Page 51 - bne_Magazine_July_2018

bne July 2018
Opinion 51
executes his policies, it cannot help but influence them, too.
Arguably, then, the composition of the senior ranks of the Presidential Administration thus matters rather more than that of cabinet, and modern Kremlinology should thus be applied to glean what lessons we can from the announcement of the team to execute Putin’s vision for his fourth (and presumably final?) presidential term.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take all that much Kremlinology. The top echelons of the administration are untouched; even several individuals whose departure was widely touted (assisted by what look like official leaks) retain their positions.
Bland but reportedly efficient Anton Vaino remains Putin’s chief of staff. His deputies, Alexei Gromov and Sergei Kiriyenko, likewise keep their positions and their portfolios. Unsurprisingly, the face of the administration will continue to be the genially-enduring Dmitri Peskov, who is both the presidential press secretary and a deputy chief of staff. Vladimir Ostrovenko and Magomedsalam Magomedov are still fellow deputies.
Of the nine presidential aides, only three are newcomers. Vladislav Surkov, the political technologist turned master of the Donbas, was expected to lose his position. Even many Western interlocutors, aware that he had not met US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker since January, were assuming he was yesterday’s man. Yet rather than appoint a new face that might suggest a new approach (or at least give an old approach the appearance of change), Putin opted to keep him in place.
Likewise, Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s 71-year-old foreign policy advisor, bucked the received wisdom and stayed on the team. Given the widespread speculation that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is eager to move on, it may be that Ushakov is simply keeping the seat warm until a suitable transition can be arranged. Much, after all, will depend on who is picked
to succeed the legendary, but increasingly marginalised and frustrated Lavrov.
What does it take to get the boot? German Klimenko, whose role as Putin’s internet advisor meant he oversaw the clumsy and often counterproductive efforts to police the “RuNet,” has gone, but this is unsurprising not just in light of his track record but also his failure to develop any personal bond with the boss. In his two years in the job, he met Putin only once.
However, it is too early to expect any change in policy, at least for the better. The new head of the Control Department is Colonel General Dmitry Shalkov, previously deputy head of the Federal Security Service (FSB). In his previous position, Shalkov was responsible for cyber-security and one of the prime movers behind the increasingly hard Russian line, so he is likely also to assume Klimenko’s role as Russia’s Canute, trying to hold back the tides of the internet.
Vladimir Kozhin, whose brief covered military-technical issues, and Yevgeny Shkolov, who handled personal matters, also lost their positions, along with aide Sergei Grigorov. Kozhin’s departure may be a by-product of the shake-up in the management of the defence-industrial complex now that Yuri Borisov has succeeded Dmitry Rogozin as Deputy Prime Minister for the Defence and Space Industries. The same may be true of Grigorov, who previously had headed the Federal Service for Technological and Export Control.
There is speculation that another newcomer to the ranks of the presidential aides with an FSB background will assume Shkolov’s role. This is Anatoly Seryshev, who since 2016 had been deputy head of the Federal Customs Service. Reportedly close to both Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Rostec CEO Sergei Chemezov, he is apparently quite a hardliner. Having previously worked not in the central FSB apparatus but in the regions, notably Irkutsk and Karelia, Seryshev is definitely on the “political policeman” wing of the siloviki.
So far, so humdrum, and it is easy to see why the Moscow Carnegie Centre’s Alexander Gabuev tweeted that “it's zastoi 2.0, a brezhnevization, but with more advanced medical services for the top leadership.”
“Inexorably, the Presidential Administration became the chancellery, audit committee, enforcer and gatekeeper of Putin’s court”
However, it took unusually long – a month – for the appointments to be revealed, and in light of the extensive trailing of wider personnel changes, as well as the slightly chaotic nature of the announcement, it may well be that this was a harder process than “business as usual may suggest.”
In many ways, this is the same pattern as we saw with the return of Alexei Kudrin. After all kinds of hints and rumours of a cen- tral position in charge of overdue economic reform, whether in the cabinet or the Presidential Administration, at the last minute there seems to have been a crisis of confidence. Instead, he ended up heading the Audit Chamber: an important position, to be sure, especially with talk of it acquiring greater powers, but not the kind of position allowing him to shape policy.
Putin, time and again, teeters on the edge of a bold advance, then steps back, opts to play it safe.
On the one hand, there is the Putin that genuinely wants more efficiency, more imagination, more diversification in
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