The Grim Reaper and the Whipping Boy: Why the Patrushevs Won’t Run the Kremlin
Despite his fearsome reputation as Putin’s top enforcer, Nikolai Patrushev’s and his son’s personal power base is too shallow to survive the potential death of the president.
Editor’s Note: This article is the second installment in a series on the succession of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Read the first here.
Russia’s controlled presidential electoral campaign started in December 2023. Besides Vladimir Putin, the “election” features a gallery of buffoonish has-beens, Leonid Slutsky (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, LDPR) and Nikolai Kharitonov (Communist Party). Vladimir Putin is assured reelection by a wide margin in March. However, we contend that a subterranean competition in Putin’s succession game is already underway.
As we argued in our December 28 article in The National Interest, it is in the Kremlin’s interests to create the impression of an orderly transition, if needed, and long-term political stability and continuity. That article focused on Putin’s first cousin once removed, Anna Putina Tsivilyova, whose meteoric emergence in the Russian public sphere was remarkable. This article considers her potential rival, Russia’s Agricultural Minister Dmitry Patrushev, frequently depicted as an anointed successor, and his father, Nikolai, a KGB officer who serves as Putin’s chief enforcer. We will conclude that neither is a likely candidate. Still, examining their careers gives us a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Kremlin’s stage-managed politics.
Some claim that only a masculine he-man-type can be king of Russia’s patriarchal jungle. But being a male has downsides, especially for the princeling Dmitry Patrushev, who has never served a day in the military. In a humiliating dressing-down, President Putin, during his press conference on December 14, 2023, made an off-color reference to Dmitry’s genitalia while criticizing his mishandling of egg production (in Russian, “eggs” can have the crude meaning of “balls”). Putin said: “I asked the Agricultural Minister, ‘How are your balls [eggs] hanging?’ He said they’re OK. Then I told him directly, ‘Well, for our citizens they’re not OK! Chicken egg prices have gone up 40 percent and even more in some places!’”
Due to his lack of popular appeal, as well as the intelligence services’ continuous clan rivalries, Dmitry Patrushev faces serious and perhaps insurmountable impediments.
Before examining Patrushev Sr.’s chances, two revealing public incidents bear mentioning up front. In late October, bizarre rumors circulated on social media about Putin’s supposed death in his Lake Valdai palace. Supposedly, his flesh was being kept “fresh” in a freezer in the basement. At the same time, the Russian internet was buzzing with stories about Putin’s doppelgangers, or body doubles. A video of Nikolai Patrushev delivering Putin’s eulogy also made the rounds. The rumors are nonsense, yet many, in their eagerness for Putin’s death, took them with more than a grain of salt.
What all these videos have in common, in our view, is they are AI-generated. Like the Beatles’ song “Now and Then,” the living Beatles, Paul and Ringo, used AI to enhance the recording. If one listens carefully, John’s voice is more Johnesque than the actual John Lennon. The doppelgangers featured in conspiratorial videos look and sound like Putin, but their mannerisms are exaggerated to a comical degree. And while Patrushev’s supposed eulogy sounds pretty much like his wooden self, the audio and the video are not quite synched if you watch his lips closely. These videos are likely produced in Ukraine or perhaps by Russian dissidents. However, the misdirection of foes is a hallowed Russian tradition going back to the frigid forests of Muscovy in the fourteenth century. As strange as it may sound, we cannot dismiss that the Kremlin was behind the production and dissemination of these videos.
On December 22, the Wall Street Journal published an excellent article pegging Patrushev Sr. as the mastermind behind Prigozhin’s execution in the form of an airplane “accident” on August 23, 2023. This article is a must-read. But there remain questions of sourcing, in which the Journal refers to “Western intelligence reports and a former Russian intelligence officer.” First, along with Putin, we did not realize the category of “former Russian intelligence officer” exists! Indeed, the only kind of “former Russian intelligence officer” that would leak this without Kremlin approval would be one with a death wish. The incentive for the Kremlin to “leak” this is obviously to try to reinforce the view inside and outside of Russia that the regime is stable. Putin’s Kremlin is all about projecting an image of continuity of power and policy, even after Prigozhin’s bizarre mutiny attempt last June.
Nikolai Patrushev: The Kremlin’s Grim Reaper
Born in Leningrad, Dmitry’s father, Nikolai (Kolya) Patrushev, graduated from the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute in 1974. Consisting of one dilapidated building shaped like a ship, this humble college, located on the city outskirts, caters to the working class—a world away from Putin’s elite Leningrad State University. One of the authors personally strolled through this hoodlum-filled Shipbuilding Institute many times. It is hardly a Russian Ivy. After graduating in the top ten percent of his class, the diligent Kolya was recruited by the KGB and sent to a regional school in Minsk for operational training.
