Why is Sergei Shoigu being accused of a Putin putsch plot?

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0:10I'm Sam Coates from Sky News. And I'm Anne McElvoy from Politico. Downing Street drama, leadership battles and policy U-turns. We're on it before it breaks. We take you straight into the rooms where the real political conversations are happening. Smart Insight, clear analysis in your feeds by 7.45am. So you start your morning fully brief for the day ahead in British politics. Hit follow and listen to Politics at Sam & An's wherever you get your podcasts.

0:42There are reports coming out of Russia of a plot to get rid of Vladimir Putin. But all might not be entirely as it seems. And this is why.

0:59Hi everyone, Neil here and there's going to be an awful lot of talk the next few days about changes in leadership so you might want to spare a thought for Vladimir Putin

1:12This weekend sees Victory Day Russia's big set-piece celebration of its victory over Nazi Germany and others. Think lots of Tanks, missiles and funny marching through Red Square. Except this year it's been scaled back. And it's probably not a complete coincidence. This has happened after reports of a plot to oust the Russian president. Vladimir Putin is very worried to the point where he is now, in the last few months, has been hunkering down and spending much of his time out of the public eye and in his various bunkers. Sergei Shoigu is the man named as Behind the Conspiracy. He was Putin's defence minister.

1:48Then he got sidelined when things didn't go to plan in Ukraine. But here's where things get confusing, as he isn't someone you'd immediately think of as a traitor. There's been a systematic purging of Shoigu's allies. So that's where this idea that he's got this authority within the military, that's where that idea becomes unstuck. So what's really going on here? Ivor Bennett, a Sky's Moscow correspondent. Ivor, always good to have you on the podcast. Look, these reports that Vladimir Putin is increasingly fearful or perhaps even just aware of some sort of an assassination attempt. What do we know?

2:22OK, so these reports are based on a European intelligence report. We don't know where this report came from. We don't know which European intelligence agency is responsible for it. But according to it and the reports of the report, yes, supposedly Vladimir Putin is very worried about an assassination attempt or an internal coup d 'etat, to the point where he is now, and the last few months has been hunkering down and spending much of his time out of the public eye and in his various bunkers. And given the position that he holds, the country that he leaves, you know, you'd imagine he would always have, you know, at least a couple of eyes peering over his shoulder.

3:00But the man named in the report is someone called Sergei Shogu, his former defence minister. So who exactly is he? Yeah, so as you say, his former defence minister, he was in post for more than a decade, but then he was sidelined a couple of years ago, roughly this time two years ago actually in 2024, and moved to be Secretary of the Security Council. And that was seen as an ousting. The two used to be very close friends. He was a loyal ally. The two would actually go on fishing trips together and would often post quite macho, topless photos of them in their fishing boat together. But since then, as I say, he's been sidelined.

3:38But according to this report, he is the one who is associated with these assassination kind of plotting, because supposedly he retains quite a lot of authority within the military high command. And the other thing that this report talks about is that Putin, as a result, has been kind of not just hunkering down, but also has tightened all the security protocols around him. So people in his inner circle, people like photographers, cooks, bodyguards, they're not allowed to use mobile phones around him that can be connected to the internet. They're not allowed to use public transport, supposedly. They've had surveillance cameras installed in their homes, according to this report.

4:17That's how paranoid Putin supposedly is right now. The report also says that Putin has cut down visits to his official residences outside Moscow, and he spends all his time, supposedly weeks on end, in this bunker in Krasnodar, which is in southern Russia near the Black Sea, where he's completely engaged and submerged in the kind of minutiae of his invasion of Ukraine. And supposedly he disappears for weeks at a time, but state media is then given kind of pre-recorded footage of him to play out on their news bulletins to project this image of normality and that everything actually is fine. Nobody panic.

4:56Just how accurate or credible do we actually think this report is? I think there are certainly some things that are believable. I think the paranoia that Putin is claimed to be showing is believable. I mean, look at events elsewhere. We've had Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, a Putin ally. He's been toppled by the Trump administration. We've seen the assassination of Iran's supreme leader, again, another Putin ally. So I think those kind of events, coupled with Ukraine's increasing ability to strike deep inside Russia with their long-range drone attacks, I think that will certainly have made Vladimir Putin worried for his own personal safety.

