Russia’s Putin to remove Shoigu as defence minister
Al Jazeera
President proposes Andrey Belousov as defence minister with Sergei Shoigu to become secretary of Security Council.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has begun a cabinet reshuffle, proposing to remove Sergei Shoigu as defence minister and reappoint him as secretary of the Security Council.
Putin proposed appointing Andrei Belousov, a former deputy prime minister who specialises in economics, as the new defence minister, the Kremlin said on Sunday.
The shake-up comes as Putin begins his fifth term in office. In line with Russian law, the entire cabinet resigned on Tuesday after Putin’s inauguration in the Kremlin.
Belousov’s candidacy will need to be approved by Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Federation Council.
Shoigu was appointed defence minister in 2012, two years before Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
