The head of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, was relieved of his post, and Alexander Misharin was appointed instead.

The head of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, has been relieved of his post, and Alexander Misharin has been appointed instead, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday. The reason for the dismissal has not yet been specified.

“Vladimir Yakunin is now at a meeting with the President of the Russian Federation,” press secretary of the President of Russian Railways Alexander Pirkov told Interfax shortly after information about the dismissal of the top manager appeared in news agencies. Pirkov declined to comment further.

Yakunin was fired less than two weeks before his 65th birthday, which will be celebrated on June 30.

Vladimir Yakunin began his career as a junior researcher at the State Institute of Applied Chemistry. In the mid-1980s, he worked at the UN and served as secretary of the permanent mission of the USSR to the organization. In 1991, together with Yuri Kovalchuk (No. 99 in the ranking of the 200 richest businessmen in Russia according to Forbes , fortune - $1.1 billion) and ex-minister Andrei Fursenko, he created the Engineering and Technical Center on the basis of the Svetlana military-industrial complex enterprise in St. Petersburg. The idea of creating the center was supported by Vladimir Putin. In October 2000, Yakunin was appointed Deputy Minister of Transport, and in 2002 - First Deputy Minister of Railways. In October 2003, he became the first vice president of Russian Railways OJSC, and on June 15, 2005, he was appointed president of the carrier.

Alexander Misharin has served as First Vice President of Russian Railways since December 2012. Before that, he was the governor of the Sverdlovsk region, the head of the Sverdlovsk railway, and the first deputy minister of Russian railways.

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