Until now, the Cabinet and the Kremlin have been vying with each other for influence. Now both will be pursuing a common political course. Pavlovsky has hailed the appointment of Dmitri Kozak as chief-of-staff for federal ministries, as, in his opinion, this will prevent the Cabinet from building some shadow system of checks and balances to the Kremlin, as it did in the recent past, especially in the final years of Boris Yeltsin's presidency.
Pavlovsky also applauded Fradkov's choice for the post of Foreign Minister. Sergei Lavrov, former Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, is a well-disciplined diplomat, who will be dutifully implementing President Vladimir Putin's foreign policies, he said.
On the other hand, the new Cabinet appointments mean that Putin will now have no one in the executive branch with whom he could share responsibility, the analyst pointed out.
