Putin is playing a game of thrones with his inner circle. And one man is rising in the shadows

Sergei Borisovich Korolev, the first deputy director of the FSB, is said by European officials to have emerged a winner behind the scenes in the Russian president’s recent Kremlin reshuffle. Kim Sengupta reports

Vladimir Putin has been shuffling his inner circle (Getty)

As a game of thrones in Russia’s security hierarchy unfolds in the Kremlin, with Vladimir Putin ringing the changes, the rise of one man is being watched with keen interest by Western intelligence agencies.

Sergei Borisovich Korolev, the first deputy director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), is said to have been given a key role as Moscow gets into battle order for the clandestine conflict underway against the West.

In a series of sudden moves this week, Sergei Shoigu was replaced as defence minister by the deputy prime minister, Andrei Belousov. Shoigu took over as secretary of the Security Council from Nikolai Patrushev, who was demoted to overseeing the country’s shipbuilding capabilities. Putin’s former bodyguard, Alexei Dyumin, the governor of the Tula region, failed to get the defence portfolio he had been tipped for, but became a senior aide to the president instead.