Monday, 12 May 2008
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Incoming Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced his cabinet line-up on Monday, re-appointing most key ministers and taking powerful figures from his previous Kremlin team with him to his new post.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who succeeded Putin as president last Wednesday, approved the names quickly at a formal meeting. But it was the new premier and previous Kremlin boss who announced them to waiting reporters.
Putin said he would re-appoint Alexei Kudrin, seen by markets as a guarantor of Russia's free-market policies, as Finance Minister. Sergei Lavrov, the public face of Moscow's assertive foreign policy, will stay as Foreign Minister.
Former prime minister and ex-collective farm boss Viktor Zubkov stays in the cabinet as one of two first deputy prime ministers. The other is Igor Shuvalov, who was Putin's top economic policy aide at the Kremlin.
Among the few major changes were the removal of Telecoms Minister Leonid Reiman, the splitting of the Industries and Energy Ministry into two separate entities and the creation of a new ministry for sport and tourism and another for ecology.
Sergei Sobyanin, who headed the powerful Kremlin administration under Putin's presidency, moves with his former boss to become government chief of staff.
Igor Sechin, Putin's deputy chief of staff at the Kremlin and seen as one of Russia's most powerful figures, will become one of five men with the rank of deputy prime minister, along with close Putin ally and former KGB spy Sergei Ivanov.
State television showed Putin proposing the names to Medvedev at a brief meeting earlier in the day.
"As we agreed, the necessary documents concerning the structure of the government and the personal appointments of the deputies of the prime minister and federal ministers are ready," Putin said.
Medvedev replied that he would approve all necessary decisions because the two men had been working on the government structure together for the past two months.
Under Russia's constitution, the prime minister proposes cabinet names to the president, who must approve them before they are final.
Swissinfo
May 12, 2008 |
Monday, 12 May 2008
Putin
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