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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its eighth day Thursday, as troops continued their assault on cities and the death toll on both sides mounted.
Russia on Wednesday reported its military casualties, saying nearly 500 of its troops had been killed and nearly 1,600 wounded – though figures could possibly be much higher.
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu at a joint news conference at the Russian embassy in Washington after their meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, August 9, 2013.
(REUTERS/Yuri Gripas)
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that Russia will continue its “special military operation” in Ukraine until “set goals are achieved.”
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Speaking at a gathering of Russia’s military chiefs in Moscow Tuesday, Shoigu insisted the purpose of the “special military operation” was to “protect the Russian Federation from the military threat posed by Western countries.”
He accused the West of orchestrating Ukrainian resistance against Russia and maintained that Russian troops will take necessary precautions to not harm civilians.
Destroyed buildings are seen on March 03, 2022, in Irpin, Ukraine.
(Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
“I emphasize that strikes are carried out only on military facilities and exclusively with high-precision weapons,” he said, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
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Originally from the Tuva region of Russia, Shoigu arrived in Moscow around the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union, becoming the minister of emergency situations. During the 1990s and 2000s, he gained a reputation for visiting the sites of natural disasters and terrorist bombings and talking one-on-one with civilians, which gained him national popularity, according to Foreign Affairs.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu during a visit a shipyard in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, April 23, 2019.
(Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Shoigu holds the distinction of being one of the few people in the Russian government who has held a senior position since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Dmitry Gorenburg, Ph.D., a Russian military expert told Fox News.
“If you look at who was in minister roles in 1999 and are still around now, there are only two names: one is Shoigu, the other is Putin,” Gorenburg said.
Despite having no military background or combat experience, Putin chose Shoigu to be the minister of defense in 2012.
At the time, Russia’s military was undergoing a transformation in its fighting capabilities. Despite a swift victory in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, military planners realized improvements were badly needed if they were ever to face a more formidable opponent like the U.S. or NATO.
“From the tactical standpoint, that was a failure. The command and control was a disaster. They couldn’t strike mobile targets,” Russian-born former U.S. intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler told Fox News. “And so on Putin’s orders, the military was going to be transformed and modernized both from the standpoint of weaponry, training, and in terms of doctrine.”
In this photo released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu shows his signature under a roadmap for military cooperation between Russia and China during a video call with Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021.
(Vadim Savitskiy/Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
Shoigu replaced Anatoly Serdyukov, a man who also had no military background and, according to Gorenburg, ruffled feathers within the military ranks for not respecting their traditional way of doing things.
Shoigu, meanwhile, was seen as a man with a great organizational ability who would respect military traditions yet embrace innovation. Being ethnically Tuvan, he also had little chance of ever being accepted as president in Russia.
“The means that he is not threatening to Putin personally, or his other senior lieutenant … That’s always the thing that autocrats fear,” Gorenburg noted. “He’s been quite effective. And he knew how to play the generals to make them feel like he understood them and respected their traditions and so forth while he could still press ahead.”
In the week leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Shoigu oversaw military drills in western Belarus, Reuters reported. He was pictured with his Belarusian counterpart and other military officials at the Brest military facility in western Belarus.
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The U.S. Treasury Department last week included Shoigu and General of the Army Valery Gerasimov in its latest round of sanctions, saying that they were both “directly responsible for the further invasion of Ukraine.”
