Sergei Ivanov, Putin's long-time KGB ally and former defence minister, dies at 73

Death of a Putin confidant

Sergei Ivanov, the former Russian defence minister and one of Vladimir Putin's oldest and most trusted associates, died on 26 June 2026 at the age of 73. His death was first announced by the VTB United League basketball organisation, where Ivanov served as honorary president, and was later confirmed by the Kremlin. No cause of death was given, but Russian media reported that he had been seriously ill.

A shared KGB past

Born on 31 January 1953 in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, Ivanov studied philology before being recruited into the KGB. He met Putin in the Leningrad KGB directorate in the 1970s. After the Soviet collapse, both men rose through the ranks; when Putin became director of the FSB in 1998, he appointed Ivanov his deputy. Ivanov then became secretary of the Security Council in 1999, when Boris Yeltsin named Putin acting president.

Defence minister and would-be successor

Ivanov served as Russia's defence minister from 2001 until 2007, the first civilian to hold the post in modern Russian history. He oversaw the armed forces during the second Chechen war and was a key architect of the Kremlin's security policies. By 2007, he had become first deputy prime minister and was widely considered the front-runner to succeed Putin when the constitution forced the president to step aside in 2008. In the end, Putin chose Dmitry Medvedev for the presidency, and Ivanov remained a senior figure without ever ascending to the top job.

A hawkish voice on the West

A fluent English speaker, Ivanov was a regular at the Munich Security Conference, where he often clashed with Western journalists and officials. He consistently warned that Russia's security interests were being undermined by U.S. missile defence plans and the erosion of arms control. He framed NATO's eastward expansion as a strategic threat and argued that European security should rest on 

“mutual respect for the concerns and interests of all sides.”

Years later, Putin would invoke similar arguments to justify the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Withdrawal from the political front line

After returning to the Kremlin in 2012, Putin appointed Ivanov as chief of the presidential administration, a role he held until 2016. One independent outlet, the Moscow Project, claimed his removal was linked to alleged involvement in a programme to influence the U.S. presidential elections that year. Ivanov then took on the lower-profile position of special presidential representative for environmental activities, ecology and transport. In February 2026, he was dismissed from that post and from Russia's Security Council, shortly before his death.

Parallels with the Soviet era

Commenting on Ivanov's passing, former Russian central bank deputy chairman Sergei Aleksashenko noted that the Putin-era figure was

“not the dumbest and not the worst member of Putin's team,”

adding that

“with him you could talk, debate, disagree without paying attention to his high position.”

Aleksashenko drew a historical parallel: in the twilight years of the Brezhnev era, loyalists began dying at roughly the same age. Ivanov's death at 73 fits squarely within that pattern.

Andrei Grechko72

Alexei Kosygin76

Mikhail Suslov80

Leonid Brezhnev76

Sergei Ivanov73

Andrei Grechko

72 years

Alexei Kosygin

76 years

Mikhail Suslov

80 years

Leonid Brezhnev

76 years

Sergei Ivanov

73 years

Data from the article text