Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev (; born 11 July 1951) is a Russian politician, security officer and former intelligence officer who served as the secretary of the Security Council of Russia from 2008 to 2024. He previously served as the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) from 1999 to 2008.
Belonging to the siloviki faction of president Vladimir Putin's inner circle, Patrushev is believed to be one of the closest advisors to Putin and a leading figure behind Russia's national security affairs. Patrushev has spoken favorably of the rise of KGB stalwarts to the highest echelons of power of Russia, referring to them as the "new nobility".
He played a key role in the decisions to seize and then annex Crimea in 2014 and to invade Ukraine in 2022.
Early life and education Born on 11 July 1951 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), Patrushev is the son of a Soviet Navy officer who was also a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Patrushev studied at secondary school No. 211 in the same class with the future chairman of the Supreme Council of the United Russia party, Boris Gryzlov.Владимир Прибыловский. Патрушев Николай Платонович . — АнтикомпроматПатрушев Николай Платонович . — Официальный сайт ФСБ РФ (www.fsb.ru) Patrushev graduated from Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute in 1974, and initially he worked as an engineer in the Institute's shipbuilding design bureau, but very soon afterwards, in 1975, he was recruited by the KGB.BackGround, People: PATRUSHEV, Nikolai Platonovich, Russia Profile, Moscow, Undated .Retrieved: 8 January 2013.
He attended intelligence and security courses at the KGB School in Minsk, and later at the Higher School of the KGB in Moscow (the present-day FSB Academy).
Patrushev has known Vladimir Putin since the 1970s, when the two men worked together in the Leningrad KGB.
Career
KGB security officer (1975–1991) Starting as a KGB security officer in the city of Leningrad, Patrushev eventually rose to become head of their local anti-smuggling and anti-corruption unit.
FSK and FSB career (1992–1999) After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Patrushev continued to work in the security services and from 1992 to 1994 he was Minister of Security of the Republic of Karelia while in 1994 he was brought to Moscow as head of the Directorate of Internal Security of the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK).
In June 1995, Patrushev became deputy chief of the FSB's Organization and Inspection Department. From May to August 1998, he was chief of the Control Directorate of the Presidential Staff; from August to October, he was Deputy Chief of the Presidential Staff; in October 1998, he was appointed deputy director of the FSB and chief of the directorate for Economic Security. In April 1999, he became FSB First Deputy Director.
Director of FSB (1999–2008) On 9 August 1999, a decree by President Boris Yeltsin promoted him to director, replacing his close friend Vladimir Putin.
In September 1999, a series of explosions hit four apartment blocks in three Russian cities, killing more than 300. The bombings, together with the Invasion of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War. The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months. A suspicious device resembling those used in the bombings was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September 1999. On 23 September, Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the inhabitants of Ryazan and ordered the air bombing of Grozny, which marked the beginning of the Second Chechen War. Three FSB agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police. The next day, Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar, and freed the FSB agents involved. FSB also issued a public apology about the incident.
Although the bombings were widely blamed on Chechen rebels, their guilt was never conclusively proven. A number of historians and investigative journalists have instead called the bombings a false flag attack perpetrated by the FSB to win public support for a new war in Chechnya and to boost the popularity of Vladimir Putin, the former head of the FSB, prior to the upcoming presidential elections.
Former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who blamed the FSB for the bombings and was a critic of Putin, was assassinated in London in 2006. The United Kingdom public inquiry into the poisoning of Litvinenko found that "the FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin."The Litvinenko Inquiry. Report into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, January 2016, p. 241–244.
Security Council of Russia (2008–2024)
From May 2008 until May 2024, Patrushev had been Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, a consultative body of the president that works out his decisions on national security affairs.BackGround, People: PATRUSHEV, Nikolai Platonovich, Russia Profile, Moscow, Undated .Retrieved: 8 January 2013.Russia trolls world by saying it cannot stop its citizens from fighting in Ukraine, Kyiv Post (25 June 2015)
Patrushev considers the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine to have been started by the United States.
Patrushev believes that the United States "would much prefer that Russia did not exist at all."
Following the October 2016 coup d'état plot failure in Montenegro, Patrushev was cited by experts, such as Mark Galeotti, as the Kremlin's point man for the Balkans, which was interpreted as indicating Russia's increasingly hardline approach to the region as well as the latter's growing importance in Russia's foreign policy strategy.
