Mikhail Mikhailovich Kassyanov

Mikhail Kassyanov (2015)

Michail Michailowitsch Kassyanow ( Russian Михаил Михайлович Касьянов ; born  December 8, 1957 in Solnzewo , now in Moscow ) is a Russian politician. From May 2000 to February 2004 he was Prime Minister of Russia .

Life

Education and career as a government official

Kasyanov graduated in 1983 from the Moscow Technical University of automotive and transport (abbreviated MADI , Russ. Московский автомобильно-дорожный институт / МАДИ ) and began his career in the late 70s as a technician and later as an engineer at Gosplan of the Soviet Union . There he also received an additional qualification in economics, so that in 1990 he switched to the state foreign trade authority. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reorganization of the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Russian Federation, he became head of department there, specializing primarily in the area of ​​the foreign debt of the Russian state. From 1995 to 1999 he was the first Deputy Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation.

Appointment as Minister of Finance

After Sergei Stepashin took office as head of government in May 1999, Kassyanov became Russian finance minister when the new cabinet was formed and retained this post as Prime Minister even after Stepashin was replaced by Vladimir Putin .

Promotion to Prime Minister

After Putin took over the presidency on December 31, 1999, Putin appointed him incumbent Prime Minister. On May 17, 2000, a few days after Putin was sworn in as President, Kassyanov was officially appointed Russian Prime Minister.

Kassyanov's policy as head of government was considered relatively liberal. His relationship with state power deteriorated after he criticized the arrest of Plato Lebedev , who was one of the board members of the Yukos oil company , along with Mikhail Khodorkovsky , who had also been arrested , as "excessive" in 2003 . In February 2004, a few weeks before the presidential elections , Kassyanov and his cabinet were sacked by Putin's decree. Mikhail Fradkov took up the post of head of government .

Activity as an opposition politician

Kassyanov at the memorial march for the murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in 2015

About a year after his release, Kassyanov drew attention to himself in the Russian public through several appearances in which he criticized Putin's policies as authoritarian and announced that he would run against Putin in the next presidential election. In April 2006 he took over the chairmanship of a liberal political organization called the People's Democratic Union . In the same year he joined the opposition movement The Other Russia and was traded for a time as its possible presidential candidate. In spring 2007 he took part in the so-called March of the Dissatisfied in Moscow alongside Garry Kasparov . On the fringes of this demonstration, he escaped arrest only through the use of his bodyguards.

In July 2007, Kassyanov left The Other Russia and founded a new party called The People for Democracy and Justice (Russian Народ за демократию и справедливость ).

In December 2007 he was run as a candidate for the 2008 presidential election . On January 15, 2008, Kassyanov's campaign headquarters in Moscow announced that there were 2.2 million signatures for the presidential candidacy, far more than necessary.

The Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation announced on January 27, 2008 that 13.38 percent of the support signatures for Kassyanov were incorrect. The electoral law only allows an error rate of 5 percent. Therefore, he was not allowed to vote for the president. The attorney general's office opened a fraud case against the campaign bureau Kassyanov. He will forego a lawsuit because the Russian courts are not independent. Kassyanov called the Russian government totalitarian and called for a boycott of the presidential elections.

As a representative for the Russian People's Democratic Union (RNDS) , which he headed, Kassyanov was co-founder and chairman of the now defunct Party of People's Freedom . This party served as a reservoir for four different opposition movements (including Solidarnost ) and planned to take part in the 2011 Duma elections, but this did not materialize.

In an interview with the weekly newspaper Die Zeit in March 2015, Kasyanov called on the West to stand firm on President Putin during the Ukraine crisis and to maintain the sanctions against Russia, otherwise the West would have to pay a much higher price later.

Because of his strict anti-Putin stance, Kassyanov experienced direct hostility from Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov . In February 2016, Kadyrov showed Kassyanov together with Vladimir Kara-Mursa in a video published on his Instagram page in the crosshairs of a rifle with the text: "If you haven't got it, you'll get it now". Kassyanov described the video as a direct death threat. Only a few days later, he was most likely attacked by Kadyrov supporters in a Moscow restaurant.

Familiar

Kassyanov is married and has two daughters.

Web links

Commons : Mikhail Mikhailovich Kassyanov  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Mikhail Mikhailovich Kassyanov: The third face of Vladimir Putin. Russia election. In: The Standard . March 2, 2012, Retrieved March 7, 2012 (Commentary on 2012 Russian Presidential Election ). 

Footnotes

1. ↑ “That is lawlessness” (tagesschau.de archive)
2. ↑ http://www.svobodanews.ru/Article/2007/12/08/20071208134417730.html
3. ↑ http://www.koeln.de/aktuell/afp/newsticker/ticker/080115154143.v12h8nug.html  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ today - Kremlin critics excluded from voting  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Accessed January 26, 2008)  
5. ↑ You spurred Putin on DIE ZEIT of March 12, 2015
6. ↑ n-tv news: Kadyrov - Putin's man for the rough . In: n-tv.de . ( n-tv.de [accessed on April 3, 2018]).