Rumor has it Putin tasked his ex-bodyguard with ending Ukraine’s cross-border offensive. Is Alexey Dyumin really Russia’s ‘shadow defense minister’?

In a televised meeting with his security team on Monday, Vladimir Putin called for Ukraine’s forces to be “driven out” of Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv’s cross-border offensive is now in its second week. Almost immediately, Russian pro-war Telegram channels began reporting that the task of pushing Ukraine’s troops back over the border had been assigned to presidential aide Alexey Dyumin, who’s been in his post for just three months. Would the Russian president really put a civilian official in charge of such a high-profile military operation? And who is Dyumin anyways? Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev explains.

Alexey Dyumin is one of Putin’s former bodyguards. Over the last decade, he’s been Russia’s deputy defense minister, the governor of Russia’s Tula region, and, since May of this year, a presidential aide. On August 12, pro-Russian Telegram channels began reporting that Dyumin had been tasked with solving the ongoing “operational crisis” in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine has reportedly taken control of dozens of settlements.

The first of these reports came from Politsatirka, a relatively small channel with 122,000 subscribers. The channel’s post said that Putin had already given Dyumin “several important orders,” putting the aide in charge of “coordinating” the various Russian security agencies operating in the Kursk region. The post was shared by the popular channel Brief (573,000 subscribers) and quickly started spreading from there, with various sources adding new details about Dyumin’s alleged assignment.

The pro-war channel Rybar, for example, called Dyumin a “senior official with full authority.” Alexander Sladkov, a war correspondent for Russian state media, claimed that the former bodyguard had been appointed “commander of the northern front,” while Nikolai Ivanov, a State Duma deputy representing the Kursk region, called Dyumin the “supervisor” of the “counter-terrorist operation.”

No official sources have confirmed that Putin has put Dyumin in charge of Russia’s effort to defend Kursk from Ukrainian forces. On the contrary, Sladkov backtracked on Tuesday, apologizing to subscribers for the “mix-up” and complaining that subsequent reports of Dyumin’s “appointment” had cited him as the source.

Generally speaking, the reports of Dyumin’s new “mission” seem to be part of a media strategy orchestrated by Dyumin himself. During his eight-year tenure as governor of the Tula region, media reports variously cast him as the country’s future defense minister, a candidate for head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), and even a potential successor to Putin.

Instead, Dyumin was given a significantly more modest post: presidential aide. This hasn’t stopped Telegram channels from reporting regularly on his “growing influence” in the Kremlin — and even referring to him as Russia’s “shadow defense minister.” This pattern isn’t unique to Dyumin: other officials who failed to get their desired positions in Putin’s post-election reshuffle earlier this year are also referred to as “shadow ministers” by anonymous Telegram channels.

Most likely, the “shadow” officials themselves (or their associates) are the ones planting these rumors. A similar pattern was seen in the late 2010s with the so-called “Shkolov Group,” the supposedly powerful entourage of then-presidential aide Evgeny Shkolov. The group’s “power” would regularly rise and fall (in the alternative universe of certain politics-focused Telegram channels), but Shkolov was ultimately never appointed to any important posts. He was dismissed in 2018 and has now been all but forgotten.

Dyumin is unlikely to suffer the same fate (though Meduza’s sources close to the Kremlin have confirmed that he does have some influence). But neither does there appear to be a promotion in his future: the aide’s supposed “new position” changes from Telegram post to Telegram post, and none of these positions actually appear in Russia’s counterterrorism legislation.

Russia’s “counter-terrorist operation” in the Kursk region is led by the FSB, and it’s possible that Dyumin, as a civilian official, will assist the agency. But that doesn’t make him a commander, a supervisor, or a “shadow defense minister.”