Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday named the little-known head of a financial market watchdog as his prime minister in a surprise move that kept analysts guessing over who would succeed him in the Kremlin.
Earlier, Putin accepted Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's resignation and then left Moscow for a planned trip to the Volga region without publicly disclosing a replacement.
It was left to the speaker of the State Duma (parliament), Boris Gryzlov, to announce that Putin had nominated Viktor Zubkov, the 65-year-old head of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, as new prime minister.
The move confounded analysts' predictions that Putin would elevate one of the most widely fancied candidates to succeed him to the prime minister's post as a stepping stone to the top Kremlin job.
That was the sequence of events under former president Boris Yeltsin, who made Putin prime minister in 1999 before naming him acting president months later.
The respected business daily Vedomosti, in an earlier report yesterday, had said Sergei Ivanov, one of two first deputy prime ministers and a close Putin ally, would replace Fradkov very soon - a view widely echoed among analysts here.
Putin, however, has sprung surprises before and Zubkov has never been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate.
This raised the possibility that Putin simply named him to keep voters guessing about his successor and avoid the risk of becoming a lame duck before he leaves power in May 2008.
"Most likely he is a transitional figure, who will stay until the new president's inauguration and the appointment of the new government," said Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank in Moscow.
"It is unexpected and suggests there is a power struggle for succession and the final decision has not been made yet."
Zubkov graduated as an economist and ran state farms in the Leningrad region before moving to Putin's home city of St Petersburg to work in the administration there. Putin was deputy mayor at the time.
Earlier, Putin met Fradkov at the Kremlin to receive his resignation and thank him for his work.
"We all have to think together how to build a structure of power so that it better corresponds to the pre-election period and prepares the country for the period after the presidential election in March," Putin told Fradkov during their meeting, which was carried on Russian television.
Fradkov gave as the reasons for his departure "approaching significant political events in the country and his own desire to give Russia's president full freedom of decision including staff decisions".
Source: China Daily/agencies
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