When Shoigu went abroad, his closest confidant was arrested on charges of corruption. Such matters can be treated as either minor or major — because their entire system operates in a decidedly pre-modern way. In other words, keeping everyone fed and well-compensated is not a crime but a skill. So while this was technically an offense, it was not the real reason for his removal.
There is a famous line from the classic Chinese film Let the Bullets Fly: “The boss is often just an empty shell.” From all the signs, the Plywood General looks more like a politician than a soldier — despite serving as the chief steward of Russia’s armed forces for so long. In fact, he backed the right horse twice in critical moments, which is how he soared to the top: someone who had never served a single day in the military became its supreme head.
I stated at the very beginning of this war: General Shoigu was not the military’s representative within Putin’s government — quite the opposite, he was Putin’s representative inside the military system. The truth is, despite Putin being in power for over twenty years, had it not been for this war, he had never really managed to get his hands into the military apparatus. With the exception of General Surovikin — the “Doomsday General” — whom Shoigu personally promoted, the real power players in other key military positions emerged through the military’s own internal momentum. This is a tradition stretching back to Soviet times and continuing to this day. Any sector that monopolizes social resources over a long period will gradually develop its own internal ecosystem. Whether driven by tradition and inertia or by entangled interests, it becomes self-organizing — an independent power center. Outsiders cannot simply insert themselves into it. This pattern has appeared in every country.
You can guess why the people Trump sent to audit U.S. military accounts keep having “accidents” and nothing ever comes of it.
The Plywood General may not know how to fight a war, but he is exceptional at things like engineering budgets. Russia’s annual military budget is only around $60–70 billion. Over the decade that Shoigu dominated defense, the total spent still didn’t match a single year of U.S. military expenditure — the U.S. spends over $800 billion annually. With that modest budget, the Plywood General carried out military reforms, equipped dozens of battalion tactical groups, produced four Tu-160 strategic bombers, manufactured over 300 other aircraft, built several thousand tanks, and constructed several warships. He also sustained a war that has now lasted more than two years, raised salaries, ensured various bonuses were paid out, and even made sure everyone in the system got their cut. You can’t help but admire his organizational ability and his talent for maneuvering through complex relationships.
The Plywood General was Putin’s political ally. The United Russia party currently in power was formed by a merger of several pro-Putin factions, the largest of which was Shoigu’s own power base. So when Putin put him in charge of defense, his intention was to use Shoigu as his personal representative to extend his reach into the military system. It would be wrong to say he failed to extend that reach — but it would also be wrong to say he did so purely as Putin’s proxy. There is a subtle nuance here: from the perspective of the military’s existing personnel, Shoigu was Putin’s agent. But from Putin’s perspective, Shoigu was building up his own power base. When that power base remained obedient, he was “my representative.” The moment it became less compliant, it transformed into an even more dangerous threat: with no allies outside and trouble brewing within, a palace coup would leave no recourse.
When the Cook (Prigozhin) launched his mutiny, I predicted in my article A705: A Replay of 1917?! that he would not succeed — the entire elite class would not follow him — and I noted that he had been forced into a hasty uprising with no real planning or preparation. The Cook’s faction was cultivated by Putin; it couldn’t be called a political ally, merely a private militia and enforcer. Wagner was different from Kadyrov’s forces. Little Kad has territory, private troops, and a complete administrative and fiscal apparatus of his own — a genuine warlord, capable of dominating a region in retreat or seizing greater power in advance. Wagner had no roots. It could only function as a private force for doing the dirty and heavy work.
Who was the true political poet behind all this? Certainly not the Cook.
All political allies operate through both cooperation and struggle, maintaining a delicate balance. Whoever breaks that balance triggers violent conflict.
When Wagner was grinding through Artemivsk (Bakhmut), taking on 26 Ukrainian brigade-level combat units in rotation, a recurring pattern emerged: the moment they achieved a breakthrough and gained battlefield advantage, ammunition and supplies would mysteriously fail to arrive. Who was responsible for supplying those battlefield essentials? Shoigu, of course. Make of that what you will — coincidence or deliberate?
The Americans engineered a scenario to bleed Russia and Ukraine against each other, but the factions within Russia were also using this opportunity to bleed each other. This is the baseline of human nature — no matter the era, such things are inevitable.
By rights, it was entirely legitimate for Shoigu as the official authority to absorb and integrate a private military group like Wagner — you can’t have militias everywhere. Yet while he was bleeding Wagner dry on one hand, with the other he was building his own private armed group, “Fakel” (Torch), modeled on Wagner. Can you imagine? The supreme head of Russia’s military, the official representative, secretly running his own private armed force. As I said before: political allies operate through cooperation — once the balance is broken, conflict becomes inevitable.
Why did General Surovikin maintain a closer relationship with Wagner than with the official military leadership? By all logic, as a member of the military establishment, his loyalties should run the other way. That’s anomalous, right? If you look at Surovikin’s career history, the pattern becomes clear: he came up through the army, then Putin pressed through resistance to forcibly reassign him as head of the air force. After taking that post, he turned around the situation on the Syrian battlefield and consolidated his position. Whose man was he? Whose private soldiers was Wagner? Once you see that connection, it all makes sense.
After the Cook died, Wagner was broken apart, the Chechen forces were dispersed — no longer appearing as an independent combat unit, but integrated at the battalion level into mixed formations on the battlefield. The Doomsday General was exiled to Africa with nothing to do. That was Shoigu’s handiwork. Beyond his political skills, he also had genuine capability: Russia’s military-industrial production capacity really did expand many times over from pre-war levels. Output surged dramatically, and the incomes of workers in the sector rose by a third.
Yet it is precisely when a person is riding highest that they are most likely to stumble. Because success breeds invisible self-inflation — and that inflation creates enormous pressure on those around them, forcing a reaction.
Shoigu’s closest confidant — the one arrested for corruption — along with two other inner-circle allies within the Ministry of Defense, became drunk on their own success. They were openly discussing the question of succession to power. Some things, even whispered behind closed doors, can trigger a fierce backlash if they leak out. And here they were discussing it in the open. Would this not plant in everyone’s mind the chilling recognition that someone’s ambitions to seize power were plain for all to see — just as the ancient saying warns? In keeping with Russia’s characteristically blunt and heavy-handed style, the current approach of apparent promotion masking actual demotion is remarkably restrained. His economic interests remain intact — control over military-industrial production and related projects stays in his hands. But the entire governance structure and personnel of the defense system will inevitably be restructured.
And the one now set to lead all of this is an economist who is fiercely opposed to dollar dominance. He is not a political ally with independent power — merely a technocrat with expertise but no power base of his own. Outside of his area of specialization, every personnel decision and institutional adjustment he makes will inevitably carry out Putin’s will.
And so, through this war and twenty years of patient waiting, Putin is finally genuinely extending his reach into the military system. The Plywood General, for all his calculations, ended up drawing water with a bamboo basket — all his effort gone to waste. In the end, he was merely stitching a wedding dress for someone else.
But some things — once lost — are lost forever.