Russia and Ukraine: who belongs to Putin’s inner circle leading the invasion?

Vladimir Putin is a lone figure who has led the Russian Army into a high-stakes war that threatens to wreck his country’s economy.

Rarely has he been more isolated than in two recent, choreographed appearances with his inner circle, where he sits at a purposeful distance from his closest advisers.

As commander-in-chief, the ultimate responsibility for the invasion rests with him, but he has always counted on a deeply loyal entouragemade up of many who also began their careers in Russia’s security services.

The question is who Putin listens to at this momentous moment in his presidency.

If there is one person Putin pays attention to, it is his confidante Sergei Shoigu, who has trumpeted Putin’s line of demilitarizing Ukraine and protecting Russia from the so-called “military threat from the West.”

This man goes on hunting and fishing trips with President Putin to Siberia, and in the past has been seen as a possible successor.

But if you look at this extraordinary image of him at the end of this table, sitting awkwardly next to the head of the Armed Forces, you’ll wonder if what he says actually reaches Putin’s ears.

This photograph was taken three days after a military campaign fighting unexpected Ukrainian resistance and low military morale.

“Shoigu was supposed to go to Kiev; he is Minister of Defense and he was supposed to succeed, ”Vera Mironova, a specialist in armed conflicts, explains to the BBC.

He was credited with the military takeover of crimea in 2014.

He was also in charge of the GRU military intelligence agencywas charged with two nerve agent poisonings: the deadly 2018 Salisbury attack in the UK and the near-fatal attack on opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Siberia in 2020.

The snapshot of Shoigu’s meeting with Putin looks even worse if we zoom in. “It looks like someone just died, like they’re at a funeral,” says Mironova.

It may sound weird, but Russian security expert and writer Andrei Soldatov believes that the Defense Minister is still, of those listened to by the president, the most influential voice.

“Shoigu is not only in charge of the Army, he is also partially in charge of the ideology; in Russia, the ideology is mainly about history, and he is in control of the narrative.”

As chief of staff, it was his job to invade Ukraine and complete the mission quickly, and by that standard he has been found deficient.

Valery Gerasimov has played a major role in Vladimir Putin’s military campaigns since he commanded an army in theChechen war of 1999and was also in charge of the military planning for Ukraineoverseeing military exercises in Belarus last month.

Described as a “tough and serious thug” by Russia specialist Mark Galeotti, General Gerasimov also played a key role in the military campaign to annex Crimea.

Some reports suggest that it has now been sidelined due to the faltering start to the Ukraine invasion and reports of low morale among the troops.

But Andrei Soldatov believes that this is an illusion in some sectors: “Putin cannot control every road and every battalion, and that is his role.”

And although the defense minister loves his uniforms, he has no military training and needs to trust the professionals, adds the specialist.

“Pathrushev is the most aggressive falconand he thinks the West has been trying to get Russia for years,” says Ben Noble, associate professor of Russian politics at University College London.

He is one of the three most loyal to Putin who have served with him since the 1970s in St. Petersburg, when Russia’s second city was still known as Leningrad.

The other two stalwarts are the head of the security service, Alexander Bortnikov, and the head of foreign intelligence, Sergei Naryshkin.

The president’s entire inner circle is known as silovikior “the executors”but these three men are even closer.

Few have as much influence over the president as Nikolai Patrushev.

Not only did he work with him in the former KGB, the Russian intelligence service, during the communist era, but he replaced him as head of its successor organization, the FSB, between 1999 and 2008.

It was during a rare meeting of the Russian Security Council, three days before the invasion, that Patrushev put forward his view that the US’s “specific goal” was the disintegration of Russia.

The session was an extraordinary theatrical scene showing the president sitting behind a desk as his security team approached a lectern and gave his opinion on recognizing the independence of the Russian-backed rebels in Ukraine.

Nikolai Patrushev passed the test. “He’s the main rallying cry, and you get the sense that Putin has moved to the most extreme position of his,” says Ben Noble.

