Oleg Govorun / D. Astakhov / ITAR-TASS

President Vladimir Putin has appointed Oleg Govorun as head of the presidential department for socio-economic cooperation with the CIS countries, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Kremlin press service reported , citing Putin's decree.

As Vedomosti previously reported, Govorun was among the candidates for this post - along with him, other associates of Vladislav Surkov, who had returned to the Kremlin, were also vying for it, in particular Nikolai Reshetnikov, Ivan Demidov and Oleg Khorokhordin.

Govorun, who previously headed the Kremlin's political department and the central plenipotentiary representative office, resigned from his post as Minister of Regional Development in October last year - as his acquaintances explained, he was offended by a reprimand from President Vladimir Putin, which was recently annulled.

In September, Putin appointed Vladislav Surkov as his aide. Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said Surkov would oversee relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. "He will be dealing with the same issues that [Tatiana] Golikova dealt with as a presidential aide, exactly the same," Peskov said.

The new thing in the work of the department will be greater activity in influencing the domestic policy of the CIS countries, says a source of Vedomosti close to the new management of the department. According to him, the work will be intensified first of all in the countries with which Surkov supervises interaction according to his direct job responsibilities - in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as in Ukraine and Moldova.

The European Union and the United States are actively working with civil society and the elite of Moldova and Ukraine, which is reflected in decisions that are negative for Russia, but it has not been doing such work for a long time, notes member of the Public Chamber Sergei Markov. He agrees that Surkov and his team are more suited for such activities than the former head of the department, Tatyana Golikova, whose task was to control the flow of money to the unrecognized republics. But so far there is no evidence that Surkov has started this work and his meetings with Russian experts on Ukraine and Moldova have begun, notes Markov, moreover, Surkov's responsibilities have been repeatedly stated to be the same as Golikova's. And another Kremlin department is called upon to work with the elites of other countries - for interregional and cultural relations with foreign relations, headed by Alexander Chernov. Therefore, how the spheres of influence will be distributed is still a mystery, Markov concludes.

Govorun returns to the Kremlin following Surkov