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Chronicle footage
Dmitry Khitarov
Deputies believed that the new prime minister and the old government could provide us with a bright future
Deputies believed that the new prime minister and the old government could provide us with a bright future
Nonecha, as they say, is not the same as just now. In previous times, the State Duma's approval of the chairman of the government was perceived as an event of paramount importance. To the triumph of Mikhail Kasyanov, who received a record 325 votes in favor with 55 against and 15 abstentions (even when voting for the “socially close” Yevgeny Primakov, the Duma - then still Bolshevik - was not so generous), journalists and everyone else, those who were interested, as they say, professionally, reacted more than calmly. They were much more excited about the end of the leapfrog with the appointment of a new prosecutor general. Even the announcement of the composition of the government could not stir up observers - almost everything was more or less known.
Redecorating
Immediately after being confirmed as Prime Minister, Mikhail Kasyanov said that the changes would affect not only the composition of the government, but also its structure. The number of federal ministries, in particular, will be reduced from 30 to 24, other federal executive bodies - from 39 to 33. It was also decided to reduce the number of deputy prime ministers from seven to five, and to abolish the post of first deputy prime minister altogether.
The rank of deputy chairman of the government, in addition to the newly appointed Alexei Kudrin, who is also entrusted with the leadership of the Ministry of Finance, was given to vice “veterans” Valentina Matvienko, Ilya Klebanov and Viktor Khristenko. The fifth deputy will oversee agriculture. Who this lucky person would be was not announced at the time the issue was signed for publication.
Attempts to reduce the number of deputy prime ministers have been made before, but they were not successful. Journalists even deduced the law of “eleven offices”: the government begins to work at full capacity only when all eleven deputy prime minister’s offices available in the White House are filled. It is difficult to say how successful the current attempt will be. In any case, in the new government there will hardly be fewer people who would like to receive the rank of deputy chairman than in the old one. It would be naive to assume that the same representative of the Russian government in Chechnya, Nikolai Koshman, will voluntarily give up his “vice” status and the cabinet that comes with it.
German Gref, whose Center for Strategic Research was preparing and, apparently, will be preparing a new government program for a long time, headed the conglomerate, called the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. Alexander Pochinok vacated the position of chief fiscal officer for Gennady Bukaev, who previously headed the capital’s tax authorities, and himself moved to the Ministry of Labor and Social Development. The appointment of Alexander Dondukov, who previously held the position of chief designer of the Yakovlev Design Bureau, as head of the newly created Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology, strengthened the position of the leaders of the military-industrial complex in the government. At the design bureau, Dondukov proved himself to be a talented leader, betting on the production of vertical take-off aircraft exactly when the military leadership finally abandoned the idea of building aircraft carriers, for which the “verticals” were intended.
Despite the announced “perestroika”, in most departments - the Ministry of Culture, which after the abolition of Goskino became the only state patron of the most important of the arts, the Ministry of Property, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Atomic Energy, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Communications and other “mines” - the former owners remained. The most eloquent evidence of the invariability of the “family” course can be considered the fact that both the head of the Ministry of Railways, Nikolai Aksenenko, and the head of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy, which is now reorganized into the Ministry of Energy, Viktor Kalyuzhny (the decree on the appointment was not appeared, however, the fact that the president took him on a trip to Central Asia indicated that it was only a matter of time), and Mikhail Lesin, who, together with the machine gunners assigned to him, was again tasked with protecting freedom of speech. Not to mention Mikhail Kasyanov himself.
Personnel
As one might expect, there were no significant changes in the composition of the ministers of the “power bloc”. Vladimir Putin, who takes extremely seriously the fact that he is, among other things, also the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, highly appreciated the efforts of the generals, who in recent months have shown in every possible way to Putin - the Prime Minister, Putin - and. O. the president, Putin - his loyalty to the president.
Igor Sergeev retained the post of Minister of Defense, and Vladimir Rushailo, contrary to numerous rumors, remained head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Sergei Shoigu, has been somewhat demoted in status - he was deprived of his vice-premier post. However, Sergei Kuzhugetovich hastened to assure journalists that he himself asked the president about this in order to focus on leading Unity.
Obviously, Vladimir Putin is quite satisfied with the way things are going in foreign policy. In any case, Igor Ivanov retained the post of head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The diplomatic department believes that the president was extremely pleased with the way Ivanov behaved at the recent meeting of foreign ministers of the Council of Europe. The fact that we were not kicked out of the European threshold was presented by the Foreign Ministry almost as a diplomatic triumph, organized personally by the head of this department.
