Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev (; born 11 July 1951) is a Russian politician, security officer and former intelligence officer who served as the secretary of the Security Council of Russia from 2008 to 2024. He previously served as the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) from 1999 to 2008.
Belonging to the siloviki faction of president Vladimir Putin's inner circle, Patrushev is believed to be one of the closest advisors to Putin and a leading figure behind Russia's national security affairs. Patrushev has spoken favorably of the rise of KGB stalwarts to the highest echelons of power of Russia, referring to them as the "new nobility".
He played a key role in the decisions to seize and then annex Crimea in 2014 and to invade Ukraine in 2022.
Patrushev studied at secondary school No. 211 in the same class with the future chairman of the Supreme Council of the United Russia party, Boris Gryzlov. Patrushev 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 (the present-day FSB Academy).
Career
thumb|Russian president Putin and then-FSB director Patrushev at a meeting of the board of the [[Federal Security Service in 2002]]
KGB security officer (1975–1991)
Starting as a KGB security officer in the city of Leningrad, Patrushev eventually rose to become head of their local anti-smuggling and anti-corruption unit.
FSK and FSB career (1992–1999)
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 Federal Counterintelligence Service (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.
Director of FSB (1999–2008)
On 9 August 1999, a decree by President Boris Yeltsin promoted him to director, replacing his close friend Vladimir Putin.
In September 1999, a series of explosions hit four apartment blocks in three Russian cities, killing more than 300. The bombings, together with the Invasion of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War. The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months. A suspicious device resembling those used in the bombings was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September 1999. On 23 September, Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the inhabitants of Ryazan and ordered the air bombing of Grozny, which marked the beginning of the Second Chechen War. Three FSB agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police. The next day, Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar, and freed the FSB agents involved. FSB also issued a public apology about the incident.
Although the bombings were widely blamed on Chechen rebels, their guilt was never conclusively proven. A number of historians and investigative journalists have instead called the bombings a false flag attack perpetrated by the FSB to win public support for a new war in Chechnya and to boost the popularity of Vladimir Putin, the former head of the FSB, prior to the upcoming presidential elections.
Security Council of Russia (2008–2024)
thumb|[[Dmitry Medvedev with Sergei Lavrov and Patrushev at the 2010 SCO Summit in Tashkent, Uzbekistan]]
thumb|Patrushev with [[Barack Obama at the White House in May 2013]]
From May 2008 until May 2024, Patrushev had been Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, a consultative body of the president that works out his decisions on national security affairs.
Patrushev considers the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine to have been started by the United States.
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.
thumb|Patrushev with [[Benjamin Netanyahu and John Bolton in June 2019]]
According to Anastasia Vashukevich, Patrushev, who had traveled to Thailand during late February 2018, was involved in her arrest in Thailand during late February 2018. Vashukevich claimed to have evidence linking Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In June 2019, Patrushev said that Iran "has always been and remains our ally and partner".
thumb|Patrushev with [[Joko Widodo in Jakarta in December 2021]]
In January 2021, he said that "the West needs" Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny "to destabilise the situation in Russia, for social upheaval, strikes and new Maidans."
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."
On 19 September 2022, during his visit to China, he described the "strengthening of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation with Beijing as an unconditional priority of Russia's foreign policy." He said that both China and Russia are calling for "a more just world order".
On 18 November 2022, he arrived in Tehran and met with Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and top security official Ali Shamkhani. On 21 November 2022, he invited Vietnamese Minister of Public Security Tô Lâm to Moscow to strengthen security cooperation between Russia and Vietnam. On 31 January 2023, he met Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in Moscow.
In February 2023, he hosted CCP Politburo member Wang Yi in Moscow and prepared the ground for the visit of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping to Russia in March 2023.
In February and March 2023, he visited Algeria, Venezuela and Cuba. On 29 March 2023, Patrushev arrived in New Delhi and met with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. In September 2023, he expressed support for China's policies regarding Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan. In February 2024, he met with the leaders of Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela.
