It would be simpler to start the biographies of the “leaders” of the president’s Administration from the year when each of them met Putin. Igor Ivanovich Sechin is believed to be a very powerful man in the Administration. He is 45 years old. He graduated from the philological faculty of Leningrad’s State University specialized as “philologist-novelist, teacher of French and Portugal”. He worked as a translator in Mozambique and Angola. “According to the media, he worked for the KGB in Africa,” Kommersant-Power affirms for example. In Sobchak’s city hall “he was responsible for contacts with Leningrad’s cities-friends: Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona and Milan.” He met Putin during a trip of Lensovet’s delegation to Brazil in 1990. From this time he accompanies him in all of his trips. When Putin, for example, became FSB director, Sechin was his adviser. On December 31st 1999 he was appointed deputy head of the president’s Administration. From July 27th 2004 he heads Rosneft’s board of directors. In other words, as we see, the president’s administration is slowly but inevitably laying its hands on the property of huge companies. As deputy head of the administration Sechin is responsible for: the Department of external policy, the Department of informational and documental provision and the presidnet’s Office. A layperson is not able to understand, for instance, the difference between the Office and the Department of informational and, for that matter, documental provision. But believe my word, Igor Sechin is almost the most powerful man in our country after Putin. They say that he grants access to Putin. Recently Sergey Dorenko published an anti-utopia, a book called “2008”; Igor Sechin is portrayed there as diabolically sly and cynical. Externally this is a man with an oval, flabby face without a clearly defined shin.
Rumor has it that Igor Sechin is in a harsh competition with another administration’s deputy head, Vladislav Yurievich Surkov. One department is directly under his orders. But this is the Department of internal policy; therefore Vladislav Yurievich is an extremely important person in the country. He dictates the internal policy: with his hands he created fake non-existing parties, broke apart existing ones, destroyed the political freedoms in the country and politics as such. If Putin’s group was honest in its unscrupulousness Vladislav Yurievich could have proudly renamed his direction into “Zubatov’s ministry of intrigues and falsification”. We will linger on V.Y.’s activities more in detail later but now shortly about his biography. He was born in 1961 in the village of Solntzevo of the Lipetsk region. The joy of patriots-nationalists is premature here because despite his rural, supposedly Russian coordinates Vladislav Yurievich’s father is a pureblooded Chechen, which is instantly apparent when we look at Surkov. Surkov’s father is Aslambek Dudayev. He was born in the village of Duba-Yurt, where his mother, a 23-years-old graduate of Tambov’s pedagogical institute, arrived to work as a teacher in 1959. She liked her colleague, the teacher Andarbek Dudayev. Vladimir Surkov came to the world in Shalinsky hospital (how was he registered as born in Solntzevo?), until 1967 he lived with his parents in Duba-Yurta and in 1967 the family moved to Grozny, to the oil industry workers’ district, Berezka, Pugachev Street.
All this information can be obtained in the Zhizn newspaper dated as of 07.13.05. I am not at all disturbed by the fact that Surkov is a Chechen, I am even glad. Because it explains some of his actions by a split personality. Naturally it is surprising that during the second Chechen war politics in Russia were formulated in significant part by a man with a spilt consciousness. How does he live, the poor, since there are rivers of blood between the Surkovs and the Dudayevs? Well, actually, the famous general Ermolov, the conqueror of the Caucasus hated by the Chechens, was married to a Chechen and his four sons later served in the Russian army…
Vladislav Yurievich Surkov is the figure closest to the NBP; he chose to be our opponent; the organization Nashi was his project; there is a chapter dedicated to it in this book, so I will talk about Surkov more in detail. This is how he is characterized in the reference book “The President’s Administration” (published by the Center of Political Information Nevsky-Lubyanka-Kremlin): “Former representative of the “Family”, joined a strategic alliance with “Piter’s group”, oriented on V. Putin and Alpha-groups; assists the president in issues of internal policy; manages public organizations, regions and media; administers the funds of the president’s administration, signs civil contracts.” In other words Surkov is our “manager”, in the language of the special services he is an officer who watches us, keeps us under his control, represses us. At the same time Surkov is the chairman of the board of directors of Transneft-Product; the cost of the company is 428 million dollars; its sphere of activity is: the transportation of oil products, the construction of pipelines.
Since Surkov is the former representative of the Family, although he was entrusted with internal policy, he got the poorest company. The wealthiest one is Gazprom and it went to Putin’s faithful veterans: Dmitry Medvedev and Alexey Miller. Gazprom has just bought Sibneft to Roman Abramovich; together their assets are evaluated at 43,1 billion dollars. The president’s next best friend, his veteran Igor Ivanovich Sechin serves, I already told, as chairman of Rosneft’s board of directors. This company extracts, processes and sells oil. Its capital is more modest: 5,3 billion dollars. Another administration’s employee close to Putin is Viktor Petrovich Ivanov, born in 1950; in 1977 he graduated from KGB’s higher courses. He went in reserve in 1994. In 1994-96 he headed the Department of administrative bodies of Saint Petersburg’s city hall.
He left the city hall with Putin and when the latter became FSB director Viktor Ivanov became head of the FSB department of personal security. Such a post is not entrusted to anybody, only to the salt of the Earth. From January 2000 he is deputy director of the administration. By Ivanov’s initiative in 2002 the president’s amnesty commission was liquidated. As the president’s adviser Viktor Ivanov manages simultaneously two departments: the department of State service issues and the Department of staff issues and State honors. From 2002 Viktor Ivanov becomes chairman of the board of directors of Aeroflot and Almaz-Antey, costing 3,3, billion dollars. The sphere of activity of his companies: air transportation, production of anti-aircraft means. Putin has met Ivanov even before his service in the city hall, they both served in Leningrad’s FSB department. Strange things happen around Ivanov, like around any functionary of the administration. This book is not about Viktor Ivanov but in order for the reader to have a sense of the climate around these people, here is only one story. “On June 6th 2003 Igor Klimov, general director of the Almaz-Antey concern, supposedly a man from the service of foreign intelligence, former Ivanov’s assistant representing his interests in the Almaz-Altey concern, was shot in Moscow. Not long before the murder the Prosecutor General started an investigation about the theft of a huge amount of money (about $ten million) on the account of providing TOP-M1 missile complexes to Greece. They said that Klimov possessed information on this case and a few months earlier the concern’s financier Sergey Vorobiev disappeared with the money,” Izvestia wrote on 06.06.03.