Berlin –
In the more than two-year war against Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has discovered that the technocrats he has assembled to run the Russian economy have proven to be his most reliable foot soldiers.
The Russian leader has now appointed one of them, Andrei Belousov, who has no military experience, to become his next defense minister.
Belousov, 65, a fan of Rembrandt who likes to quote Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Carl Jung, has for years separated himself from the other technocrats, many of whom have provided excellent economic guidance even as they personally view Putin’s provocative geopolitical moves as dangerous for the economy. Russia’s economic future.