5:35But does that mean Sergei Shoigu, his former loyal ally and former close friend, does that mean he is plotting a coup against him? I'm not so sure. Well, is there any evidence that we might be able to point to? I mean, because look, if you want to take on Vladimir Putin, you're going to need support and you're probably going to need support from aspects of the Russian military. And you would assume, given his time as defence minister, that Shoigu might at least have access to that. Well, that's the thinking in this report. That's the reasoning that he used to be the head of the Ministry of Defence, and therefore he retains a lot of kind of loyalty and authority within the kind of military high command and the powers that be, the powers you would need to launch a coup.

6:19But I think that's where the kind of theory becomes unstuck in the eyes of many analysts and Russia watchers, because actually, you know, Sergei Shoigu is the man who's associated with the kind of botched invasion of Ukraine, why it didn't go to plan to begin with, and then why there were so many kind of supply issues, strategy kind of fumblings in the two years before his ousting. So that's one reason. Then secondly, his kind of former close associates and people he put in place within the kind of high command of the military since his ousting have themselves been ousted and subject to corruption cases.

6:56Some have been put in prison, things like that. There's been a systematic purging of Shoigu's allies. So that's where this idea that he's got this authority within the military, that's where that idea becomes unstuck. Let's sit Sergei Shoigu just to the side for a second, Ivor. Vladimir Putin is a former KGB, FSB agent, right? This is a sharp man, particularly when it comes to kind of the cloak and dagger stuff. So in his time as president, Has he done anything to the state's apparatuses to make sure that a coup attempt is less likely than more? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And as you say, his kind of KGB schooling will have taught him that.

7:35He's been in power, don't forget, for 26 years. It's a quarter of a century. It's an incredibly long time. And in that time, he has kind of centralised all power. Critics will say it's an authoritarian state, of course. and he's kind of stacked his inner circle and the federal security services that protect high-ranking officials with loyalists. So I think it would be very, very hard to plot against him without someone finding out who's a loyalist to him and then Vladimir Putin finding out. Yeah, I think he's built the system as such to deter against any kind of internal coups. So look, Ivor, if we imagine for a second that this report is not credible, and you've given and plenty of reasons why we may well at least doubt it somewhat.

8:18Why then do you think it was released and by whom? Is there a bit of shady stuff going on in the background, spooks being spooks, disinformation and all that? Well, I think there certainly seems to be an element of that. And I think the timing is interesting. Being released in this week in the run-up to Victory Day and the big military parade. So Victory Day is May the 9th. It's a really, really big deal here. It marks the end of World War II, and specifically here, the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany, marked each year by this big military parade in Red Square. So it's supposed to be a big projection of power for Vladimir Putin.

8:53It's a key instrument central to the identity that he's created for modern Russia. So releasing it now kind of obviously projects an image of weakness for him if the Russian public suddenly hear he's hunkered down kind of fearing assassination attempts. So that's one reason. I think the other reason is that it could be also to destabilize the elites here, the Russian elites, and get them looking over their shoulder. Because if, say, the result of all this is that Vladimir Putin outs his kind of longtime ally and close friend, Sergei Shoigu, then that's going to make the other kind of people in his inner circle, the elites, all rather, rather nervous.

9:31And so, okay, we don't know exactly who it's from, but it's from a European intelligence agency, and this could certainly serve Europe's interests, I'd say. I mean, assassination or not, we do know that Vladimir Putin has some broader security concerns. I mean, the victory march that you've just been talking about has been scaled back this year. There have been warnings issued to embassies based in Kiev, of course, the Ukrainian capital. Why is all that going on? Yeah, so to just add some more context about this parade, it normally involves lots of heavy machinery. Normally, there are armoured personnel carriers rumbling across Red Square, the big Yars ballistic missile launcher carrying its intercontinental ballistic missiles across Red Square.

10:16That's normally the highlight. Last year, they even paraded some attack drones. This year, though, they've said they're going to scale it down. There won't be any heavy machinery. And the reason is the threat of Ukrainian drones. There has been a spike in drone attacks across Russia recently. not just kind of energy infrastructure, but also at the start of this week, a drone hit a Moscow high rise just a few miles from the Kremlin. And I think that has made the authorities really rattled here. It's got them worried and nervous that their big day, Vladimir Putin's big parade is going to be disrupted.

10:51So that's why they've decided to scale it down. And I think there's also another school of thought is that there could be more battlefield pressures as well, that some of this machinery is actually needed in Ukraine rather on Red Square for this parade.

11:297.45am. So you start your morning fully brief for the day ahead in British politics. Hit follow and listen to Politics at Salmon Hands wherever you get your podcasts.

