Former Russian defence minister Sergei Ivanov, once seen as a possible successor to President Vladimir Putin, has died at the age of 73.
Ivanov was a key member of the group known as the “siloviki” or “strongmen” who, like Putin, had risen through the ranks of the Soviet KGB security service and wielded huge influence after Putin took power at the turn of the millennium.
His death, incongruously, was first announced by a basketball organisation – the VTB United League, where Ivanov was honorary president. It was later confirmed by the Kremlin.
Ivanov helped shape Russia’s post‑Soviet security state and oversaw the armed forces during the early years of Putin’s presidency. He was defence minister during the second Chechen war, launched by Putin to crush a separatist insurgency in the Muslim region of Chechnya that tried to break away from Moscow after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
A fluent English-speaker, Ivanov was a combative figure who regularly jousted with journalists at the Munich Security Conference and cast himself as a pragmatist seeking to move beyond Cold War divisions.
At the same time, he consistently warned that Russia’s security interests were being undermined, particularly by U.S. missile defence plans and the erosion of arms control agreements.