Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev is a Russian politician, security officer and intelligence officer. He served as Director of the Russian Federal Security Service, which is the main successor organization to the Soviet KGB, from 1999 to 2008, and he has been Secretary of the Security Council of Russia since 2008.
Born in 1951 in Leningrad, Patrushev is the son of a Soviet Navy officer who was also a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 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. He attended intelligence and security courses at the KGB School in Minsk, and later at the Higher School of the KGB in Moscow. 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 Kingdompublic 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."
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. After the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, Patrushev was placed on the European Union's list of sanctioned individuals in Russia. In April 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on him and 23 other Russian nationals. 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 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.
Political views
Patrushev belongs to the Siloviki of Putin's inner circle. 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 are, if you will, modern 'neo-nobility'." The term "new nobility" gained currency afterwards, as in the eponymous book The New Nobility. Patrushev believes that the United States of America "would much prefer that Russia did not exist at all. He was quoted as saying, "Because we possess great 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." 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. According to Patrushev, the 2014 Ukrainian revolution was started by the United States. In June 2019, Patrushev said that Iran "has always been and remains our ally and partner".
Order of St Dmitri Donskoy, the Blessed Great Prince of Moscow, 1st Class – 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."
Other
In January 2007, Nikolai Patrushev and his brother, Viktor Platonovich Patrushev, 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.
