He has also been accepted as a member of the Russian Security Council, according to the Kremlin.
Advertisement
The president has appointed Anton Vaino new presidential chief of staff. Vaino previously held the post of deputy chief of staff.
Putin said he respects the decision of Ivanov to leave his post of Kremlin chief of staff.
Sergey Ivanov was appointed presidential chief of staff on December 22, 2011.
“I remember well our agreement about the fact you had asked not to be in this area of work as the head of the presidential administration for more than four years”, the Russian president said at the meeting with Mr Ivanov and his successor.
But his dismissal may be a harbinger of a new dynamic within the Russian elite.
A Downing Street spokesman confirmed the two leaders had spoken during the afternoon, adding that Mr Putin had “congratulated (Mrs May) on her appointment and wished her success”.
He was defence minister between 2001 and 2007, and was a first deputy prime minister during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency from 2008 to 2012.
“We have worked for many years together with great success”, Mr Putin told his long-serving ally.
Analysts offered contrasting views as to whether Ivanov had been pushed out of the Kremlin, with some seeing his exit as a sign that Putin was nervous ahead of elections and others saying Ivanov, 63, had been looking to quit for some time. Ivanov, however, has been somewhat eclipsed by his deputy Vyacheslav Volodin, who has been the chief architect of the Kremlin’s domestic policies.
The Kremlin said on August 12 that Ivanov will now serve as a presidential representative for environmental and transportation issues.
“I’m happy with how you handle tasks in your line of work”, Putin said.
Mr Ivanov is the latest casualty in what now seems to be Mr Putin’s campaign to get rid of his closest allies who have worked with him for decades and moved in the 1990s from St Petersburg to Moscow.
Ivanov then praised Vayno as fully fit to replace him.
Advertisement
Vaino’s grandfather, Carl Vaino, was a top Communist official in Soviet Estonia who resisted the Baltic nation’s drive for independence in the 1980s and was moved to Moscow shortly before the Soviet collapse.
