After the election of Dmitry Medvedev as President of Russia, Ivanov was reappointed a Deputy Prime Minister (in office: 2008–2011) in Vladimir Putin's second cabinet.

Before joining the federal administration in Moscow, Ivanov served from the late 1991s in Europe and in Africa (Kenya) as a specialist in law and foreign languages.

In the 1980s, Ivanov served as Second Secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki, working directly under the KGB resident Felix Karasev.

[4] In 2015, Ivanov stated that his career in the KGB had been ruined and destroyed because of Oleg Gordievsky's defection and exfiltration on 19 July 1985 from Moscow through the northwestern part of the Soviet Union near Leningrad and then through Finland to the United Kingdom.

[10] Between 1992 and Ivanov's appointment in 1999, Yeltsin used the council as political expediency dictated but did not allow it to emerge as a relatively strong and autonomous institution.

[10] Ivanov was named by Vladimir Putin, who had succeeded Yeltsin as president on 31 December 1999, as Russia's Minister of Defense in March 2001.

[11] Putin called the personnel changes in Russia's security structures coinciding with Ivanov's appointment as Defense minister "a step toward demilitarizing public life."

In October 2003, Ivanov claimed that Russia did not rule out a pre-emptive military strike anywhere in the world if the national interest demands it.

[14] In 2004, Ivanov, as Defense Minister, pledged state support to the suspects in Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev's assassination detained in Qatar and declared that their imprisonment was illegal.

[16] In January 2006, Ivanov received criticism for his downplaying response to the public outcry over a particularly brutal hazing incident at a military base in the Urals, which involved Andrey Sychyov as a victim, whose legs and genitals were amputated due to the vicious beatings and abuse.

In a series of public comments on the 2003–2004 elections, for instance, he unequivocally stated his opposition to rolling back the Western-style economic reforms and privatizations of the 1990s.

"[20][21] In November 2005, Ivanov was appointed to the post of Deputy Prime Minister in Mikhail Fradkov's Second Cabinet, with added responsibility for the Manufacturing industry and arms exports.

[30] The Steele dossier (Report 2016/111) claims that his encouragement of meddling in the 2016 United States presidential election, which provoked unanticipated blowback against the Kremlin, was the catalyst for his firing.

[37] On 20 May 2005, a Volkswagen driven by Ivanov's eldest son, Alexander (1977–2014), struck and killed a 68-year-old woman, Svetlana Beridze, on a zebra crossing.

[41][42] On 20 March 2014, the American Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced that Ivanov and 19 other Russian oligarchs had been added to the Specially Designated Nationals List (SDN).

[43][44][45][46][47][48] On 24 February 2022, the United States announced new sanctions against Ivanov and his son Sergey in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.