By the 1970s, the KGB realized it could only manage, not halt, social decay in the USSR. It learned to embed operatives throughout society as if governing an overseas colony. According to General Alexander Mikhailov, “The KGB [during the Brezhnev period] was extremely professional in selecting its cadres. The KGB didn’t just stick with elites from its Higher School but instead found people who were suited for specific tasks: if they needed a physicist, they hired a physicist. If they needed a chemist, they hired a chemist. If they needed a pianist, they hired a pianist.” Mikhailov confirms, for example, that social infiltration included the KGB establishment of the Soviet Union’s first rock club.
But what to do about corruption within its own ranks? Working-class kids like Patrushev were essential cogs in infiltrating the infiltrators. Patrushev was assigned to the delicate task of conducting a “fight against corruption and contraband” among the rough-and-tumble lumberjacks of Karelia. This type of illicit trade was only possible with support from above, yet it required constant monitoring.
While Brezhnev (and his family) not only acquiesced to this corruption as necessary to maintain his rule, they actively benefited from it. Andropov, a true believer and the godfather of the modern Russian intelligence services, regarded the KGB as a means to regain control of the commanding heights of the Soviet economy by implanting its operatives within the corrupt clans. The secret services did not have the power to recreate the Stalinist police state, but rather—by masking its lack of numbers and exploiting “the psychological fact that the unknown is fearsome, mighty, threatening,” the KGB could exert significant social control. This late Soviet system functioned because clan rivalry between the KGB, the police, the Party, and the military created an informal system of checks and balances. Patrushev was one of the checks.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Yeltsin years, Putin fostered a return to this late Soviet form of rule. Gradually, the business empires of the oligarchs, whom naïve American advisers in the 1990s assumed would “stand up to the state,” were seized by Putin’s “new nobility” of latter-day securocrats. A GRU officer, Igor Sechin, who took over Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s empire, was long considered Putin’s second in command. Likewise, KGB men Gennadi Timchenko and Sergey Chemezov, as dominant oligarchs, are also considered political heavyweights. In 2007, then-Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and former KGB agent appeared to many as Putin’s most capable and likely successor. By contrast, Patrushev preferred to amass bureaucratic power by maintaining a low public profile as head of the amorphous Security Council. None of these figures inherited Putin’s throne. Instead, the nod went to Dmitry Medvedev, who, besides being the only candidate shorter than Putin, was the only one who had not begun his career in the former Soviet intelligence services.
Patrushev serves a specific purpose in policing the unruly former KGB, SVR, and GRU clans of intelligence officers. He appears to be the Grim Reaper of “wet work,” a trade euphemism for assassination. Rumors swirl that Patrushev was behind some of the most notorious capers: the poisonings of Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal, as well as the assassination of Prigozhin. Indeed, Patrushev follows in a long line of fearsome enforcers whose power derived exclusively from the ruler: Johann von Biron, Alexei Arakcheyev, Alexander Benckendorff, Lavrentiy Beria, Alexander Korzhakov, and others.
Patrushev’s systemic role and limited power came to light during the “Three Whales” scandal in 2003. Nominally concerning banal accounting fraud at a furniture store, this still unresolved case ensnared key members of the power elite, sparking a clan war that became a major early challenge for Putin. Putin handed Patrushev the unenviable task of tamping down the turf war. In 2003, a lead investigator, Yuri Shchekochikhin, died from a not-so-mysterious poisoning, a method that would become a trademark of Patrushev’s work. Viktor Cherkesov, an old-school KGB man, thundered about the need for intelligence officers to form a caste of saintly “warriors” that would hold in check the corrupt patronage networks of the “traders.” Patrushev, with a wink from Putin, had Cherkesov sidelined. As under Andropov, the corrupt parallel economy needs to be managed, not destroyed. Patrushev tapped down the “Three Whales” clan warfare but never extinguished it. According to Maria Maksakova, an opera singer, her husband, Denis Voronenkov, was charged to continue investigations into corruption at Patrushev’s FSB. Voronenkov was gunned down in 2017 in Kyiv. Patrushev must know that he has stepped on too many toes and that without Putin, he would suffer a fate similar to that of Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s notorious NKVD chief, who was tried and executed following the dictator’s death in 1953.
