Those who believe the Nazi-infested worldview espoused by Vladimir Putin to be — softly put — outlandish, have yet to meet Nikolai Patrushev.
The man known as the hawk’s hawk, the hardliner of hardliners, was back in the spotlight this week after being pushed out of his 16-year-role as secretary of the Security Council, to be replaced by Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in a cabinet reshuffle ordered by Putin.
His new post as an aide to Putin tasked with shipbuilding matters reeks of a demotion.
“This comes down to honorable retirement,” analyst Nikolai Petrov told POLITICO.
If so, it marks a sharp break with a spy who has been close to Putin since their KGB years in 1970s Leningrad and went on to play a pivotal role in his quarter-century rule.
“This is my good comrade,” Putin is reported to have said in 1999, introducing Patrushev as his successor at the FSB spy agency after he himself became prime minister. “He will do everything for the security services to become even more powerful.”
That Patrushev did. And then some.
Over the years, Patrushev, who once referred to spooks as the modern-day “nobility” — has emerged as Russia’s conspiracist in chief, spouting theories to underpin the Putin regime’s expansionism abroad and repression at home.
It might be difficult to believe today — with shipbuilding being what some might consider garden leave — but there was a time when analysts wondered whether Patrushev was the real power behind the throne.
Importantly, he was effectively Russia’s national security advisor and as such the main liaison for security with foreign powers, including the United States — the object of much of his wrath.
It was Patrushev who reportedly egged Putin on into launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But that appears to also have been the beginning of his own unraveling.
As security chief, he will have faced questions about the Kremlin’s misconceptions on the ease of taking control of Ukraine, and how the anticipated three-day blitzkrieg triumph became a long and grinding war.
Not to speak of huge security breaches at home, such as warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny last year or the recent terror attack on the Crocus concert hall outside Moscow.
According to some, however, the final curtain has yet to fall on Patrushev’s career. His new position still leaves some wiggle-room for influence. And — crucially — he will still have Putin’s ear.
Considering what he has said in past years, that alone is reason to take note. Here’s a selection:
- The West is trading in Ukrainian orphans and organs
Two months after Russia launched its invasion, in April 2022, Patrushev alleged in an interview with newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Ukrainian criminals were “trafficking young orphans taken from Ukraine for their subsequent illegal adoption in Europe.”
(Come to think of it: Perhaps Patrushev misread his own intel and correctly predicted Russia’s own crimes in abducting children and placing them with Russian families, according to an ICC arrest warrant and independent journalists?)
That wasn’t all: the West had “revived the shadow market for the purchase of human organs from socially vulnerable segments of the Ukrainian population for clandestine transplants for European patients.”
2. The ‘golden billion’
One of the most stubborn post-Soviet conspiracy theories stipulates that a small elite of uber wealthy deliberately manufactures global crises to enrich themselves.
Guess who not only believes that theory, but has elevated it to a question of national security?
Months into Russia’s invasion, in May 2022, Patrushev told the newspaper Argumenty i Fakti that the “Anglo-Saxons” had been guided by that principle for “centuries.”
“Hiding behind words such as the fight for human rights, freedom and democracy, in reality they are implementing the doctrine of the ‘golden billion,’ which stipulates that only a limited number of people can thrive in this world,’” he said.
Evil plotting by “a handful of magnates in the City of London and Wall Street” was to blame for unemployment and migration crises in Europe as well as hunger in Africa caused by disrupted grain supplies (and certainly not by the bombing of Ukrainian ports.)
Not to forget coronavirus, which Patrushev figured originated in a Pentagon lab.
“The Clinton, Rockefeller, Soros and Biden foundations were involved in this work,” he said.
3. Madeleine Albright speaks from beyond the grave
In 2015, a year after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, Patrushev expressed the conviction that the United States wanted to wipe Russia off the face of the earth.
“You probably remember the declaration of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that neither the Far North nor Siberia belongs to Russia,” he said in an interview.That idea stemmed from a 2006 interview in which Boris Ratnikov, a retired major general at the Federal Guard Service, boasted of the agency’s special department of psychics.
In Ratnikov’s telling, his boss Georgy Rogozin had lain down and entered a trance-like state. Using a photo of Albright as a prompt, Rogozin acted as an “interface” between Ratnikov and the top American politician.
While scouring her mind, Rogozin picked up on Albright’s “pathological hatred of Slavs” and envy towards Russia for having “the world’s largest reserves of natural resources.”
4. Students are agents of revolution
It’s not just Russia’s territorial integrity that the West is looking to undermine.
In 2021, Patrushev’s spokesperson informed the press that he would soon be reporting to Putin on Western attacks on Russian moral and spiritual values, as well as attempts to impose “alien ideals and norms” that would undermine social stability.
Among those are professing LGBT+ values — another attempt by the “golden billion” (see point 2) to rid the world of “superfluous people.”
Using NGOs as agents, the West targeted vulnerable groups in Russia, such as ethnic minorities and religious groups, with the aim of “destabilizing the sociopolitical situation, and discrediting the Russian authorities.”
Another instrument was students, lured to the West with grants and exchange programs. From the United States, “they return as agitators ready to carry out so-called democratic transformations and prepare the ground for the implementation of ‘color revolution’ scenarios,” Patrushev told a security meeting in the Armenian capital Yerevan.
Earlier, Patrushev warned of attempts to recruit Russian youth by foreign cults professing neo-paganism, occultism and Satanism.
In his 2023 interview Patrushev warned: “Westerners are trying to weaken our country, dismember it, destroy the Russian language and the Russian world.”
5. Ukraine is being invaded… By Poland.
Not Russia, but Poland is trying to invade Ukraine, Patrushev explained at a national security meeting in May 2022.
“The so-called Western partners of the Kyiv regime are using the current situation for their own selfish interests and have big plans for Ukrainian lands,” he said.
As proof, he cited a visit to Kyiv by Polish President Andrzej Duda, and his “statement that soon the Polish-Ukrainian border will stop existing.”
“Judging by everything, Poland is already moving towards seizing territory in western Ukraine.”
In fact, Duda had pledged the continuation of Polish aid to Ukraine and fleeing Ukrainians, saying the border between the two countries should “unite, not divide.” He also called Ukrainians “heroes” for fighting for their independence.
Feeling relieved, considering all of the above, that Patrushev might be on his way out?
If you are, it might be worth keeping in mind that Russia’s Ambassador to the U.N. Vasily Nebenza once told the Security Council that the United States had been deploying combat mosquitoes in Ukraine.
“We all know these claims are pure fabrications, brought forth without a shred of evidence. And I would even venture to say the Russian delegation knows these charges are fabricated. But they dutifully carry out marching orders from President Putin,” came the riposte from U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
The post Putin has ditched his paranoid security chief. Here are 5 of the wackiest things Nikolai Patrushev has said. appeared first on Politico.
