#6
Financial Times (UK)
5 January 2002
Russians question quality of the president's men:
Vladimir Putin's habit of recruiting senior aides from his home city has raised
doubts over his judgment
By ANDREW JACK
Two years after taking charge in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin faces growing criticism for one of the most potentially damaging aspects of his management style: the narrow pool of people from whom he draws to fill top appointments.
In dozens of senior strategic jobs - in politics, the civil service and state-controlled business alike - Mr Putin has named or left in charge a group of long-standing acquaintances, including many from his native city, St Petersburg.
With economic growth beginning to slow, the elections cycle drawing on and the critical phase of implementing his ambitious reform plans coming to a head this year, the skills of those in leadership positions are coming under more intense scrutiny.
Boris Nemtsov, one of the leaders of the Union of Right Forces movement in parliament, has returned repeatedly to the theme in the past few months, telling party activists in one recent speech: "It is Putin's sacred belief that only St Petersburg has good people. It is his profound mistake. (His) main tragedy is that he doesn't trust people."
While Alexander Voloshin, the head of the presidential administration, remains in office from the time of President Boris Yeltsin, many of Mr Putin's other senior Kremlin aides have arrived since from different circles.
Those from St Petersburg include Dmitri Medvedev and Dmitry Kozak, both deputy heads of his administration in the Kremlin, and German Gref, the minister for economic trade and development. Alexei Kudrin, the finance minister, is also from the city. In the business sector, Alexei Miller, the new head of Gazprom, the gas monopoly 38 per cent owned by the state, was chosen personally by Mr Putin in May, after a career in St Petersburg. Mr Miller has in turn hired others from the city to join him.
In politics, their ranks were swelled most recently by Sergei Mironov, a politician and administrator from the city, who was elected in December as the new head of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament.
From Mr Putin's previous career in the security services there is Sergei Ivanov, now the minister of defence, and many lower-profile figures such as Sergei Chemezov, a senior manager at the state arms company Rosoboronexport, with whom he worked at the Soviet embassy in East Germany in the 1980s.
In some ways, St Petersburg - as Russia's second largest city and traditionally an intellectual haven - is a rich recruiting ground for Mr Putin. If he had been from Moscow or worked there for longer, for example, the trend would have been less obvious - particularly to vocal Muscovites.
He has also been following a long tradition in his hiring practices, by using people he knows. Mr Yeltsin initially hired people from his traditional power base in the city of Yekaterinburg, for instance.
Mr Putin himself says that there have been many appointments of people from elsewhere during his term so far, while also arguing that it is logical he will chose those whom he knows and trusts "professionally and morally". He stresses that he has been in the Kremlin for only two years and it takes time to get to know those with suitable skills from other regions.
Yuri Kotler, a partner with Ward Howell, the international recruitment agency, says: "He is trying to put into decision-making positions people that he can rely on. The vast majority come from his previous life. But I don't think he is able to find a lot of people from business."
His firm has helped place two people with useful skills in Mr Gref's economic development ministry. But the selection has proved extremely difficult, with maximum salaries for senior officials of just Rbs5,000 a month (Dollars 166).
He argues that the fact that many of Mr Putin's close aides come from the security services or the bureaucracy means they are used to controlling and supervising, rather than implementing. They also lack the experience of democratic politics.
But the mettle of the president's men has yet to be thoroughly tested. That will change in the coming months. The government wants to push ahead this year with reform of Russia's big state-dominated industries - in gas, electricity, telecommunications and railways. It wants to implement land sales legislation, tax and labour codes and anti-red-tape measures. Mr Putin's St Petersburg allies will ultimately be judged by results.
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