Sergei Ivanov, a former Russian defense minister, Kremlin chief of staff and longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin, has died at the age of 73, the VTB United League basketball organization, where he served as honorary president, said Friday.
The professional men’s basketball league did not disclose the cause of death. The exiled news outlet Meduza reported that Ivanov was rumored to be suffering from a severe, long-term illness.
Putin expressed his “deep condolences” to Ivanov’s friends and relatives in a brief, one-sentence statement published on the Kremlin’s website.
Ivanov and Putin first met in the 1970s while both were serving in the Leningrad directorate of the KGB. While Putin transitioned into local politics by joining the St. Petersburg mayor’s office in the 1990s, Ivanov remained in the intelligence services, rising to become a senior officer in the Foreign Intelligence Service.
The pair reunited in the late 1990s as Putin rose through the federal government. Putin named Ivanov his deputy at the FSB security service in 1998 and subsequently appointed him secretary of Russia’s Security Council after becoming prime minister in 1999.
