RUSSIA: Incoming Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin announced a cabinet line-up yesterday which combined key ministers and powerful Kremlin figures into an unusually strong team under his command.
President Dmitry Medvedev, who took over from Mr Putin last Wednesday, announced three top appointments of his own, including the powerful chief of the Kremlin administration. But all of them signalled close continuity with Mr Putin.
Mr Medvedev and Mr Putin have pledged to rule Russia together in an unprecedented "tandem" arrangement. But many analysts said the appointments confirmed that Mr Putin remains the real boss, at least for now.
Key Putin ally Sergei Naryshkin - a former government chief of staff reported by Russian media to have links to the security services - was named head of Mr Medvedev's Kremlin administration.
"I don't think the appointment of Sergei Naryshkin as head of the presidential administration is the decision of Dmitry Medvedev," said independent political analyst Georgy Bovt. "I think it is the decision of Vladimir Putin and I don't actually see any appointments apart from [new justice minister Alexander] Konovalov that you can put down exclusively to Dmitry Medvedev."
Mr Putin reappointed his long-serving finance minister Alexei Kudrin, seen by markets as a guarantor of Russia's free-market policies. Sergei Lavrov, the public face of Moscow's assertive, anti-western diplomacy, also stayed on as foreign minister.
Two key figures from the all-powerful Kremlin administration moved with Mr Putin to take up new roles in the White House, the riverside seat of Russia's government. Sergei Sobyanin, a former governor of the oil-rich region of Tyumen who headed the Kremlin administration under Mr Putin, becomes the new premier's chief of staff and one of five deputy prime ministers.
Igor Sechin, formerly a deputy head of the presidential administration and a key Kremlin hardliner with close ties to the security services, becomes another of the five deputy prime ministers, tasked with overseeing industry and energy.
Former prime minister and ex-collective farm boss Viktor Zubkov continued in the cabinet as one of two first deputy prime ministers - the most senior posts after Mr Putin's.
- (Reuters)