The president proposes Andrey Belousov as defense minister, with Sergei Shoigu as secretary of the Security Council.
Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated a ministerial reshuffle, proposing to remove Sergei Shoigu as Defense Minister and rename him Secretary of the Security Council.
Putin proposed naming Andrei Belousov, a former deputy prime minister who specialized in economics, as the new defense minister, the Kremlin said on Sunday.
The change comes as Putin begins his fifth term. In accordance with Russian law, the entire cabinet resigned on Tuesday following Putin’s inauguration into the Kremlin.
Belousov’s candidacy will have to be approved by the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council.
Shoigu was appointed defense minister in 2012, two years before Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Shoigu’s deputy, Timur Ivanov, was arrested last month on bribery charges and ordered to remain in custody pending an official investigation. The arrest was widely interpreted as an attack on Shoigu and a possible precursor to his dismissal, despite his close ties to Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday that Putin decided to hand over the defense portfolio to a civilian because the ministry should be “open to innovation and cutting-edge ideas” and Belousov, who until recently served as first deputy Prime Minister, is right for the job.
Putin won the March elections by recording 87 percent of the vote in a poll that analysts said lacked democratic legitimacy, after several candidates who opposed the war in Ukraine were barred from running by the Central Election Commission.
The reshuffle comes as thousands of civilians have fled Russia’s renewed ground offensive in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, which has targeted towns and villages with an artillery and mortar barrage.
Intense fighting has forced at least one Ukrainian unit to withdraw as Russian forces seize more territory in less-defended settlements in the so-called gray zone along the Russian border.
On Sunday afternoon, the city of Vovchansk, one of the largest in the northeast with a pre-war population of 17,000, emerged as a focal point in the battle.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
