Putin sacks chief of staff

In a symbolic gesture, Putin appointed Ivanov a special envoy for transportation and the environment, a stunning downgrade for the man who had been considered one of the most influential people in Russian Federation.

“I’m happy with how you handle tasks”, Putin said.

President Putin told Russian TV on Friday (August 12) that Ivanov asked to leave his post and even recommended his replacement, Anton Vaino.

When Medvedev obediently stepped down after one term to allow Putin reclaim the presidency in 2012, Ivanov was named the Kremlin chief of staff, a job with broad authority.

A career intelligence officer who speaks fluent English and Swedish, Mr Ivanov was considered one of the most powerful individuals in the country after Mr Putin and has frequently been identified as a likely successor.

President Vladimir Putin has demoted the Kremlin’s chief of staff in a dramatic shake-up of Russia’s leadership.

When he came to power in 2000, Putin created a top-down “power vertical” staffed largely by old KGB colleagues, which was quite successful in stopping the economic and political decay that beset Russian Federation in the 1990s. He served previously as a deputy prime minister and defence minister.

“Vaino is not the worst appointment, but he is not a political figure”, former Kremlin adviser Gleb Pavlovsky said, noting that Ivanov would keep his seat on Putin’s Security Council and hence a degree of influence.

Multiple theories for why Ivanov had departed quickly arose in Russian Federation. He was seen as a leader of the hawkishly anti-Western camp of former spies who have come to dominate Kremlin policy-making. “He’s very afraid of “Brezhnev-nization”.

(Vatican Radio) Political tensions are reported in Russian Federation where President Vladimir Putin has abruptly replaced his longtime chief-of-staff with a low-profile younger aide. Mr Putin became prime minister, before returning to the presidency just three-and-a-half years later.

There is another circumstance to suggest that this dismissal was well coordinated: with Ivanov’s deputy, Vyacheslav Volodin, who is in charge of overseeing matters related to Russia’s party system, now on the campaign trail, Ivanov’s successor, Anton Vaino, a younger Putin confidant, will temporarily take over his duties too.

“I think he’s choosing now a new team”, Bunin said. In a meeting with President Putin shown on state television both men claimed that the chief of staff was stepping down at his own request.

A number of other younger apparatchiks, including from the military, have also received high-profile promotions.

So is this the fall-out from some kind of power struggle? At the same time, Putin has recently appeared to move to shore up his control over Russia’s security apparatus before parliamentary elections this autumn, creating a new National Guard with increased powers and appointing his former chief bodyguard to oversee it.

But many noted Ivanov’s removal seemed to not only mark a shift toward a changing of the guard, but also a change in his entourage’s attitude toward him.