Patrushev is considered as very hawkish towards the West and the United States, and in 2022 was seen by some observers as one of the likeliest candidates for succeeding Putin.
2022 invasion of Ukraine
In August 2021, during the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, Patrushev told Izvestia newspaper that the United States had abandoned its Afghan allies, and that the reason was the incompetent work of the intelligence services of the United States, Britain and other NATO countries and the misplaced belief of the West in the correctness of its decisions. He predicted that the United States would also abandon its allies in Ukraine:
In early November 2021, CIA Director William Burns and U.S. ambassador to Russia John Sullivan met in Moscow with Patrushev and informed him that they knew about Russia's invasion plans. Burns warned that if Putin proceeded down this path, the West would respond with severe consequences for Russia. Sullivan recounted that Patrushev was undeterred and "supremely confident" that the invasion was going to succeed. However, in late January 2022, just before the invasion, Patrushev publicly denied that Russia was prepared to attack Ukraine.
thumb|[[Kyiv after Russian shelling in March 2022. Patrushev played a key role in Putin's decision to invade Ukraine. including Patrushev and Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu. 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]." According to sources close to the Kremlin, most of Putin's close advisers opposed the invasion, and even Patrushev advised Putin to give diplomacy another chance three days before the invasion, but Putin overruled them all.
On 26 April 2022, after two months of war, Patrushev predicted that Ukraine would collapse and be broken into several states because of what he cast as a U.S. attempt to use Kyiv to undermine Russia. He repeated the "denazification" trope and claimed: Patrushev claimed that "Ukraine, saturated with weapons, poses a threat to Russia".
In October 2022, Patrushev accused the United States and its allies of wanting to "fight to the last Ukrainian".
In January 2023, he claimed that Russia was fighting NATO in Ukraine and that the West was trying to destroy Russia.
In February 2023, during a meeting with CCP Politburo member Wang Yi in Moscow, Patrushev claimed that "the bloody events in Ukraine staged by the West" are just one example of the West's attempts to maintain its global dominance.
On 15 September 2023, Patrushev claimed that Russia had identified and "neutralized" hundreds of foreign spies in recent years.
In September 2023, he met the Chinese foreign minister in Moscow for the annual security talks. On 10 October 2023, he arrived in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
On 22 December 2023, The Wall Street Journal cited sources within the Western and Russian intelligence agencies as saying that the Wagner Group plane crash was orchestrated by Patrushev. The paper alleged that Patrushev presented to Putin a plan to assassinate Yevgeny Prigozhin in August 2023, which led to intelligence officials inserting a bomb under the wing of Prigozhin's plane during pre-departure safety checks.
In March 2024, Patrushev claimed that Ukraine was behind the Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow.
On 12 May 2024, Putin nominated outgoing defense minister Sergei Shoigu to replace Patrushev as the secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, effective as of 14 May 2024. Patrushev was appointed as a Presidential Aide.
On 16 August 2024, Patrushev claimed, without providing evidence, that the Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk Oblast was "planned with the participation of NATO and Western special services", calling the incursion "a desperate act, driven by the impending collapse of the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv."
Presidential aide
Patrushev was offered to become presidential aide in charge of shipbuilding after Putin's fifth inauguration. According to Abbas Galliamov, this was a demotion because Putin felt that Patrushev had misled him by his hawkishness on Ukraine,
Patrushev was personally sanctioned by the UK government in 2014 in relation to Russo-Ukrainian War.
In April 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on him and 23 other Russian nationals.
Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States imposed sanctions against Andrey Patrushev, son of Nikolai Patrushev.
He was sanctioned by New Zealand in relation to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Political views
thumb|A meeting of the [[Military-Industrial Commission of Russia in September 2015]]
thumb|Patrushev with Argentine president [[Mauricio Macri in December 2017. Patrushev promoted friendly relations between Russia and non-Western countries.]]
thumb|upright|Patrushev and [[Narendra Modi in New Delhi in March 2023]]
Patrushev belongs to the siloviki of Putin's inner circle.