to 2020, Belousov served as an advisor to the Russian President. Since 2020, he has served as First Deputy Prime Minister. When Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin contracted the coronavirus in 2020, Belousov briefly assumed the duties of prime minister while Mishustin improved.
* In 2017, Russian media RBC said that Belousov was one of the officials who convinced Putin that the digital economy and blockchain technology were of crucial importance for the future.
* “I can say that what a sovereign state must definitely have is to have its own meanings. Who are we, where did we come from, where are we going? … We have no other choice for our country but to take possession of it,” Belousov told RBC in an interview in 2023. “Or reproduce this identity.”
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* According to RBC, he practiced sambo and karate in his youth and did not serve in the armed forces. He is believed to be close to Putin.
