The Kremlin announcement said that Putin congratulated May on her appointment, following David Cameron’s resignation in June, and said that the leaders agreed “to step up joint work in some areas”, including issues of aviation security.
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The Kremlin said in a statement that Putin had “decreed to relieve Ivanov of his duties” and handed him a job as a special representative for conservation, environmental and transportation issues.
Ivanov’s successor is Anton Vaino, 42, his virtually unknown deputy chief of staff and a career diplomat who is widely seen as a Putin loyalist with no political ambitions of his own.
Putin commented on the Kremlin’s announcement, saying that Ivanov himself asked to leave his post at the Kremlin. Vedomosti, a Russian business daily, described the new chief of staff as “Putin’s own man”. Mr Putin at the time was prime minister. “Ivanov knows not only Putin but knew Leonid Brezhnev as well and is a broad-minded person”.
Russian Federation is set to hold its next presidential election in 2018, and Mr Putin is widely expected to run again for a new term.
Ivanov, who served together with Putin in the Soviet-era KGB spy agency, was appointed Kremlin chief of staff in late 2011, just months before Putin’s 2012 re-election. Ivanov is Putin’s age, 63, while Vayno is 44. He remains a little-known figure whose family descends from the old Soviet Communist Party elite and is not believed to be beholden to any interest or group within Russian Federation – except to Putin himself.
Among the new appointees to senior government jobs are former officers of the Kremlin security guard and stolid clerks who hadn’t been known to the public. “They are steadfastly faithful to him”.
At the same time, Putin has recently appeared to move to shore up his control over Russia’s security apparatus ahead of parliamentary elections this autumn, creating a new National Guard with increased powers and appointing his former chief bodyguard to oversee it.
Moscow-based analyst Alexei Makarkin said that Putin wants to avoid projecting the image of an ageing leader.
Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.
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