Nikolai Patrushev

Born in 1951 in Leningrad (today Saint Petersburg), Patrushev is the son of a Soviet Navy officer who was also a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.[5] He 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.[6]

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).[5] Subsequently, he was a KGB security officer in the city of Leningrad, and eventually rose to become head of the anti-smuggling and anti-corruption unit of the local KGB.

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 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. On 9 August the same year, a decree by President Boris Yeltsin promoted him to Director, replacing his close friend Vladimir Putin.

The United Kingdom public inquiry into the 2006 poisoning of FSB whistleblower Alexander Litvinenko found that "the FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by Mr Patrushev and also by President Putin."[7]

Patrushev at a meeting of Vladimir Putin with officers and prosecutors appointed to senior positions, April 2015

Patrushev with Argentina's President Mauricio Macri in December 2017

Since 2008, Patrushev has been Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, a consultative body of the President that works out his decisions on national security affairs.[1][2]

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.[8][9][10]

Patrushev with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and John Bolton in June 2019

According to a post on Anastasia Vashukevich's Instagram account, Patrushev, who had traveled to Thailand during late February 2018, was involved in her arrest in Thailand during late February 2018.[11]

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."[12][13]

In late January 2022, during a visit to mark the anniversary of the end of the Siege of Leningrad during the Second World War, Patrushev said, "We don't want war. We don't need that at all."[14] He denied allegations that Russia plans to invade Ukraine, describing the claims as "completely absurd."[15]

In April 2022, Patrushev claimed that "Using their henchmen in Kyiv, the Americans, in an attempt to suppress Russia, decided to create an antipode of our country, cynically choosing Ukraine for this, trying to divide essentially a single people. The result of the policy of the West and the regime in Kyiv can only be the disintegration of Ukraine into several states."[16]

Patrushev belongs to the siloviki of Putin's inner circle.[17][lower-alpha 1]

In December 2000, on the anniversary of the founding of the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, an interview with him was published in a Russian national daily. In defence of the emerging trend of co-opting officers in the security and intelligence apparatus into high government posts, Patrushev noted that his FSB colleagues did not "work for money [...] [they] are, if you will, modern 'neo-nobility'." ("современные «неодворяне»")[18][19] The term "new nobility" gained currency afterwards, as in the eponymous book The New Nobility.[20][21]

Patrushev believes that the United States of America "would much prefer that Russia did not exist at all."[22] He was quoted as saying, "Because we possess great [natural] resources. The Americans believe that we control them illegally and undeservedly because, in their view, we do not use them as they ought to be used."[22]

Patrushev also referenced "Madeleine Albright’s claim 'that neither the Far East nor Siberia belong to Russia.'" According to the New York Times, there is no official record of Albright having made such a remark. Instead, it can be traced back to a psychic employed by the FSB who claimed to have read the thoughts in Albright's mind while in a state of trance.[23][24]

According to Patrushev, the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine was started by the United States.[22]

In June 2019, Patrushev said that Iran "has always been and remains our ally and partner".[25]

Ben Noble, Associate Professor of Russian Politics at University College London, describes Patrushev as "the most hawkish hawk, thinking the West has been out to get Russia for years".[26] 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]."[27]

His eldest son, Dmitry, is a banker, Minister of Agriculture of Russia since 18 May 2018.[28] His younger son, Andrey, graduated in 2003 from the FSB Academy where he studied law with his classmate Pavel Fradkov, who is the son of Mikhail Fradkov, and has worked in leadership roles at Gazprom Neft.[29][30][31]

In January 2007, Nikolai Patrushev and his brother, Viktor Platonovich Patrushev (Russian: Виктор Платонович Патрушев), joined the expedition of polar explorer Arthur Chilingarov, that flew on two helicopters to Antarctica and visited the South Pole and the Amundsen-Scott station.[32][33]

• Order of St Dmitri Donskoy, the Blessed Great Prince of Moscow, 1st Class (Russian Orthodox Church, 2005) – The saint allegedly wards off "all kinds of threats for the sake of multiplying the faith and piety of the people, strengthening families and protecting from bodily extinction and spiritual death."[38]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Nikolai Patrushev.

• FSB biography (in Russian)
• Security Council Biography (in Russian)
• Patrushev Biography in English