Putin’s Successor: Sergei Shoigu?
But Mr Shoigu is much more than Russia’s latest defence minister. At 60, three years younger than Mr Putin, he is the longest-serving member of the Russian government; his tenure stretches back to 1990, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Mr Putin was still toiling in obscurity in the St Petersburg mayor’s office. He made his name at the Ministry of Emergency Situations (MChS), a semi-militarised rescue service with a wide remit that he built himself and led for nearly 22 years. By skilfully navigating Russia’s Byzantine bureaucracy, he has accrued power and popularity without making any notable enemies. “There’s no one else like him in the ruling class,” says Evgeny Minchenko, an analyst who studies the Russian elite. “It’s an absolutely unprecedented story.”
.. When Mr Putin took power, his strategists needed to define the amorphous new leader for the public. Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin adviser, says the administration “consciously crafted” Mr Putin’s image in part on Mr Shoigu’s: “Putin was supposed to be a rescuer, too.”
.. But if a shortlist exists, Mr Shoigu is probably on it. He remains Russia’s most trusted and popular politician not named Putin. He has avoided scandals and is perceived as relatively clean.