Who is Andrei Belousov, the new Russian Defense Minister?
Russian President Vladimir Putin tapped Andrei Belousov, the civilian economist as his surprise new defence minister on Sunday in an attempt to gird Russia for economic war by trying to better utilise the defence budget and harness greater innovation to win in Ukraine.
- Below are some facts about Andrei Removich Belousov:
Andrei Belousov was born on March 17, 1959, in Moscow, into a family of a Soviet economist, who was involved in the development of economic reform in the 1960s, Raim Belousov (1926-2008).
In 1981, Andrei Belousov graduated from the Faculty of Economics at Moscow State University named after Lomonosov, specializing in economics, and obtained a Ph.D. in Economics in 1986.
In 2006, at the National Institute for Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN), he defended his doctoral thesis on the topic "Contradictions and Prospects for the Development of the Reproduction System in the Russian Economy."
From 1981 to 1986, he worked as a research intern and junior researcher at the Central Institute of Economics and Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union.
From 1986 to 1990, he worked at the Institute of Economics and Scientific and Technological Progress Forecasting of the Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union.
From 1990 to 2006, he worked as a senior researcher and head of the laboratory at the National Institute for Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
From 2000 to 2006, he served as the Director-General of the Center for Economic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting and concurrently as an independent advisor to the Russian government.
From February 2006 to July 2008, he served as Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation.
From 2008 to 2012, he was the Director of the Department of Economics and Finance in the Government of the Russian Federation.
From May 2012 to June 2013, he served as Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation in Dmitry Medvedev's government. He was previously Russia's Director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Deputy Director at the World Bank.
On June 24, 2013, he worked in the administration of the Russian president, where he held the position of Assistant to the President of the State Vladimir Putin on Economic Issues until January 21, 2020.
From June 2015 to September 2018, he served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the oil company "Rosneft."
Since January 21, 2020, he has been the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation under Mikhail Mishustin.
From April to May 2020, he served as Acting Prime Minister in Mishustin's first government.
Since 2022, he has also been overseeing the development of high-speed transport vehicle technologies, smart control systems, and next-generation transportation equipment.
He was awarded the Order of Honor in 2009 and has been honored by the Russian President.
He is the author of the book "The Evolution of the Russian Economy's Reproduction System: From Crisis to Development" (2006).