Mr Manturov has been a loyal member of the Putin ministerial team since 2012, and has regularly travelled with the president on foreign and domestic visits. He was handed the task of overseeing Russia’s weapons industry last summer when shortcomings had already been exposed on the battlefield.
As he explained that his ministry had launched a programme to produce helicopter engines in St Petersburg that were previously made in Ukraine, the president butted in, complaining it was all taking too long.
As the minister’s public humiliation neared its end, he promised his department would do its best with its economic partners. But this was clearly not enough for an increasingly agitated president.
“No, do it within a month. Don’t you understand the situation we’re in? It needs to be done in a month, no later.”
The televised dressing-down echoed an even more dramatic event three days before the war broke out, when Mr Putin ordered his top security figures to say whether Russia should recognise two occupied areas of eastern Ukraine as independent.
When one of his closest allies, foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin, hesitantly suggested Russia’s Western partners should be given one last chance, President Putin began to interrogate him.
Mr Naryshkin stumbled over his words several times before declaring he would support the two occupied regions being brought into the Russian Federation.
Although President Putin said incorporating Ukraine’s regions into Russia was not on the table, several months later that was exactly what he announced.
BBC
