Do we like them?

Do we like Mikhail Mishustin?

Our score: 3 out of 10. He runs the machinery behind a sanctioned wartime government, and I found no real good deeds or kind acts to set against that.

Mikhail Mishustin was born in 1966 and is a career bureaucrat, not a Kremlin insider from the security services. He spent about a decade running Russia's federal tax service and is credited with more than doubling revenues there. Putin named him prime minister in January 2020, replacing Dmitry Medvedev.

Plenty in the elite saw him as a placeholder when he got the job. Instead he is now six years in, longer than Medvedev's run, which tells you how safe a pair of hands he is for the boss. He is often seen on TV being quizzed by Putin about deadlines and tasks.

The war is the elephant in the room. In October 2022 Putin put him in charge of a Coordination Council to improve the army's supplies and its medical and logistical support. He has also told parliament his government adapted the economy to Western sanctions, and in his February 2026 Duma address he focused on arms supplies and the budget deficit.

He rarely talks about the invasion directly. Meduza reports he long avoided the official wartime phrase, preferring “external challenges”, and that he reportedly learned of the invasion plans only the day before. That tells you something about his style, but it doesn't change that his job since then has been keeping the system working.

The harm check comes down to the company and the job. Britain froze his assets and banned him from travel in March 2022 as part of a package of about 350 sanctions listings. Meduza also reports experts blamed early lifting of COVID restrictions under his cabinet for an estimated 220,000 excess deaths. I found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ people in his own words, so this is a lean no because of the government he runs, not his speeches.

On the good side, I found no charity work or kind acts to report, which is the honest gap here. Meduza describes a manager who avoids open fights and publicly thanks other officials, and a January 2026 Levada poll had him on 72% approval against Putin's 84%. Nothing new has turned up lately beyond routine government business; the latest piece I read is from March 2026.