The Russian government has, after all, seen a round of personnel changes. Although they reached the level of deputy prime ministers, they are best described as cosmetic.
Dmitry Grigorenko, the head of the government apparatus and a close ally of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, has given up his post to Irina Okladnikova, a deputy finance minister. Transport Minister Andrey Nikitin has become deputy prime minister for transport, filling the vacancy left by Vitaly Savelyev’s move to the State Duma; Dmitry Yadrov, head of Rosaviatsia, has replaced Nikitin as transport minister. Yuri Trutnev, a veteran of Russian politics, has left his posts as deputy prime minister and presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District. Oleg Kozhemyako, governor of Primorsky Krai, has become the government’s new overseer of the Far East. Another change is the elevation of Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to deputy prime minister.
The most consequential move in this series is Dmitry Grigorenko’s departure as head of the government apparatus. A longtime Mishustin colleague from their years at the Federal Tax Service, Grigorenko controlled the government’s principal bureaucratic machinery. For any official in Russia’s power vertical, having a trusted person at the head of the apparatus makes the job considerably easier. Grigorenko’s dismissal is therefore a loss for Mishustin. Full control over the apparatus was one of the factors that allowed Mishustin to be seen as a “strong prime minister,” with a broad mandate and extensive oversight powers within the government. Mishustin undoubtedly knows Irina Okladnikova well. She is unlikely to pursue an independent political line in her new role, but neither can she be regarded as the prime minister’s trusted confidante.
That said, the scale of the loss should not be exaggerated. The Russian government is structured in such a way that most of its most influential members answer either directly to Vladimir Putin or to powerful groups that resolve key issues directly with the president. The prime minister has little real influence over their actions and decisions, since these are settled at a higher level.
No matter how tightly Mishustin controlled the apparatus through Grigorenko, he could not shape the substance of documents prepared by First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov (part of Sergei Chemezov’s Rostec group), Deputy Prime Minister for Construction Marat Khusnullin (personally tied to Putin), the transport bloc, traditionally controlled by the Rotenberg brothers, or Finance Minister Anton Siluanov (also personally tied to Putin). For the same reason, Irina Okladnikova’s move into the head of the government apparatus should not be seen as a major boost for Siluanov.
The real scale of Mishustin’s loss will depend on whether the government’s political bloc, led by Leonid Levin and Alexander Gribov—experienced political technologists serving as deputy heads of the apparatus—remains intact. If they keep their positions and continue the prime minister’s rather successful public-relations effort, the consequences of the reshuffle for Mishustin may be largely symbolic.
Okladnikova will most likely oversee documents coming into the government that concern state spending. Her appointment may also be part of a bargain between Putin and the technocratic financiers who are expected to keep the economy from descending into chaos. The restoration of Anton Siluanov’s deputy prime minister status points in the same direction.
The open question is whether the Siluanov-Okladnikova tandem can withstand the lobbying efforts of influential groups from Putin’s inner circle. The likely answer is no. The continued clan-based arrangement in the government’s transport bloc points that way: the Rotenbergs retain control, with Andrey Nikitin—close to their group and to Defense Minister Andrey Belousov—becoming deputy prime minister, while Rosaviatsia head Dmitry Yadrov becomes transport minister. Yet the brothers have clearly had trouble maintaining that control: the decision on Nikitin was, for a time, left hanging.
Yuri Trutnev’s departure from the posts of deputy prime minister and presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District had been discussed for some time. Trutnev entered the power vertical as a young and ambitious politician in the early 2000s; now 70, he has begun to face the understandable health problems of age. The post of presidential aide—a role often given to the president’s close associates—will serve as an honorable retirement while allowing him to remain active. But Trutnev failed to secure a successor as deputy prime minister.
That successor could have been either Alexei Chekunkov, head of the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic and the son of a close friend of the former envoy, or governors loyal to Trutnev: Dmitry Demeshin of Khabarovsk Krai or Maria Kostyuk of the Jewish Autonomous Region. Instead, the new deputy prime minister and Far Eastern envoy is Oleg Kozhemyako, governor of Primorsky Krai, whose relations with Trutnev have always been neutral at best and tense at worst. Nor has Kozhemyako received a full carte blanche.
The “strong” deputy prime ministers—Trutnev himself, Marat Khusnullin, Dmitry Patrushev, and Denis Manturov—each have “their own” minister in the portfolio they directly oversee. It is in the ministries that operational control over a sector and its financial flows is concentrated; without a minister drawn from his own team or that of his group, a deputy prime minister is largely a ceremonial post. The Far East ministry is still run by Alexei Chekunkov, who is close to Trutnev, while many governors in the district are protégés of the now-former deputy prime minister and envoy. Given that Trutnev maintains close ties with Vladimir Putin—ties Kozhemyako does not yet have—the new overseer of the Far East will find it difficult to establish himself as an influential deputy prime minister, envoy, and key figure in regional politics.
For now, the government reshuffle suggests that Vladimir Putin has not abandoned his ultra-conservative personnel policy and that stagnation in the power vertical persists. The reasons for replacement are age and health (Trutnev) or a regrouping within blocs assigned to clan-based groups (Nikitin and Yadrov). The head of the government apparatus works directly with the prime minister and only rarely with the president himself, which is why the change means little for Putin personally. People close and familiar to him continue in their posts.
Coming for the Communists Again
This week saw the detention of one of the most prominent regional communists: Oleg Mikhailov, head of the KPRF’s branch in the Komi Republic. He is charged with justifying terrorism over a post in support of the imprisoned political scientist Boris Kagarlitsky. In the previous State Duma elections, Mikhailov defeated a United Russia candidate in a competitive single-mandate district and became a federal deputy. The communist owed his victory to his high-profile opposition work: he sharply criticized the republican authorities and backed environmental protests against the construction of a landfill at the Shiyes station. The presidential administration tried to block Mikhailov’s nomination in the district in this cycle’s elections, but he managed to run again on the Communist Party ticket. According to the official results, he lost the single-mandate race (the KPRF branch in Komi does not recognize the outcome), and the votes cast for the federal party list were not enough to get him into the Duma.
Mikhailov’s detention after the federal parliamentary campaign shows that the presidential administration has not abandoned its plans to weaken the KPRF. Without Oleg Mikhailov, the work of the party’s Komi branch will be paralyzed, at least for a time. It is unlikely that its ranks contain another politician capable of combining organizational work with the kind of prominent public activity Mikhailov practiced. By depriving the KPRF of strong regional footholds and knocking local charismatic figures out of politics, the Kremlin may indeed push the party leadership to become far more pliant—and, in the longer run, bring the communists fully to heel. The KPRF leadership is trying to resist, but the intensity of that resistance clearly falls short of the pressure with which the authorities have set about resolving the “communist question.”