According to Anastasia Vashukevich, Patrushev, who had traveled to Thailand during late February 2018, was involved in her arrest in Thailand during late February 2018. Vashukevich claimed to have evidence linking Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In June 2019, Patrushev said that Iran "has always been and remains our ally and partner".
In January 2021, he said that "the West needs" Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny "to destabilise the situation in Russia, for social upheaval, strikes and new Maidans."
Patrushev was a leading figure behind Russia's updated national security strategy, published in May 2021. It states that Russia may use "forceful methods" to "thwart or avert unfriendly actions that threaten the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation."
On 19 September 2022, during his visit to China, he described the "strengthening of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation with Beijing as an unconditional priority of Russia's foreign policy." He said that both China and Russia are calling for "a more just world order".
On 18 November 2022, he arrived in Tehran and met with Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and top security official Ali Shamkhani. On 21 November 2022, he invited Vietnamese Minister of Public Security Tô Lâm to Moscow to strengthen security cooperation between Russia and Vietnam. On 31 January 2023, he met Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in Moscow.
In February 2023, he hosted CCP Politburo member Wang Yi in Moscow and prepared the ground for the visit of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping to Russia in March 2023. Patrushev said that "amid a campaign by the West to deter both Russia and China, it is particularly important to further deepen the Russian-Chinese coordination and cooperation in the international arena."
In February and March 2023, he visited Algeria, Venezuela and Cuba. On 29 March 2023, Patrushev arrived in New Delhi and met with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. In September 2023, he expressed support for China's policies regarding Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan. In February 2024, he met with the leaders of Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela.
Patrushev is considered as very hawkish towards the West and the United States, and in 2022 was seen by some observers as one of the likeliest candidates for succeeding Putin.
2022 invasion of Ukraine
In August 2021, during the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Patrushev told Izvestia newspaper that the United States had abandoned its Afghan allies, and that the reason was the incompetent work of the intelligence services of the United States, Britain and other NATO countries and the misplaced belief of the West in the correctness of its decisions. He predicted that the United States would also abandon its allies in Ukraine:
In early November 2021, CIA Director William Burns and U.S. ambassador to Russia John Sullivan met in Moscow with Patrushev and informed him that they knew about Russia's invasion plans. Burns warned that if Putin proceeded down this path, the West would respond with severe consequences for Russia. Sullivan recounted that Patrushev was undeterred and "supremely confident" that the invasion was going to succeed. However, in late January 2022, just before the invasion, Patrushev publicly denied that Russia was prepared to attack Ukraine.
Sources say Putin's decision to invade Ukraine was influenced by a small group of war hawks around him, including Patrushev and Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu. According to Putin-regime expert Catherine Belton, it was "Patrushev who's always been the leading ideologue of using capitalism as a tool to undermine the West to buy off and corrupt officials and so on. And he's certainly very much painted the West as a hostile enemy of Russia and something which is kind of debauched and decrepit, and it's time to attack [Ukraine in 2022]." According to sources close to the Kremlin, most of Putin's close advisers opposed the invasion, and even Patrushev advised Putin to give diplomacy another chance three days before the invasion, but Putin overruled them all.
On 26 April 2022, after two months of war, Patrushev predicted that Ukraine would collapse and be broken into several states because of what he cast as a U.S. attempt to use Kyiv to undermine Russia. He repeated the "denazification" trope and claimed: Patrushev claimed that "Ukraine, saturated with weapons, poses a threat to Russia". He downplayed the sanctions against Russia and said that "Russia is reorienting itself away from the European market to the African, Asian and Latin American markets."
In April 2022, he addressed the global food crisis, caused in part by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying that "Tens of millions of people in Africa or the Middle East, through the fault of the West, will be on the verge of starvation. To survive, they will rush to Europe. I'm not sure that Europe will survive the crisis."
In May 2022, he speculated that Poland "is already taking actions related to the seizure of western Ukrainian territories." He claimed that the West "has already revived the shadow market for the purchase of human organs from the socially vulnerable segments of the Ukrainian population for clandestine transplant operations for European patients."
On 17 August 2022, Patrushev met with Narendra Modi's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to discuss measures to strengthen the strategic partnership across sectors including defense ties and energy security. Russia appreciated India's neutral position on Ukraine.
In October 2022, Patrushev accused the United States and its allies of wanting to "fight to the last Ukrainian". He said that Anglo-Saxons "are exploiting Ukraine as an instrument of struggle with our country ... The goal is to suppress Russia, retain their imaginary supremacy, keep their unipolar world, ensure themselves the opportunity to live at the expense of others.