In 1964, Ivashov graduated from
Tashkent Suvorov Military School and later in 1974 from the
Frunze Military Academy. He was a platoon commander in the Soviet military forces that
invaded Czechoslovakia to put down the
Prague Spring in 1968. Between 1976 and 1984, he worked as a senior aide to the
Soviet Minister of Defense Dmitry Ustinov. In 1987 he became chief of the department for general affairs in the
Soviet Union’s Ministry of Defense. From 1996 to 2001, he was chief of the military cooperation department at the
Russian Ministry of Defense. He was in charge of military co-operation between members of the
Commonwealth of Independent States. General Ivashov was one of the organizers of the
march of Russian paratroopers to Pristina in 1999. After his retirement in 2001, Ivashov wrote extensively on military affairs and geopolitics. Between 2004 and 2014, he was President of the Academy for Geopolitical Problems. After a year break he was reelected president of the Academy end of March 2015. He was reportedly involved in the
Foundations of Geopolitics, a book by
Aleksandr Dugin. On December 5, 2011, he notified his intention to participate in the presidential race through self-nomination. But the Central Election Committee refused his nomination for administrative reasons. In October 2016, Ivashov explained in Russian
Channel One that
Russia's engagement in the Syrian conflict was critical to prevent construction of
Qatar–Turkey pipeline, which would be catastrophic for
Gazprom and, in turn, for the budget of the
Russian Federation. On 31 January 2022, during the
prelude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as Chairman of the Russian Officers' General Assembly, Gen. Ivashov published a statement condemning Putin's "criminal policy of provoking a war" and calling for President Putin's resignation. Blaming Putin for risking "the final destruction of Russian statehood and the extermination of the indigenous population of the country" Ivashov stated that the real danger for Russia was not NATO or the West but "the unviability of the state model, the complete incapacity and lack of professionalism of the system of power and administration, the passivity and disorganization of society." Under these conditions "no country survives for long". Also on 7 February 2022 Ivashov publicly called for Putin to resign over threats of a "criminal" invasion of Ukraine. ==References==