Putin Puts Russia Inc. Under New Management
The newly formed government is the president’s bureaucratic dream team, but its kind of competence won’t translate into growth.
Opening doors for loyalists.
Photographer: Sergei Ilnitsky/AFP/Getty Images
The new lineup of the Russian government, announced on Tuesday evening, means significant changes in how the world’s 11th-biggest economy by nominal gross domestic product is run. President Vladimir Putin expects a new generation of senior officials, who have made their entire public-sector careers under his rule, to boost growth with efficient, tightly monitored and well-targeted government spending. Reality probably will soon make a dent in these expectations.
Previous Russian governments usually included a few highly qualified economists and economic managers but also lots of ballast: Political loyalists and conservative ideologues who kept their jobs just because they irritated the opposition and the West, intelligence-service veterans, lobbyists for important industries and relatives of Putin cronies. In Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s new cabinet, Dmitry Patrushev, the son of Nikolai Patrushev, Putin’s old friend and secretary of his influential Security Council, still serves as agriculture minister. But the balance has shifted toward a new breed of public servant — those with a proven ability to run complex projects and with self-presentation skills equaling those of private-sector executives.