Nikolai Patrushev, “the most dangerous man in Russia” and who “whispers poison in Putin’s ear”

On paper, is a merely advisory body that is responsible for giving advice to the president on matters of national and foreign security. In practice, however, this institution inherited from the soviet regime it has long been the center of political decision-making in the Kremlin.

And who is in command of this apparatus is Nikolai Patrushev, one of the closest advisers to Vladimir Putin who could take his place if something happened to the current leader. Born in 1951, Patrushev is considered by many to be the president’s hawk, with whom he shares his imperial vision of the world.

[De las palabras a los hechos: así cumple cada país su promesa de armar a Ucrania]

for the academic British Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia from the Faculty of Slavic and Eastern European Studies at University College London, he is “the demon on Putin’s shoulder whispering poison in his ear”. Or, in other words, “the most dangerous man in Russia”, as Galeotti has repeated in various posts.

Fame is by no means free. His numerous appearances in different national media, place him as one of the main speakers of Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine.

This same April, Patrushev conducted an interview in the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, in which he began by accusing the United States of “attempting to force Russia to relinquish its sovereignty, self-awareness, culture, and independent foreign policy.” And he ended up talking about the special operation in Ukraine to “denazify the territory and destroy the foothold of neo-Nazism created by the efforts of the West on the Russian borders.”

Some proclamations that follow the line marked by the kremlin since the beginning of the year, but taken to the extreme and mixed with different conspiracy theories. “The West has revived the shadow market for the purchase of human organs from socially vulnerable segments of the Ukrainian population for clandestine transplant operations for European patients,” she says in the interview.

Career as a spy

In his youth, he studied naval engineering and received a doctorate in legal sciences. However, if today he is responsible for the Security Council, it is because of his career as a spy.

In the 70’s he joined the KGB from what is now St. Petersburg and that before it was Leningrad. There he met Putin, although they worked in different departments, and since then he has remained by his side.

[Al menos 12 muertos, entre ellos un niño, en un bombardeo ruso contra la ciudad de Vinnytsia]

First as an adviser to the current Russian leader when he was appointed head of the FSB (KGB successor agency) in 1998. Later, when Yeltsin appointed Putin as prime minister, Patrushev replaced Putin as head of the Federal Security Servicea position he held for a decade.

Although he has spent his career virtually in the shadows, Patrushev’s name is inextricably linked to some of the darkest moments of Putin’s tenure. It is the case of the wave of attacks that terrified the country in 1999 and that served as justification for the Kremlin to start a new war in Chechnya.

Mastermind of the assassination of opponent Litvinenko

In that year, a series of bomb attacks on residential buildings killed 300 people. They were then attributed to Chechen Islamic extremists…until a foiled attack in September of that year cast doubt on who was responsible.

Specifically, when a bomb was found in the city of Ryazan, 200 kilometers from Moscow, and Patrushev confessed that it was actually made with “sugar” and not with “explosives”, since it was a simulacrum organized by the FSB. Also, some international investigationspoint to Patrushev as mastermind of the assassination of former spy and opponent Alezander Litvinenko, poisoning him with radioactive polonium 210 in a London hotel in 2006. However, like Putin, he who is one of the most powerful men in Russia has always denied his involvement in the matter.