President Vladimir Putin dismissed two senior officials yesterday in a surprise move that followed recent rumours of feuding at the heart of the Kremlin.
The twin sackings come less than a month after the killing of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, which had exposed rarely seen tensions between various factions within Putin’s inner elite.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Oleg Morozov, 61, was leaving his post as head of the President’s domestic policy department because of family reasons.
Peskov also announced the departure of head of the international cooperation department, Sergei Bolkhovitin, but gave no reason for his removal. His department deals with technical aspects of foreign cooperation.
Morozov was replaced by Tatyana Voronova, who previously headed the youth section of Putin’s ruling United Russia party, served as a lawmaker and sat on the country’s central elections committee before moving to the Kremlin in early 2013.
Twin sackings come less than a month after killing of Kremlin critic Nemtsov
Analysts said Voronova is a protege of Vyacheslav Volodin – Putin’s first deputy chief of staff who was blacklisted by the European Union last year for what the bloc said was his role in the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
Commentators saw her appointment as a possible signal that the Kremlin was gearing up for local elections due in some regions later this year as well as national parliamentary polls due in 2016.
No successor was named for Bolkhovitin. The sense of intrigue at the Kremlin this month was heightened when Putin vanished from public view for 10 days. However, he laughed off his disappearance when he finally re-emerged at a public event on March 16.
Meanwhile the Russian President has a visit planned to China in September, news agency Interfax has reported, citing the Kremlin’s chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov.
Interfax also reported that a Russian government delegation had been invited to a parade in China on September 3 to mark 70 years since the end of the World War II.
“We welcome this news,” said Hong Lei, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry.
China will hold a military parade and series of other events in September, but has given no details yet of which countries it will invite, except for saying that parade invitees would include major war participants and other countries in the region.
The parade will be Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first since he took over as Communist Party and military chief in late 2012 and as president in early 2013.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said this week Xi had confirmed he would visit Moscow on May 9 to join in commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Other leaders, mainly from Asia, former Soviet republics and Latin America, will also be on hand.
China has yet to confirm Xi’s visit. Xi has made a big public show of underscoring the importance of ties with Russia, and Moscow was the first capital he visited as president. Xi also attended the Winter Olympics in Sochi at Putin’s invitation.
Although the two see eye-to-eye on many international diplomatic issues, including the conflict in Syria, and generally vote as one on the United Nations Security Council, China has not proved so willing to support Russia on Ukraine.
China has said it would like to develop “friendly cooperation” with Ukraine, and repeatedly said it respected the ex-Soviet state’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.