The President of South Ossetia Gagloev became an adviser to Putin. He will be replaced by former Deputy Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Marat Kambolov

The President of the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia, Alan Gagloev, resigned and announced that he was going to work in the Administration of the President of Russia as an adviser to Vladimir Putin. TASS reports this. Prime Minister Marat Kambolov will become the acting head of the republic.

“Yesterday I had a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who invited me to go to work in the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation as his adviser and assist in the implementation of the agreement we signed [on deepening allied cooperation] <...>. I supported our historical leader Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and am ready to stand next to him. Starting today, I am transferring to serve in the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation and resigning as President of the Republic of South Ossetia,” Gagloev said in a video message published on the official website of the President of South Ossetia.

Gagloev was born in Tskhinvali and has led South Ossetia since 2022. Before that, he held various positions in the leadership of the unrecognized republic, created the Alan Union party, which subsequently merged with the New Ossetia and Nykhas parties on the basis of the latter.

Kambolov was born in North Ossetia, studied at the Academy of National Economy of the Russian Federation, and worked at the Federal Agency for Science and Innovation. In 2010, he became Deputy Minister of Education of Russia Dmitry Livanov, but left there in 2016. Three years earlier, his office was searched as part of a criminal case against the former rector of the State University of Management Viktor Kozbanenko, accused of receiving a bribe of 7 million rubles. During interrogation, he testified against Kambolov, but later Livanov stated that Kozbanenko simply slandered Kambolov and there was no reason to remove him from work. In 2016, Kambolov, being in the status of a witness in this case, left the Ministry of Education and went to work at the Kurchatov Institute, where he first held the post of deputy director and then director. He was appointed to the post of head of the government of South Ossetia in early June of this year.

As political scientist Ivan Preobrazhensky previously wrote , this appointment may mean that the Kovalchuk family close to Putin will gain control over South Ossetia: Mikhail Kovalchuk holds the position of honorary president of the Kurchatov Institute research institute.