Russian president names four new regional governors

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev nominated four new regional leaders on Monday in an apparent bid to rejuvenate regional authorities, the Kremlin said.

The president named four successors to the incumbent heads of the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, Siberia's Krasnoyarsk Territory and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area, and the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East, the Kremlin said in a statement on its website.

"The nomination of these candidates means that the president has moved to reshuffle governors," RIA Novosti news agency quoted an unnamed Kremlin official as saying.

Noting the need to introduce a new generation of governors across the country's regional administrations, Medvedev has appointed new leaders in about a fifth of Russia's regions over the past year and a half.

The heads of Russia's regions have been nominated by the president and approved by regional legislatures since 2004.

Source: Xinhua