Analysis of Russian media confirms that Patrushev’s clout is circumscribed. In transcripts of Kremlin meetings, Nikolai Patrushev’s name comes towards the end. An arch-conservative, Nikolai Patrushev possesses none of the charisma of politicians like Vladimir Zhirinovsky or Dmitry Rogozin. His limited media presence serves to diminish his stature further. On TV, viewers know Patrushev only from sporadic statements uttered in a curt, dour tone. Nikolai Patrushev is habitually seen isolated, reading his announcements from paper. Importantly, his utterances are rarely integrated into the main messaging of TV coverage.
This contrasts sharply with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin or Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Several times a week, fawning TV news coverage portrays these figures as tackling day-to-day issues in stage-managed settings. As opposed to Putin, Anna Putina, Sobyanin, Mishustin, Kirienko, Kadyrov, and many other figures, Patrushev has no media persona. After over twenty years, little is known about the man and his private life. Among the public, he has no fans or followers.
Despite (and assuredly because of) his lack of charisma, Patrushev has amassed substantial power—a power that derives exclusively from Putin’s personal trust. Putin was confident enough to step down as president in 2007 in part because he knew Patrushev would rein in any attempt by Medvedev to become a genuine, independent president. During medical operations, COVID isolation, and wartime personal security fears, Putin entrusted Patrushev with the reins of power. Since Putin and Patrushev are rarely seen in physical proximity, it can be assumed that Patrushev functions as a “designated survivor” in case of catastrophe. Due to the Russian military’s poor performance and the paramilitary groups’ uncertain loyalties, Patrushev has probably accumulated more authority. Yet, whether this power—a power so intimately connected to the person of the president—can survive his death and succession is an open and perhaps fatal question.
Dmitry Patrushev: The Kremlin’s Whipping Boy
In Putin’s early years, Dmitry (Dima) Patrushev followed the path of other service princelings. Instead of studying abroad, he attended closed institutions like the State Management University, the Diplomatic Academy, and the FSB Academy. Perhaps due to the “Three Whales” scandal, Nikolai Patrushev was unable to open a career for his son at the FSB. Instead, Patrushev Jr. had a clumsy doctoral dissertation defended under his name. Full of plagiarism, misspellings, and improper citations, his dissertation was completed at the Saint Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance, a bastion of the Yeltsin-era oligarch Peter Aven. Patrushev Jr.’s work soon appeared online, where it was widely mocked.
Dmitry (along with his brother Andrei) soon assumed cushy and lucrative “management” posts at various banks, as well as at Gazprom and Lukoil. During this time, Patrushev had a limited domestic and international profile. In 2015, he was named “Banker of the Year” despite the agricultural bank accumulating record debts. How he obtained the initial capital to become a dominant investor in such endeavors has never been explained, but its parameters are not hard to imagine.
When Putin came to power, it was assumed that oil and gas would be Russia’s geopolitical ace in the hole. Putin made no secret that he could crush “color revolutions” with this natural-resource bat. But under the management of Patrushev, Fradkov, Sechin, and other Putin cronies and their offspring, Russia missed out on the fracking revolution and the switch to renewable energy. This turned out to be an enormous blunder.
In the meantime, far from the scrutiny of the FSB, Russia’s freewheeling agriculture was flourishing, especially in 2014 when, in response to Western sanctions, Russia imposed a ban on European food imports. This boosted domestic agriculture by providing significant tax breaks and state investments. As opposed to the fracking blunder, the Russian agricultural sector has been a significant revenue generator for the Russian economy for the last ten years, not to mention food for its citizens.
In the Soviet era, an appointment as Minister of Agriculture was a kind of domestic exile for Kremlin elites. Mikhail Gorbachev was a notable exception as he was brought to Moscow from his native Krasnodar in 1978 to Moscow as Minister of Agriculture. Nor was it his job performance there that impressed some of his Kremlin colleagues as food production continued to worsen despite huge investments.
Dmitry Patrushev became Minister of Agriculture in 2018. Besides VTB Bank, in 2010, Patrushev assumed management of the Russian Agricultural Bank. Among his first acts was dealing harshly with transport worker strikes. He rapidly moved to centralize agricultural exports, which had the potential to replace oil and gas as sources of foreign cash and geopolitical influence. Patrushev, together with local elites, focused on creating a new political base for Putin. Dmitry proclaimed: “The village should become a new economic center of Russia, a “place of power for entrepreneurs, an area where investments and advanced technologies are concentrated.” According to Patrushev, the state should make the central decisions on grain production: the United Grain Company must not be privatized.
