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01-04-2005, 05:18 PM
January 4, 2005
Putin Demotes Adviser Critical of the Kremlin
By C. J. CHIVERS
OSCOW, Jan. 3 - President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday abruptly reduced the responsibilities of a senior adviser who last week issued a sweeping criticism of the Kremlin's leadership and expressed deep misgivings about the direction in which Russia was headed.
In a presidential decree released without further comment, Mr. Putin relieved the adviser, Andrei N. Illarionov, of his duties as Russia's envoy to the Group of 8, comprising the world's major industrialized nations and Russia. Mr. Putin reassigned those duties to a presidential aide who is seemingly a more loyal Kremlin insider, Igor I. Shuvalov.
Mr. Illarionov, 43, has been an economics adviser to Mr. Putin since 2000, and at times a vocal critic of the Kremlin's course. Both the Kremlin and Mr. Illarionov's spokeswoman said that for the moment he would retain his principal post. But his sudden removal as envoy to the Group of 8 carried an implicit rebuke.
In a long news conference here last week and then in an interview on an independent radio station, Mr. Illarionov issued a searing and comprehensive assessment of the state of affairs in Russia, saying the country had sharply shifted direction for the worse, and risked becoming a third world state.
For more than a year the debate about Russia's course and its political chill has been lively, with much public worrying over the plans and judgment of Mr. Putin and the group of former K.G.B. officers with whom he tightly controls the nation's political life. What made Mr. Illarionov's remarks so striking was not their substance - they reflect widely held views among Western critics of the Kremlin and those few in Russia who still risk speaking publicly - but their source, from an insider.
Mr. Illarionov described the government as both arbitrary and wrong-headed, criticizing the Kremlin's crackdown on the news media, its expropriation of the main asset of Yukos, the oil giant, its centralization of political power and its foreign relations.
His assessments were unsparing. He called the seizure last month of the Yukos unit "the swindle of the year."
In the government's attack on a healthy company, and its signals about which companies were Kremlin favorites, Mr. Illarionov said, "financial flows are rerouted from the most effective companies to the least effective ones."
Moreover, Mr. Putin's decision to do away with elections for governors throughout Russia, and to appoint governors through the presidency, Mr. Illarionov said, ensured that political competition was undermined, to ill effect. "Limited competition in all spheres of life leads to one thing," he said. "To stagnation."
At times Mr. Illarionov also appeared to put himself personally at odds with Mr. Putin, for example, dismissing as absurd Kremlin defenses of the Yukos seizure. Mr. Putin has been vocal in his support of Yukos's near liquidation.
"This entire affair regrettably demonstrates that any of the official or semiofficial explanations given to the public regarding the Yukos affair do not have a leg to stand on," the economics adviser said.
More on this Story (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/europe/04russia.html?ei=5006&en=3378a28ebb21685c&ex=1105419600&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=)
Putin Demotes Adviser Critical of the Kremlin
By C. J. CHIVERS
OSCOW, Jan. 3 - President Vladimir V. Putin on Monday abruptly reduced the responsibilities of a senior adviser who last week issued a sweeping criticism of the Kremlin's leadership and expressed deep misgivings about the direction in which Russia was headed.
In a presidential decree released without further comment, Mr. Putin relieved the adviser, Andrei N. Illarionov, of his duties as Russia's envoy to the Group of 8, comprising the world's major industrialized nations and Russia. Mr. Putin reassigned those duties to a presidential aide who is seemingly a more loyal Kremlin insider, Igor I. Shuvalov.
Mr. Illarionov, 43, has been an economics adviser to Mr. Putin since 2000, and at times a vocal critic of the Kremlin's course. Both the Kremlin and Mr. Illarionov's spokeswoman said that for the moment he would retain his principal post. But his sudden removal as envoy to the Group of 8 carried an implicit rebuke.
In a long news conference here last week and then in an interview on an independent radio station, Mr. Illarionov issued a searing and comprehensive assessment of the state of affairs in Russia, saying the country had sharply shifted direction for the worse, and risked becoming a third world state.
For more than a year the debate about Russia's course and its political chill has been lively, with much public worrying over the plans and judgment of Mr. Putin and the group of former K.G.B. officers with whom he tightly controls the nation's political life. What made Mr. Illarionov's remarks so striking was not their substance - they reflect widely held views among Western critics of the Kremlin and those few in Russia who still risk speaking publicly - but their source, from an insider.
Mr. Illarionov described the government as both arbitrary and wrong-headed, criticizing the Kremlin's crackdown on the news media, its expropriation of the main asset of Yukos, the oil giant, its centralization of political power and its foreign relations.
His assessments were unsparing. He called the seizure last month of the Yukos unit "the swindle of the year."
In the government's attack on a healthy company, and its signals about which companies were Kremlin favorites, Mr. Illarionov said, "financial flows are rerouted from the most effective companies to the least effective ones."
Moreover, Mr. Putin's decision to do away with elections for governors throughout Russia, and to appoint governors through the presidency, Mr. Illarionov said, ensured that political competition was undermined, to ill effect. "Limited competition in all spheres of life leads to one thing," he said. "To stagnation."
At times Mr. Illarionov also appeared to put himself personally at odds with Mr. Putin, for example, dismissing as absurd Kremlin defenses of the Yukos seizure. Mr. Putin has been vocal in his support of Yukos's near liquidation.
"This entire affair regrettably demonstrates that any of the official or semiofficial explanations given to the public regarding the Yukos affair do not have a leg to stand on," the economics adviser said.
More on this Story (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/international/europe/04russia.html?ei=5006&en=3378a28ebb21685c&ex=1105419600&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=)