Medvedev appoints interim chief of government staff

Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has appointed First Deputy Chief of the government staff, Sergei Prikhodko, to the position of Acting Chief of government staff following Wednesday’s resignation of former chief, Vladislav Surkov. “Duties of Acting Chief of governmental staff shall be vested in First Deputy Chief of staff Sergei Eduardovich Prikhodko,” says Medvedev’s resolution uploaded on the official governmental site. Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on dismissing Surkov at the latter man’s personal will. The presidential press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said Surkov had filed a request to relieve him of duties on his own initiative and the President had answered it. “This is related to the action on presidential decrees,” he added. Sergei Prikhodko was born January 12, 1957, in Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations /MGIMO/ in 1980 and immediately took up a job on the staff of the Soviet embassy in Czechoslovakia, which he kept in various capacities through to 1993. In 1993, he quit the position of First Secretary at the Russian embassy in Prague and was transferred to Moscow to become a department chief and then a deputy director of a department. He performed these duties through to 1997. Prikhodko held the positions of a presidential aide, a deputy chief of the Presidential Administration Staff, and a deputy chief of the Presidential Administration Staff in charge of foreign policy from 1997 through to 2004. From 2004 through to 2012, he was an aide to the President. His appointment to the position of First Deputy Chief of the government staff took place May 22, 2012. The governmental press service said earlier Surkov’s duties of a deputy prime minister would go over to another deputy prime minister, Arkady Dvorkovich. Surkov was in charge of supervising the sphere of innovations, among other things.