This was an excellent video, only about 30 minutes: some highlights.

Shoigu was Defense Minister, is now Secretary of the Security Council which effectively makes him Putin's national security advisor. He's also been given an important executive position, he's been appointed as deputy chair of the military industrial commission, replacing Medvedev who's the deputy chair of the Security Council. Shoigu has also been appointed as head of the federal service for military-technical coordination; this used to be an agency within the Russian defense ministry but a few days before this reshuffle Putin transferred it from the defense ministry to the secretariat of the Security Council. What these appointments do is put him in charge of the military industrial economy, coordinating military procurement and production and development of new systems for the military; that's what the military-technical part is about. He's actually been fulfilling this role for some time, he's the one (rather than Medvedev, who was appointed deputy head of the military industrial commission in 2022) who's been visiting the factories, meeting the engineers and scientists, working out the kind of weapons the military needed and ensuring an uninterrupted supply to the front lines.

Belousov was Putin's economic advisor in the past. He's said to be exceptionally capable and likable, someone who makes people work well and people like working for. He's extremely good at technical forecasting and a good manager, something a sprawling organization like the defense ministry needs. He's not a military man but historically, going back to the Russian revolution, this role has almost always been filled by a civilian administrator. He's not exactly an economist, as widely reported; what he was for a long time was an official at an agency called the Central Economic Mathematical Institute, an institution under the Russian Academy of Sciences set up in the 1960s that was set up primarily to introduce mathematical and economic forecasting mechanisms into the planning systems. So he's got long connections with the very powerful scientific community.

It's not in Belousov's official bio but we know from Putin that at a certain point in the 1980s Belousov became an official in Gosplan, the Soviet Union's principle economic planning agency. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Gosplan became the economics ministry. Belousov has been Putin's economic advisor in the past and then as Deputy PM, the man in overall charge of the economy. The Russian economy is booming, he's done a superb job and by all accounts is an extremely good manager. His strengths are in planning and forecasting so he's being transferred to the Defense Ministry at a time when defense procurement has expanded enormously and he's there to ensure the situation is managed efficiently, even as the man who's now taken over from him as overall head of the Russian economy, is a man called Monturov who was previously Russia's industry minister, worked directly under Belousov and is now in charge of Russia's civilian economy.

So we're basically seeing a strengthening of management and planning agencies across the government: Shoigu put in charge of the military industrial economy; Belousov at the Defense Ministry working very closely with Shoigu; and Monturov, industry chief, in charge of the civilian economy. This highlights the fact that the overall priority is re-industrialization. In all other respects the economic team, which has been extraordinarily successful - Nabiullina at the Central Bank, Siluanov at the finance ministry, Reshetnikov at the economics ministry - all remain in place as they were expected to.

(13:49)

Shoigu has been an effective and capable administrator, in charge of the Defense Ministry from 2012 to 2024 and he took it to the point it's outproducing the entirety of the collective West. It's clear that with Belousov coming in, they're going to ramp things up and innovate even more.

Gerasimov is staying in place as Chief of the General Staff, the major military figure in Russia and in charge of the actual uniformed military. Gerasimov is widely considered to be extremely capable and you can see how effective he's been in the fact that Russia is winning the war.

On Petrushev, one possibility is that he will take over Medvedev's job as deputy chair of the Security Council. Medvedev is a lawyer and said to be an outstanding one; some say what he really wants is to transfer to the Russian Constitutional Court and eventually become its chair. However, if this change was going to happen it probably would have been announced already.

Petrushev is a former intelligence official, coordinating intelligence matters for Putin for a long time and maybe his new post will actually be his old post, to act as some kind of Director of National Intelligence for Putin. The important thing to say is that Petrushev has not been sacked. They say he'll have a new post and I understand that his son who's been a very successful agriculture minister, has been promoted in this reshuffle as well.

(21:08)

The West always gets the Security Council wrong, probably because in the Western conception, Russia is a dictatorship with Putin as the autocrat. The idea that there's an institution that Putin works with and through and that this institution collectively makes the key decisions is so contrary to the whole Western narrative about Russia that it's completely ignored.

The Security Council is the central decision-making body in Russia. It meets every Tuesday and the people who sit on it are the most important and powerful people in Russia, some of them simply by virtue of their role, e.g., the heads of the Federation Council and Duma that comprise the Russian parliament.

The governmental system in Russia is extremely structured, there's no analog to it in the US. It's where the top people in Russia come together on a weekly basis and talk things through. It's made up of officials from the military sphere, the economic and legal/judicial sphere; its name is misleading, it covers the overall direction of economic policy and domestic policies. It gets reports from people who aren't members of the Security Council, it's an absolutely crucial part of the government.