President Putin (left) and Sergei Ivanov (epa)
14 November 2005 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin today announced a series of changes in his cabinet and the Kremlin administration.
The president named Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov as deputy prime minister while allowing him to retain his defense post.
Putin also named his chief of staff Dmitrii Medvedev as first deputy prime minister. Putin's new chief of staff will be Sergei Sobyanin, the former governor of oil-rich Tyumen Oblast.
A number of presidential envoys were also replaced as part of the reshuffle. Putin's envoys to the Volga and Far Eastern federal districts, Sergei Kirienko and Konstantin Pulikovskii, were dismissed from their posts.
They were replaced respectively by Aleksandr Konovalov, a former prosecutor-general of Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan, and Kamil Iskhakov, a former mayor of the city of Kazan.
RFE/RL Russia Report
RFE/RL Russia Report