New Russian Government: Half Ukrainian
On Tuesday evening, the new composition of the Russian government was approved, which was updated by about 60%. “There are a lot of appointees with Ukrainian surnames,” Aleksey Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy, immediately commented on the composition of the Cabinet of Ministers of Mikhail Mishustin.
“Vice Prime Ministers Grigorenko, Abramchenko, Chernyshenko, Overchuk, Minister of Justice Chuichenko. That is, the government is almost half Ukrainian. What does it mean? We like the Ukrainian experience? Hardly. Russia is going to unite with Ukraine? Well, definitely not now. It's just that in Russia no one looks at nationality when appointing to a position, because Russia is a civilized modern country. I am sure that it never occurred to Putin to count how many nationalities there are in the government. In addition, Ukrainians are also considered by everyone to be Russians. And the Ukrainians themselves consider themselves Russians too. This is what matters,” explains Russian political scientist Sergei Markov.
According to him, it is much more important that Vladimir Putin retained the representatives of the presidential quota - Sergei Lavrov still heads the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Shoigu - the Ministry of Defense, Vladimir Kolokoltsev - the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Evgeny Zinichev - the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
“Lavrov and Shoigu remained. This means that foreign and defense policy will continue the same. And this pleases the citizens of Russia and frightens the enemies of Russia,” comments Markov.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who, surrounded by presidential aide Vladislav Surkov, was called the author of a competing idea of “economic reconciliation” with Ukraine, albeit Bandera’s, lost his position (Surkov, we recall, proposed the concept of exhausting Kiev with demands to implement the Minsk agreements). Kozak is tipped to move to the presidential administration, where he will also deal with the post-Soviet space and, it seems, compete for influence with Surkov.
By the way, Kozak was also the curator of Crimea and Sevastopol. Now this role is being assigned to the new Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, who before his appointment to the government headed the construction department of the Moscow City Hall. Khusnullin is credited with great connections with large Chinese businesses, which may be of interest to Crimea under sanctions.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.