From 2017 until the present, the Russian media (usually towards the end of daily news broadcasts) occasionally covers short pronouncements from the Agricultural Minister. Awkwardly, he makes no mention of his father. In 2017, in a widely mocked speech, Patrushev gave a rambling promise to return the agricultural bank to profit. In 2018, Patrushev promised that he would “rationalize” grain exports so that a “sufficient” amount could remain for domestic consumption. Echoing Lenin, Dmitry Patrushev proclaimed that Agricultural cooperatives must work hand-in-hand with the state. In 2019, Patrushev tried to institute a system of strict state monitoring “from raw production to the store shelf.”
During Covid, Patrushev began to appear slightly more often in the media. On July 7, 2020, he assured the public that even with self-isolation measures, agricultural enterprises “will not stop their work even for a day.” Patrushev has engaged in fleeting attempts to create his own PR base, for example, working with the obscure regional media firm TiumenMedia.
Being Minister of Agriculture has many downsides. Frequently, Dmitry is forced to explain the rising prices of potatoes, chicken, and eggs. As minister, he banned the fishing of threatened species, a move sure to alienate provincial sentiment. Another headache has been the inability of farmers to receive specialized seeds from Western companies. During the war, in 2022, Patrushev was “requesting” that farmers “voluntarily” lower their prices to deal with the effects of Western sanctions. On TV, viewers usually see Patrushev alone and isolated.
His closest connection seems to be with the Don Region. One of the few friendly figures he is seen with is Veniamin Kondratyev, governor of Krasnodar Krai.
In one rare exception to this apparent isolation, Patrushev played the part of an anointed prince. On May 12, 2023, Russian TV viewers saw Dmitry Patrushev and Ramzan Kadyrov open a new fish hatchery in Chechnya. Presumably, Patrushev was dispatched to conduct off-line talks with the fearsome Chechen strongman during a tumultuous time for the “special operation” in Ukraine.
This version of events is supported by a subsequent Vesti news report aired on May 18, 2023, when TV viewers glimpsed Vladimir Putin meeting alone with Dmitry Patrushev while conducting a state meeting by video conference. This unusual scene suggests that Putin trusts Dmitry over others and entrusts him with special assignments, such as conveying confidential messages from Kadyrov.
Nonetheless, Dmitry’s clout seems limited. In cabinet meetings, Dmitry Patrushev is usually seated at the far end of the table, in the twenty-first place. From body language, it’s clear others do not like him. Indeed, for an agricultural minister, he cuts an awkward figure. He is stiff, wears a business suit, and has a passing resemblance to Hunter Biden, a bête noire of Russian propaganda. Even the heavily censored Russian press notes that he lacks experience in agriculture. Officially, he is a bachelor and has an unusually high declared income. According to media leaks, he supports two wives and lives in a baronial mansion. Since this kompromat appears on top of a Yandex search, it’s safe to assume he has enemies in the Kremlin. This animosity boiled onto the parliamentary floor when the matronly Senate chair, Valentina Matvienko, cut him off during a meeting. It was a savage takedown demonstrating the power and wrath of Matvienko, who has not been shy in her open criticism. The timing of this Federation Council was significant as it was just after Putin had called for the partial mobilization and the recognition of the four Ukrainian Oblasts as territory of the Russian Federation. Why criticize Patrushev, then? It is hard to say for sure, but as Russia was entering winter during a war, politicians wanted to be viewed as especially attentive to the population’s food needs. Judging by this ham-handed media rollout, it’s hard to see Dmitry Patrushev as an anointed successor.
Bad Blood
Over the decades, Nikolai Partushev has accumulated bad blood among the elites. Indeed, it’s doubtful that the Patrushev clan could unite even the intelligence services, the warriors, and the traders. But even if Nikolai could, Russia’s oligarchs would fear a vindictive Patrushev in the highest position of power and able to go after anybody whom he wants. This would cause a split (Roskol) among the elite. In particular, it’s not clear why regional kingpins, notably Ramzan Kadyrov, would fall in line behind Patrushev. Moreover, neither Nikolai nor Dmitry Patrushev has a media presence or popular following. Finally, a Patrushev succession would face blowback from the technical and financial cadres.
Patrushev could come to power only in the case of some unforeseen catastrophic event. Moreover, for the Patrushev clan to seize power, they would need a charismatic frontman, such as Dmitry Rogozin. But even in the Putin catastrophe scenario, the Russian constitution calls for the sitting prime minister to take over until elections are held within ninety days. This was precisely the scenario (without the catastrophe, but rather Yeltsin’s sudden resignation on December 31, 1999) that brought Vladimir Putin to power. The current Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin, is one of Putin’s most capable underlings. In our next and final article in this series, we will examine his candidacy and that of a few others.
Chris Monday is an Associate Professor of Economics at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.
Andy Kuchins is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.
Image: Shutterstock.com.