MOSCOW, May 14. /TASS/. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has appointed St. Petersburg’s former deputy governor Valery Pikalev as head of the Federal Customs Service, the press service of the Russian government said.

Pikalev was born in 1968. He graduated the St. Petersburg University of the Russian Interior Ministry and served in the Armed Forces from 1986 to 2018, when he joined the Leningrad Region government as deputy head for security issues. In 2019, he was appointed deputy governor of St. Petersburg and head of the governor’s administration.

In February 2023, Vladimir Bulavin vacated the office of the Federal Customs Service’s head and his first deputy, Ruslan Davydov, has been acting chief.