The New Russian MoD Has an Interesting Past

Things are emerging on Andrey Belousov, the new Russian Minister of Defense, that makes me wonder. His connections to the West are fascinating, and a week ago might have meant he should be seen as a foreign agent, at least if I read Russian legislation closely.

So, let’s start with the most recent of these. Mind you, Gerhard Schröder has a few amusing ties to Russia. So maybe this is not the interesting bit.

The new Russian Defense Minister worked with Gerhard Schröder

As BILD columnist Philip Pyatov reminds, in 2015–2020. Andrey Belousov was on the board of directors of Rosneft. In 2017–2022 Gerhard Schröder also worked there. In 2017, he took over the post of chairman of the council from Belousov. The journalist calls them “former colleagues.”

“I don’t know whether that departure was voluntary, or Belousov was forced to transfer his post. But then he praised Schröder with the kindest words. He said that it would be great for Russia to have such a famous person at the head of the board of directors of Rosneft. So we need to understand once again: the current Minister of War of the Russian Federation, who should organize and finance this criminal and murderous war for Putin, did the same thing with Schröder at Rosneft,” Pyatov said in a podcast by BILD deputy editor-in-chief Paul Ronzheimer…