INTO RELIABLE HANDS

A week after the resignation of Mikhail Fradkov's government, Vladimir Putin announced the composition of V. Zubkov's new government, making some slight adjustments. Viktor Khristenko's wife, Tatyana Golikova (who had been first deputy to Finance Minister A. Kudrin since August 2002) became health and social development minister; Dmitriy Kozak (who had been the president's representative plenipotentiary in the Southern Federal District since 13 September 2004) was appointed minister for regional development; and Elvira Nabiullina was appointed economy minister (from June 2000, she was first deputy to Russian Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref, in 2003-05 she was president of the Centre for Strategic Development Foundation, and since October 2005 she had been head of the council of experts of the organizational committee set up to prepare and support the chairmanship of the Russian Federation of the G8, and head of a research group at the Centre for Strategic Development).

Most members of ex-premier Mikhail Fradkov's team will continue their work in the new government. The structural changes in the government boiled down to the appearance of one more deputy prime minister: the two first deputy prime ministers, Dmitriy Medvedev and Sergey Ivanov, and the two ordinary deputies, Aleksandr Zhukov and Sergey Naryshkin, were joined by a fifth colleague - Aleksey Kudrin, who became deputy prime minister while retaining his post of finance minister. Two new federal committees will also appear in the structure of the government - for youth affairs and for fishing. This means that, in addition to Mikhail Fradkov, German Gref, Mikhail Zurabov and Vladimir Yakovlev lost their posts in the cabinet; they have all been continuously subject to public criticism in one way or another and did not fit in with the new line of the Russian president and his retinue.

Thus, one can draw some interim conclusions from the last government reshuffle ahead of the parliamentary and presidential elections in Russia. Many Russian and foreign experts believe that the reshuffle confirmed the continuity of the economic strategy and political line of the incumbent president. The appointment of the former head of financial intelligence, Viktor Zubkov (according to some reports, one of the oldest and closest associates of the Russian president, going back to the St Petersburg mayoralty), as prime minister and the rise in status of Aleksey Kudrin, who has a reputation as a liberal reformer and enjoys the trust of financial and investment circles both within and outside Russia, reflects the presence of certain tendencies in Putin's strategy.

Firstly - the preservation and strengthening of the liberal market component of the government. Secondly, some weakening of the leading positions of power-wielders in the hierarchy of the Russian authorities; Mikhail Fradkov, promoted by the deputy head of the Kremlin administration, Igor Sechin, has lost his post. Everybody knows that Zubkov's relations with I. Sechin are far from cordial. However, Zubkov is one of the few people in Vladimir Putin's retinue who "knows everything about everyone", thus securing his official and political positions even when elections and changes of power occur in the country.

Therefore, if, in the future, Zubkov, for example, becomes president and Medvedev becomes prime minister, Putin needs to build into the power structure a figure or a body (e.g., the Security Council) to coordinate the activities of the special services.

However, the most important task undertaken by the outgoing president lies elsewhere. Both the government reshuffle and the latest reform of the Prosecutor-General's Office, which resulted in the detachment of the investigative committee (Putin's schoolmate, Aleksandr Bastrykin, became head of this agency) are intended to form a new system of checks and balances in the system on the executive authorities, including the power-wielding agencies, to ensure that none of the leading politicians or agencies plays an independent game.

Considering the inevitable intensification of the struggle for position in the economic and financial sectors before and after the change of power in 2008, Putin seeks to create a power structure that would rule out any threat to his own position and would not prevent a possible return to power in the future. In other words, the talk is of the preconditions for long-term stability, and this is what the former financial intelligence officer seeks to ensure.