Sergei Ivanov, one of Putin’s “successors” in 2008, to whom he was probably afraid to transfer power, died

Former Defense Minister and longtime ally of Vladimir Putin Sergei Ivanov has died at the age of 73, reported the VTB United League, of which he was honorary president. His career reached its peak in 2007, when the media began to call him one of the possible successors in the presidential elections. However, the Project’s source said that Putin never seriously considered his candidacy. Ivanov was four months younger than Putin.

Details . The causes of Ivanov's death are not stated.

• ️ Ivanov was born in 1953 in Leningrad, graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University (St. Petersburg State University), Higher Courses of the KGB and “101 School” of the First Main Directorate of the KGB. He served in the Second and First Directorates of the KGB (counterintelligence and foreign intelligence, respectively). According to one version , in 1976-1977 he was an employee of the personnel department of the KGB department in Leningrad, where Vladimir Putin also worked at the same time.
• ️ After the collapse of the USSR, he worked in intelligence and law enforcement agencies: in the SVR from 1991 to 1998, then as deputy director of the FSB, and from 2001 to 2007 as minister of defense.
• ️Successor . At the end of Vladimir Putin's second presidential term, Ivanov, along with Dmitry Medvedev, was called a possible successor to the president. Both of them were even made “first deputy prime ministers of the government.”
• ️ But in fact, Putin did not consider Ivanov as a real successor, since he saw him as too serious a threat to his future, an acquaintance of Ivanov told journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin in an interview in 2023 (quoted in the book “ The Tsar in Person ”). “He believed that Sergei would not give him power back,” the source said. The most important role in Putin’s antipathy was played by the fact that Ivanov was favored by the American administration, which considered him a more mature politician than Medvedev, the source emphasized.
• ️ Decline of a career . From 2011 to 2016, Ivanov headed the presidential administration. After this, his career began to decline due to health problems after the death of his son.
• ️ One of the main events of this period was Ivanov’s meeting with the American actress Pamela Anderson.
• ️ In 2016, Ivanov took “essentially a nominal post” of special representative on environmental issues, ecology and transport. In February, Putin fired him from this position as well.

Property . The Ivanov family uses or owns a 254-meter apartment in the “Government House” on Rochdelskaya Street, 12с1. Many officials live in their neighbors, including presidential aide Andrei Fursenko.

• ️ Ivanov’s wife and son also own an apartment in the Five Stars residential complex worth 250-400 million rubles, according to the database of officials on the Project website.

Family . His wife, Irina Ivanova, worked at the Central Bank at least until 2009, and in 2021 - at Gazprombank, where she earned 279 million rubles in a year (while in her public declaration she indicated an income 10 times less - 27.6 million rubles).

• ️ The eldest son Alexander Ivanov drowned in 2014 while on vacation in the UAE. Before his death, he was deputy chairman and member of the board of Vnesheconombank.
• ️ The official’s youngest son, Sergei Sergeevich Ivanov, is a member of the board of directors of Gazprombank, general director of the diamond mining company Alrosa, member of the board of directors of Severalmaz and NPF Gazfond. In 2021, he earned half a billion rubles.