The president proposed appointing Andrei Belousov as Minister of Defense and Sergei Shoigu as Secretary of the Security Council.
Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to fire Sergei Shoigu as defense minister and replace him as secretary of the Security Council as part of a cabinet reshuffle.
The Kremlin announced on Sunday that former deputy prime minister Andrei Belousov, an economics expert, will become the new defense minister.
As President Putin begins his fifth term, drastic changes will occur. In accordance with Russian law, Putin's entire cabinet resigned on Tuesday after he took office in the Kremlin.
Belousov's candidacy must be approved by Russia's upper house of parliament, the Federation Council.
Shoigu was appointed defense minister in 2012, two years before Russia invaded and annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.
One of Shoigu's deputies, Timur Ivanov, was arrested last month on bribery charges and ordered to be detained pending an official investigation. The arrest was widely interpreted as an attack on Mr. Shoigu and a possible precursor to his removal despite his close ties to President Vladimir Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday that Putin's decision to transfer the defense portfolio to a civilian was because the ministry should be “open to innovation and cutting-edge ideas” and that Belosov He said he was qualified for the position.
After several candidates opposed to the war in Ukraine were barred from running by the Central Election Commission, President Putin received a lower share of the vote in an opinion poll that analysts said lacked democratic legitimacy. He won the general election in March with 87% of the vote.
The personnel changes come as thousands more civilians are evacuating from a new Russian ground offensive that has targeted towns and villages in northeastern Ukraine's Kharkiv region with a barrage of artillery and mortar fire. .
Heavy fighting has forced at least one Ukrainian military unit to retreat as Russian forces occupy more territory beyond weakly defended settlements in the so-called gray zone along Russia's border.
By Sunday afternoon, the city of Vovtyansk, the largest town in the northeast with a pre-war population of 17,000, had emerged as the focus of the fighting.