Experts in the Kremlin say the president trusts the information he receives from the security services more than any other source, and Alexander Bortnikov is seen as part of Putin’s inner sanctum.

Alexander Bortnikov, another KGB veteran from Leningrad, assumed leadership of the FSBreplacing Nikolai Patrushev.

Both men are known to be close to the president, but as Ben Noble points out: “We also can’t say with complete confidence who’s in charge and who’s calling the shots.”

The FSB has considerable influence over other police services and even has their own special forces.

Bortnikov is important, but he is not there to challenge the Russian leader or give advice like others do, Andrei Soldatov believes.

Completing the trio of old spies from Leningrad, Sergei Naryshkin has stood by the president for much of his career.

So how should we approach the remarkable rebuke he was subjected to when he strayed from Putin’s line of argument during the Security Council meeting?

When asked for his assessment of the situation, the intelligence chief got flustered and altered his words, only for the president to tell him: “That is not what we are discussing.”

The long session was edited, so the Kremlin deliberately decided to show that tense moment in front of a huge television audience.

“It was shocking. It was very cool and collected, and people will have wondered: ‘what’s going on here?’” Ben Noble told the BBC.

Mark Galeotti says he was shocked by the toxic atmosphere of the whole situation.

But Andrei Soldatov thinks Putin was just enjoying the moment: “Putin loves to play with his inner circle and make (Naryshkin) look like a fool.”

Sergei Naryshkin has long followed Putin, in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, then in Putin’s office in 2004, and finally becoming Speaker of Parliament.

But he also runs the Russian Historical Society and, in Soldatov’s opinion, has proved very important in providing the president ideological foundations for your actions.

Last year, he gave an interview to the BBC’s Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg, in which he denied that Russia had carried out poisonings and cyberattacks or interfered in elections in other countries.

For 18 years, he has been the Russia’s highest-ranking diplomatpresenting Russia’s case to the world even though he is not seen as having a major role in decision-making.

Sergei Lavrov, 71, is further evidence that Vladimir Putin relies heavily on figures from his past.

It’s a cunning operator: Last month he tried to ridicule British Chancellor Liz Truss for her knowledge of Russian geography and the year before he tried to humiliate European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

But he has long been on the sidelines of all things Ukraine, and despite his gruff and hostile reputation, he advocated more diplomatic talks on Ukraine, and the Russian president chose to ignore him.

It is unlikely that he cared that the majority of the UN Human Rights Council walked out while trying to defend Russia’s invasion via video call.

A rare female face in Putin’s entourage, she oversaw the Upper House vote to approve the deployment of Russian forces abroad, paving the way for the invasion.

Valentina Matviyenko is another Putin supporter from St. Petersburg who also helped bring about the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

But she is not considered one of the main decision makers. That said, few people can say with complete certainty who is in charge and who makes the important decisions.

Like any other member of the Russian Security Council, his role is give the impression that there is a collective discussion when it is more likely that the Russian leader has already made up his mind.

A former bodyguard to the president, he now heads Russia’s National Guard, Rosgvardia, formed by President Putin just six years ago as a kind of personal army in the style of a praetorian guard similar to the Roman Empire.

By choosing his own personal security guard to lead it, he ensured their loyalty, and Viktor Zolotov has increased their number to 400,000.

Vera Mironova believes that the original Russian plan was to complete the invasion in a matter of daysand when the army seemed to be failing, the Russian National Guard took the lead.

The problem is that the leader of the National Guard he has no military trainingand since their force has no tanks, they have also been vulnerable to attack.

Who else does Putin listen to?

The first Minister Mikhail Mishustin has the unenviable task of rescuing the economy, but has little to say about the war.

The Mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyaninand the head of the state oil giant Rosneft, Igor Sechinare also close to the president, according to political analyst Yevgeny Minchenko.

The billionaire brothers Boris and Arkady Rottenberg, who were childhood friends of the president, have also been close confidants for a long time. In 2020, the magazine Forbes he named them “the richest family in Russia”.