Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev, 73, is an ally of Russia president Vladimir Putin. He is generally seen as a leading figure behind Russia’s national security affairs.
Nikolai, a former intelligence officer who served as the secretary of the Security Council of Russia from 2008 to 2024, played a key role in the decisions to seize annex Crimea in 2014 and to invade Ukraine in 2022.
How Putin and ‘the most dangerous man in Russia’ became a thing
Nikolai and Putin were cut from the same fabric. The Russian politician and security officer belongs to the siloviki faction of president Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.
Nikolai who was the director of the Federal Security Service was preceded by Vladimir Putin. The Russia president was also his chairman when Nikolai was serving in Secretary of the Security Council of Russia.
Who is the most dangerous man in Russia?
Nikolai became the ‘most dangerous man in Russia’ because of his alleged ‘paranoid conspiracy-driven mindset, according to Mark Galeotti, an expert in the field of Russian politics and security.
Nikolai speaks for Putin and is even allowed to explain and clarify Putin’s thoughts. For his ability to control information reaching Putin, Galeotti compared him to Sir Humphrey from the British television series Yes Minister.
Nikolai Patrushev who thinks Ukraine should be in the Russian zone of influence believes in various conspiracy theories and often gives interviews to state-controlled media in Russia.
He said in April 2022, that Washington ‘tried to force Russia to give up sovereignty, self-consciousness, culture, an independent foreign and domestic policy.’
He claimed that the West is seeking to reduce the world’s population in various ways, including creating an empire of lies, involving the humiliation and destruction of Russia and other objectionable states.
Two months after, he accused the United States, Britain, the EU and Japan of an ‘increasingly adventurous and aggressive policy’ that ‘is based on a complete detachment from reality, the desire to construct their own imaginary world, which they will rule. Such an escape from reality is a real threat to all of humanity.’
In his interview in an official government paper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, he said that the Russo-Ukrainian War is only part of a wider war with NATO and the ‘collective West’.
He warned that Russia ‘has modern, unique weapons capable of destroying any adversary, including the United States, in the event of a threat to its existence.’
Nikolai enjoys the rise of KGB stalwarts to the highest echelons of power of Russia, as him and Putin are products of KGB until he ranked as General of the Army during his days in Federal Security Service.
The man the world is watching
After the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, Nikolai was placed on the European Union’s list of sanctioned individuals in Russia.
Patrushev was personally sanctioned by the UK government in 2014 in relation to Russo-Ukrainian War. The United States imposed sanctions on him in April 2018, New Zealand too.
Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States imposed sanctions against his son, Andrey Patrushev.
Nikolai Patrushev is Vladimir Putin’s man in the Balkans.