11:48But let's just go back to Putin himself. Could he ever be, you know, so to speak, taken out? Or is his grasp on power just so complete, so total, that it would be unthinkable? Just an example, we have Genni Prigozhin, the former leader of the Wagner Mercenary Group. He had a very large, very public, very dangerous falling out with Vladimir Putin. Just how close did he get to being a serious threat to Putin's authority or even his life? No, exactly. I mean, that was the biggest challenge on his leadership since he came to power, really wasn't it and it almost came from nowhere he seemed untouchable then all of a sudden as you say Yevgeny Pregosian led this column of men with so many kind of armed mercenaries behind him to within 200 kilometers of Moscow and many actually believe he could have actually if he'd come this far what would the authorities what would they have done I mean they would have been quite powerless to stop anything and it was all kind of called off at the last moment and the kind of deal was struck and then two months later Pregosian winds up dead in this mystery plane crash so yeah that was a real kind of threat to his authority.

12:52Since then, in the two years, he did manage to kind of tighten his grip and control. But actually, I must say, in recent weeks, there seems to be a kind of shift in the atmosphere here, for a number of reasons, because there have been a number of instances where high profile people have kind of spoken out against what's happening. A lot of the complaints, including from a kind of former Putin loyalist, have been to do with the internet outages. There have been a lot of internet blackouts in recent weeks and months, supposedly to do with security. But some, his critics say that it's to do with Vladimir Putin wanting to tighten control and to suppress any dissent here.

13:32So there have been complaints about that. There have been complaints about the economy as well. Lots of small businesses are going to the wall because there's been hikes in VAT. People are unhappy about cuts to public services. And this is all because of the war. The economy is now entirely geared towards the war. Money has been taken from many places and been put towards the Ministry of Defence. And with the war now, it's in its fifth year. People are growing increasingly dissatisfied with it. You can detect that both within the elites and within the public. And I think the Kremlin seems to know that.

14:08It's allowed this kind of bubbling discontent, these various instances to appear. And that is rare. And I think the longer the war goes on, the longer, without any obvious benefits, the danger for Vladimir Putin certainly does increase, the danger and the threat to his rule. If Vladimir Putin is harboring any concerns about challenges to his leadership, about an assassination attempt, about even a kind of a popular uprising, is he displaying any sign of it? Because, you know, I have seen him out and about relatively regularly over the past couple of months. Yeah, that's right. He has been out and about, especially recently.

14:46He met Iran's foreign minister in St. Petersburg a couple of weeks ago. And recently he had an event in Moscow where he met members of Russia's indigenous community. So according to those images, everything's perfectly normal. But going back to that intelligence report, he is now spending a lot of time hunkered down. And if we actually look at the number of public appearances, meetings and trips he's done in the first kind of portion of this year, the first few months, those have dropped off quite significantly. It's certainly true that he's been out and about less than he was last year. I think that certainly does reflect tighter security around him.

15:24That is to be expected given events elsewhere in the world with the toppling of Maduro, the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and also these encroaching long-range drone attacks by Ukraine further into Russia. I mean, look, clearly there are genuine concerns about the veracity of this intelligence report from an unnamed European intelligence agency. But it has done the rounds in terms of European media and indeed the elites in the capitals. Are we perhaps in the West guilty of a bit of wishful thinking? Yeah, I think that's certainly true. There are lots of Western leaders, lots of Western governments who would like to see the back of Vladimir Putin.

16:04Of course, that is, I think, a given. Everyone can agree on that. And I think, as you say, wishful thinking from this intelligence report, maybe, as we discussed, designed to kind of destabilise the elites. So some kind of discord there and also make Putin look weak in the eyes of the Russian public. but at the same time even if he is replaced I think the question is who would come next who would replace him and that's where things get difficult because as we've been talking about he's been in power for so long the whole kind of leadership structure and the way Russia works has been molded to him it is his critics say an authoritarian state with him at the center all power goes through him.

16:48And so whoever does come next, whenever that is, it doesn't necessarily mean that Russia will change, even if its leader does. For Russia to change, that could take a lot longer than for its leader to change. Ivor, always a pleasure. Thanks very much. And that's your lot for the week. And it's been a very busy week. Scroll back if you want to find out what it's like on the front line with Putin's Russia. I interviewed our ambassador to Estonia. We've also been asking if the UN is still fit for its original purpose. ending wars. Dominic Wagon was on Topform that episode. For those and more, just scroll back in your feed.

17:21We're back again next week. Till then, take care.

17:45Conversations are happening. Smart Insight, clear analysis in your feeds by 7.45am. So you start your morning fully brief for the day ahead in British politics. Hit follow and listen to Politics at Sam & Anne's wherever you get your podcasts.