Putin names new finance minister

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has named Anton Siluanov as acting finance minister after Alexei Kudrin’s dramatic departure from government. Announcing the appointment to his cabinet, Mr Putin said it had been agreed with President Dmitry Medvedev. Mr Kudrin resigned after publicly declaring he would not sit in a cabinet led by Mr Medvedev, set to swap roles with Mr Putin next year. His fiscal skills were seen as crucial to recent Russian financial stability. Separately, his responsibility for financial oversight as first deputy prime minister have been passed to another minister of the same rank, Igor Shuvalov. On Tuesday, Mr Kudrin was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying he had quit the government because of fiscal risks the government was taking, and had offered to resign months before. In a resignation statement quoted by the agency, he also said he had declined a proposal to lead Right Cause, a liberal party backed by the Kremlin. He reportedly called it “an artificial project that in fact discredits the idea of liberal democracy”. Mr Siluanov, 48, was deputy finance minister under Mr Kudrin from 2005. According to his biography on the finance ministry’s website 1 , he graduated from the Moscow Finance Institute in the 1980s, specialising in finance and credit. He has occupied various positions at the ministry over the past two decades.