Sergei Shoigu (Шойгу Сергей Кужугетович) was born on May 21, 1955, in Chadan, Tuva region.

Education: Construction engineering, Krasnoyarsk Polytechnic Institute, 1977. Ph.D., economics.

1977-1988: Worked in various Siberian construction trusts, rising from supervisor to director

1988-1989: Second secretary, Abakan Town Party Committee

1989-1990: Inspector, Krasnoyarsk Regional Party Committee

1990-1991: Vice-president, State Architecture and Construction Committee

1991: Chairman of the Russian Rescuers' Corps, which brought together volunteer rescue units formed by alpinists in the aftermath of the devastating 1988 Spitak earthquake in the Armenian S.S.R.

August 1991: Actively supported Boris Yeltsin during the attempted coup by Communist Party hard-liners against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev

1991-1994: Chairman of the Emergency Situations Committee, the successor to the Russian Rescuers' Corps. The committee would become the Emergency Situations Ministry in 1994.

Early 1990s: Shoigu participated in the government's response to several armed conflicts in the Caucasus, including in North and South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Ingushetia

1994-present: Emergency situations minister

1995-1996: Actively supported President Yeltsin's re-election campaign

1995: Joined the organizing committee of Viktor Chernomyrdin's Our Home is Russia party

1996-present: Member of the Security Council

1999: Became chief of the Unity party, which supported Vladimir Putin's 2000 presidential bid

2000: Deputy prime minister

2001-present: Member of the Marine Board

December 2001: Became a co-chairman of United Russia, which merged the Unity, Fatherland and All Russia parties. Boris Gryzlov was named party chief.

2003: Shoigu's name appeared second on United Russia's list in parliamentary elections

2007: Shoigu heads United Party's list in the Stavropol region for State Duma elections

August 2008: Prime Minister Putin, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev and Shoigu were charged with leading Russian efforts to help civilian victims of the Russia-Georgia War

2009: Elected president of the Russian Geographic Society

July-August 2010: Shoigu and the Emergency Situations Ministry come under intense public criticism for failing to quickly control forest and peat-bog fires caused by a record heat wave and drought in Western Russia. Fifty died and thousands were left homeless in the forest fires, which burned more than a million hectares and together with peat-bog fires covered major cities, including Moscow, in toxic smog. Shoigu estimated the damage at 12 billion rubles, while some experts put the figure at 450 billion rubles. He argued that because the Forest Code did not specify which body was responsible for putting out forest fires, the Emergency Situations Ministry should not shoulder the blame.