Almost all heads of special services remained in their places: FSB, FPS, tax police and FAPSI. They came to their positions during the period when the current president headed the Security Council or was prime minister, and they can rightfully be called Putin’s people.
The director of the Foreign Intelligence Service has not yet been appointed. According to Itogi’s sources, the president has accumulated many complaints against its former leader, Vyacheslav Trubnikov. Putin, who takes intelligence matters to heart, is not a little irritated by the recent failure of the Russian station in Poland.
The only new face among the security forces so far is the director of the Federal Security Service, Evgeny Murov. All that is known about him is that before this appointment he was deputy head of the FSB for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region. Which fits well with the general trend - people from the Northern capital are now taking up positions in the special services.
The fact that Vladimir Putin has not changed almost any of the top officials of the law enforcement agencies is also explained by the fact that the “anti-terrorist operation” in Chechnya is still far from over, and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief does not want to change horses at the crossing. True, cynics believe that Putin will make some of these horses scapegoats when he has to explain to the people why, after the brilliant victory of the Russian army, the separatists not only did not lay down their arms, but continue to inflict increasingly significant blows on the troops of the United Group.
But if the fate of the top officials of the power ministries is more or less determined, then several dozen generals who, following the example of senior members of the presidential administration, who submitted their resignations of their own free will (unlike cabinet members who were obliged to do so), wrote immediately after the inauguration resignation reports are in limbo - their reports have not been acted upon. Army personnel officers do not hide the fact that they find themselves in a dead end: either they should sign the reports and reappoint the generals to their positions, or pretend that there were no reports at all.
Most likely, no revolutionary changes will occur within the power ministries. But they will not soon forget the hassle that the Kremlin gave the generals.
And Volodya too
Just last Tuesday it seemed that the acting. Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov will lose not only the prefix “acting,” but also the position itself. The senators were so confident that the president would nominate the current chief of staff of the government, Dmitry Kozak, for the post of prosecutor general that the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation, ahead of schedule, even before receiving an official message from the Kremlin, discussed and unanimously approved this candidacy.
Indeed, all Tuesday there were unambiguous signals from the Kremlin - the president made a choice in favor of his old friend from St. Petersburg, who headed the legal department of the St. Petersburg mayor's office under Anatoly Sobchak.
And yet, on Wednesday morning, the president proposed that the Federation Council approve Vladimir Ustinov as prosecutor general. The senators were discouraged, which, however, did not stop them from unanimously voting for the presidential creature during the day. The head of the upper chamber, Yegor Stroev, helped the senators save face with his usual grace, declaring that the appointment was not clear until the very last moment and that he personally “conducted consultations all evening and even at night.”
Now you can make any assumptions about why the choice fell on Ustinov. Apparently, the Kremlin family, which the new president inherited from his predecessor, is too tired of the hassle associated with endless investigations about the “Andavas” and “Mabetexes” to allow their patron to experiment with appointing to the highest prosecutorial post a person who can at least suspect of independence, energy and strength of character.
Our goal is formalism
As expected, for most government officials, resigning their powers to the newly elected president has become a pure formality, a ritual. How ritualistic were the complaints of the Bolsheviks about the absence of the “Russian spirit” in the cabinet of ministers. Or the demands of the right to get rid of the most odious “family” ministers, in particular Viktor Kalyuzhny. As a result, both of them, as well as the third, fourth and fifth, unanimously voted for the prime minister, although in his speech he limited himself to general, absolutely formal phrases, admitting that he did not yet have a real program. The communists, however, were appeased by adding the absolutely Russian surname Dondukov to the list of ministers, and the Kremlin quickly silenced the right-wingers by introducing Alexei Kudrin and German Gref into the new government and appointing SPS leader Sergei Kiriyenko as Nizhny Novgorod governor-general.
One can assume that the preservation of several “iconic” figures in the government was one of the “guarantees” for the former president, but it is difficult to imagine what Boris Nikolayevich personally asked for, say, for the Minister of Education Vladimir Filippov or the Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman. This means that when assembling a formally new, but in fact old government, Vladimir Putin (it is clear that the new prime minister, if he had anything to do with the appointments, was only indirect) did it consciously. This means that he considers the Yeltsin government his own. Which, however, does not reflect at all on the credibility of the new president, who not formally, but actually promised us a bright future.
With the participation of Alexander Golts and Alexander Ryklin