Vladimir Putin’s plans to remake Russia’s government remained a secret kept by him and his inner circle until the very last moment, when ministers were called to a surprise meeting to be told they were all about to resign from their jobs.
“It was total shock in the government,” said Konstantin Gaaze, a Moscow-based political analyst. “They didn’t know what was being prepared for them even as they were called for the meeting with the president and prime minister.”
The sudden government reshuffle and planned amendments to the country’s constitution will help Putin secure a place in Russia’s government for himself after 2024, when his term ends as president.
But the selection may help Putin secure another aim: managing a simmering conflict among the clans and interest groups surrounding him, including those in his inner circle, who are jockeying for influence as he plans his exit from the Kremlin in 2024.
In the charged environment, taxman Mikhail Mishustin is a neutral choice for prime minister who leaves Putin’s options open for the future, said Yekaterina Schulmann, a Moscow-based political scientist.
“This is a person whose appointment does not convey a political message,” said Schulmann, as opposed to others like Alexei Kudrin, a former minister of finance, who is seen as a liberal, or Nikolai Patrushev, the hawkish head of the security council. “It does not entail that he cannot become a successor. But it does not denote it either.”
Vladimir Putin’s selection for Russia’s next prime minister is a loyal technocrat seen as a capable placeholder while the Russian president plans for his political succession.
Mikhail Mishustin, 53, is the head of Russia’s tax service, credited with bringing digital tools to revolutionise the agency and help it crack down on tax evasion.
His nomination came on Wednesday as Putin embarked on a sweeping reshuffle of the country’s leadership. Mishustin met Putin in the Kremlin where the Russian president “suggested to him that he take the post of the head of government” which he accepted, the Kremlin said.
He will face a vote of approval in the Russian parliament within a week, which is almost certain to pass.
Mishustin, a graduate of the Stankin Moscow State Technological University, has headed the tax service since being appointed by Putin in 2010, and also worked for the agency in the 1990s.
He has also worked as the president of an investment company and as the head of a laboratory for a Moscow-based computer company.
A recent profile of Mishustin in the Financial Times called him the “taxman of the future” and credited him with developing a real-time system “directed more at shopkeepers than oligarchs.”
Mishustin is not thought to be among the likely candidates to be Putin’s eventual replacement, who have largely included powerful officials known to be longtime allies of the president, including city heads, members of his presidential administration, and even former bodyguards.
Balancing those interests has become crucial with Putin entering the twilight of his presidency, and as the infighting has intensified. In a notable case in 2017, Igor Sechin, the head of the country’s oil giant Rosneft and a Kremlin hardliner, personally took part in a bribery sting against former economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev. Ulyukayev was sentenced to eight years in a prison colony, where he remains.
Smaller-level conflicts have also emerged in Russia’s security services.
“We’ve seen over the past year how conflicts have grown among the various security services and even within the FSB,” Evgeny Minchenko, a Moscow-based political analyst close to the government, said on the Echo of Moscow radio station. He described the balance of power as “complex”, with a number of interest groups.
Influential figures include the defence secretary, Sergei Shoigu, the Duma head, Vyacheslav Volodin, Patrushev, the security council head, and the Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
Sechin, the Rosneft chief and Sergei Chemezov, the Rostec CEO, are also regarded as bigger hitters.
(August 9, 1999) Acting prime minister
Boris Yeltsin sacks his cabinet and appoints Putin, a political neophyte who headed the main successor to the KGB, as his acting prime minister and heir apparent.
(December 31, 1999) Acting president
Yeltsin stuns Russia and the world by using his traditional new year message to announce his resignation and hand his sweeping powers, including the nuclear suitcase, to Putin.
(March 23, 2000) President (first term)
Putin wins a surprisingly narrow majority in his first presidential election, taking 53% of the vote and avoiding a second round run-off.
(March 14, 2004) President (second term)
Putin consolidates his centralised control of power by cruising to a second term as president with 71% of the vote, having limited press access to his opponents and harassing their campaigns.
(May 8, 2008) Prime minister
Putin is prevented by the constitution from running for a third term as president. The First deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev is elected in his stead. One of his earliest moves is to appoint Putin as prime minister, leaving little doubt that the two men plan, at the very least, to run Russia in tandem.
(March 4, 2012) President (third term)
Amid widespread allegations of vote-rigging, Putin returns to the role of president, taking 63.6%. Medvedev becomes his prime minister. "Putin has named himself the emperor of Russia for the next 12 years," says protest leader Alexei Navalny.
(March 18, 2018) President (fourth term)
Putin is re-elected until 2024 with 77% of the vote, amid high tensions between London and Moscow over the Salisbury nerve agent attack. Opposition activists highlight a number of cases of vote-rigging and statistical anomalies.
Informal advisers such as the the Putin-tied businessmen Yuri Kovalchuk, Arkady Rotenberg and Gennady Timchenko are “the heads of fairly powerful clans”, Minchenko said.
“And not for the first time, in this model you have this Politburo and then a technical manager is brought in to be the head of the government,” he said, referring to Mishustin.
Mishustin, who has headed Russia’s tax service for eight years, has a reputation as a loyal technocrat, an outsider whom some observers are not sure can position himself as an eventual successor.
“Mishustin does not have any political experience or popularity with the electorate, and is not part of Putin’s inner circle,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political scientist and the head of the R.Politik analysis firm. “It seems highly likely that Mishustin is just a technocratic placeholder.
“It depends on a million circumstances,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a political analyst and senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Centre. “He is the ideal pretender to fulfil the position of the digitised technocrat.”
Unlikely prime ministers have had a tendency to stick around much longer than expected. Mikhail Fradkov, a former tax police official, was seen as an outsider when he was appointed by Putin in 2004, and stayed in office for three years. And Putin, of course, was seen as an unlikely choice when he was appointed prime minister by Yeltsin in 1999. Months later, he assumed power.
For now, Russia must prepare for a national vote on Putin’s proposed amendments, not necessarily a referendum but a public display of support as Putin’s ambitions carry him beyond 2024.
“It will be the biggest political show that Russia has ever seen,” Gaaze predicted.
