Putin’s Former Security Guard Tasked to ‘Sort Kursk Out’

Russian President Vladimir Putin put the 52-year-old Secretary of Russia’s State Council, Aleksey Dyumin, in charge of the military operation in the Kursk region on Monday, Aug. 12 according to the Moscow Times, citing the Russian milblogger “Management Z Kursk.”

Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, gave a briefing over video link to a televised meeting with the heads of law enforcement on Wednesday, Aug. 7, during which he put a positive spin on the situation in Kursk that was largely contradicted by most other battlefield reports.

It was reported that following the meeting Putin had tasked Alexander Bortnikov, Director of Russia’s Federal Security Service ( FSB) to take over the “counter-terrorism operation” in Kursk, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW)

It came as a surprise to many for him to also be replaced less than a week later by Dyumin, even though he holds the rank of colonel general. It is, however, one that pro-Kremlin bloggers generally seem to be in favor of.

In confirming the appointment on Tuesday, the well-known blogger Rybar wrote that Dyumin’s appointment was “a sign that the security forces, on their own and without interference from Moscow, were unable to solve coordination problems.”

He went on to say that he had raised these issues with Russia’s Ministry of Defense previously and the need to bring in Dyumin underscores “how great the scale of the disaster is in the context of interdepartmental cooperation.”

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Rybar described the appointment as someone who is firmly “part of Putin's team,” will cut out “the window dressing and start solving the problem, rather than trying to freeze it.” Dyumin has a reputation of being a problem solver capable of resolving issues of coordination, combat and civil management.

This view is supported by Alexander Sladkov, the so-called military correspondent for Russia’s State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, also posting on Telegram. Sladkov wrote that appointing Dyumin as “Commander of the Northern Direction of the Northwestern Military District” is great. “I absolutely welcome it.”

He said Dyumin is a military man, well respected by the army and in the special services, who will quickly get into the subject and start making the right decisions. He added that as Putin’s man, he has been given extraordinary legal powers and will not allow the Russian leader to be deceived by others.

In his view, Dyumin, who was recently a brilliant governor, not only takes the needs of the military into account, but also those of the civilian population of the Kursk region.

Dyumin was part of the presidential security team during Yeltsin’s final term and Putin’s first and second terms and became, his personal adjutant in 2008.

In 2012 he was made deputy head of the FSO presidential security service and later worked in the Ministry of Defense. He was appointed governor of the Tula region in 2016 before being moved to the Ministry of Defense in 2023, during the aborted Wagner mutiny and given his current post as part of Putin’s 2024 inauguration appointments.

Russian milbloggers see Dyumin’s appointment as the removal of Gerasimov from the military chain of command in the Kursk region and suggest his sidelining may not stop there. He has been accused of ignoring intelligence of the buildup of Ukrainian troops on the border with Kursk and his over-optimistic Aug. 7 briefing on the situation in the Kursk region has been labeled as “outright lies” by many Russian media figures.