Why Putin Fired His Chief of Staff and Longtime Ally

In an unexpected move, Russian President Vladimir Putin replaced Friday the head of the presidential administration Sergei Ivanov with Anton Vaino, a younger and less known official.

Ivanov, thanking Putin for his praise of his work, commented that his four years and eight months in the role made him the longest-serving head of Russia’s presidential administration.

“I will strive to work just as actively, dynamically and most importantly, successfully in my new duties,” he said.

Ivanov’s former deputy, Andrei Vaino, has been named as his replacement on the recommendation of his predecessor. Ivanov said he was “absolutely convinced Vaino is ready for the job.”

The dismissal, as several Kremlin insiders told The Moscow Times, follows the logic of the recent staff reshuffle among top Russian officials. Putin is replacing his old guard with young and loyal bureaucratic figures, moving toward enforcing his personal leadership.

Replacing Ivanov

Ivanov, 63, is a longtime ally of Putin. He has known Putin since the mid 1970s, when they worked together at the KGB, the Soviet predecessor of the Federal Security Service (FSB). Ivanov started his career as a top state official when Putin came to power and was always considered a member of Putin’s inner circle.

He was appointed defense minister in 2001. In 2007, he became deputy prime minister along with Dmitry Medvedev in what was seen by onlookers as a race for the spot of Putin’s successor, fueled by the president himself. Since then, Ivanov’s relations with Medvedev have always been considered as a competition for the top spot in Russian politics.

After Medvedev became president in 2008, Ivanov accompanied Putin to the government as deputy prime minister. Later, when Putin returned to the Kremlin as president in 2012, Ivanov was appointed head of his administration.

Unlike Ivanov, Anton Vaino is purely a bureaucrat, experts say. “He is totally neutral and polite, not ready to discuss anything or ask questions. It’s Putin’s personal choice,” a source close the Kremlin told The Moscow Times.

“He is perfect, by Putin’s standards: effective, but with no personal ties to him,” agreed political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky.

Inside the Kremlin, Vaino’s appointment didn’t come as a total shock. “He would have become the next head of administration anyway,” the source close to the Kremlin said.

Rumors of the move started circulating in early spring. Ivanov has been planning to resign for some time now — it was only a matter of time, says political analyst Yevgeny Minchenko.

In addition, Putin has been dissatisfied with Ivanov for some time. New legislation on the National Guard was the last straw, the Moscow-based political commentator Konstantin Gaaze says: “The expertise and the workflow involved in drafting this legislation went wrong. As a result, the version of one of the amendments signed by Putin and officially published in the press is different from what the parliament voted for. And the Kremlin managers had to deal with the scandal.”

Vaino, 44, is the grandson of the former head of the Estonian Communist Party. Fluent in English and Japanese, he trained as a diplomat before serving in Russia’s embassy in Tokyo in the late 1990s and then at Russia’s Foreign Ministry. Since 2003 he has risen up the management structures of the presidential administration — he then made his career as chief of the presidential protocol department. Within the elite, The Moscow Times’ sources say, Vaino is closer to the head of the Rostec state-owned arms manufacturer, Sergei Chemezov — but he also quite close to Putin.

He was never seen as a political player within Putin’s circle, but, rather, as Putin’s personal assistant — comparable to his press secretary Dmitry Peskov, insiders said.