September 14, 2007	Friday	Ramazan 1, 1428

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin’s choice of a little-known bureaucrat for prime minister has put the spotlight on the shadowy alliance of ex-KGB men and natives of Putin’s hometown Saint Petersburg who analysts say really run Russia.Many were bewildered when Putin appointed finance official Viktor Zubkov in the place of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov on Wednesday.

“Only Putin knows!” was the headline in the popular Moskovsky Komsomolets daily on Thursday.

“Putin acted in his usual style, unexpectedly pulling a rabbit out of a hat,” state-run Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily wrote.

In fact, a government shake-up had been widely predicted ahead of parliamentary polls this December and the presidential election on March 2, when the popular and powerful Putin is required by the constitution to step down.

But no one guessed that Zubkov, head of the government’s financial crimes investigation agency, would emerge winner.

He is even greyer than the ultra-uncharismatic Fradkov. When he turns 66 on Saturday he will be a year past retirement age for civil servants – and a decade beyond the average lifespan for Russia’s sickly male population.

Yet the choice of Zubkov was far less strange than it looked.

Like almost everyone who counts in the Kremlin, he worked in Putin’s hometown of Saint Petersburg and is close to the security services, a network of generals, prosecutors, and political conservatives known as the ‘siloviki’. Most prominent is the powerful first deputy premier Sergei Ivanov, an ex-KGB general widely tipped to succeed Putin next year.

But the Petersburg clan also includes secret services chief Nikolai Patrushev and two key Kremlin administration figures – Igor Sechin and ex-KGB general Viktor Ivanov.

“The people close to Putin are all ‘siloviki’ and come from Saint Petersburg,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a researcher at the Sociology Institute of Russia’s Academy of Sciences.

“These are the people who were with him from the beginning,” she said.

Together with Putin “these are the five who decide”. Zubkov has no known connection to the KGB. Neither does his official biography include the mysterious gaps and tell-tale Soviet-era postings that point unofficially to KGB links.

However, his ties to the Petersburg clan and the wider siloviki are impeccable.

He first worked with Putin in the Saint Petersburg mayor’s office between 1992-93, forging a lasting friendship with the ambitious young future president, recently resigned from the KGB with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

Ever since, Zubkov has been a regular at Putin’s birthday parties, the respected Vedomosti newspaper wrote on Thursday, “even taking part in the blowing out of candles on the cake”.

—AFP