Mikhail Kasyanov shares some qualities with his boss, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kasyanov is youngish, 42 to Putin’s 47. He is well-traveled and comfortable with his Western counterparts. He has a reputation for getting things done but staying out of the spotlight.
Also like Putin, Kasyanov is known for being loyal to the boss.
A year ago, Putin and Kasyanov were virtual unknowns in Russia. Now they run the country.
Upon being sworn in as president Sunday, Putin immediately named Kasyanov acting prime minister. On Wednesday, Putin is expected to ask Russia’s parliament to confirm Kasyanov’s appointment. A vote, widely expected to go Kasyanov’s way, should come within a week.
Kasyanov is considered a reform-minded but hardly radical economist. As with Putin, there are questions about his goals and allegiances. Some Russian media link Kasyanov to the same powerful businessmen who played such a dramatic–many would say destructive–role during the Boris Yeltsin era.
The English-speaking Kasyanov is better known among some Western investors than he is with the Russian people.
In February he renegotiated loans with the London Club of commercial creditors, securing what Kasyanov described as a more than 50 percent reduction in Russia’s debt. Some observers criticized the deal, suggesting that Kasyanov merely spread out the payments instead of reducing them. Others said Russia should refuse to pay its foreign debts, some of which it inherited from the Soviet Union.
Kasyanov rejected such appeals: “This is not a concept of development but a concept of isolation and stagnation,” he said.
Though Kasyanov predicted that Russia wouldn’t take on new foreign loans for the remainder of 2000, Moscow is eager to work out a deal with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF has frozen a package of $4 billion in loans, demanding that Russia make more progress in such areas as tax reform.
Kasyanov has sought to assure foreign investors that the Putin administration will pursue reforms aimed at attracting more money from abroad and then protecting those investments in Russia’s often uncertain marketplace.
“Since there is little money for investment in the country, the greater part of investments must come from outside the country,” Kasyanov said. “For this to happen Russia must behave in a civilized manner and not live in isolation.”
More Top Picks Best Pool Vacuum Heads For Algae Cleanup
Though Putin has presided in the Kremlin for more than four months, he has yet to release his economic blueprint for Russia. His economic advisers include staunch liberals who are urging Russia to lower taxes, cut government spending and further open Russia to the free market. Others, such as Putin himself, talk of maintaining a protective state role.
Though Kasyanov has criticized efforts to roll back Russia’s reforms, he is regarded as a centrist. He says the state’s primary approach should be non-interference, but he says Russia’s military industry, research institutes and agriculture sector can’t survive without government help.
Kasyanov began his career with Gosplan, the Soviet-era agency responsible for planning all facets of the Soviet economy. He worked there throughout the 1980s, watching as Mikhail Gorbachev tried to break the Soviet economy out of its stagnation with modest free-market reforms.
After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Kasyanov worked his way up through various economic and financial posts. He won praise last summer after striking a deal with the Paris Club, a group of official creditors. He moved up from being a deputy to finance minister, a post he held when Putin became prime minister last August.
When Boris Yeltsin resigned as president last New Year’s Eve, Putin became acting president as well as prime minister. He turned to Kasyanov, now a first deputy prime minister, to conduct much of the day-to-day business of governing Russia.
The business magazine Profile described Kasyanov in terms similar to those used to characterize Putin. He is called “urbane” but “not striking.”
“He is not a super-strategist but [has] an ability for constructive economic thought,” the magazine said. “As a true bureaucrat, [Kasyanov] at all times and under all political courses could get along with his bosses and with influential groups.”
One of the main questions surrounding the Kremlin as Putin embarks on his presidency is the role of the so-called oligarchs, those Russian business and media giants who wielded so much influence over the Yeltsin presidency.
In the run-up to his March 26 election victory, Putin vowed to rein in the oligarchs and level the economic playing field. So far, though, he has shown more willingness to coexist with the tycoons than confront them.
The appointment of Kasyanov is seen as another sign of coexistence. Kasyanov has been linked to, among others, Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky.
“I know a lot of businessmen and well-known entrepreneurs,” Kasyanov said last month. “But I don’t have any concrete ties to any particular financial-industrial group.”