MOSCOW, February 20. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has pointed out that he had heeded Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s advice in forming the Cabinet of Ministers. Neither prominence nor popularity of the candidates played any role whatsoever as the main benchmarks in favor of their appointment.
"You know, the criterion was not the lack of knowledge about those people, it was their professional qualifications. I know, and Mikhail Mishustin knows these people as competent professionals," Putin told TASS in an interview for the project entitled "20 Questions with Vladimir Putin".
"To a considerable extent I was guided by Mikhail's opinion in this regard, not somebody else's. There were a number of candidates whom I had doubts about, but Mikhail would prove it to me that this or that person was the best fit for the job," Putin said. "I agreed with him because, at the end of the day, he was forming his own team and the final concrete result it achieves will depend on the efficiency of its work."
On January 15, following President Vladimir Putin’s Address to the Federal Assembly, Dmitry Medvedev announced his government’s resignation. He said it was the right step to take against the background of the president’s proposals for amending the Constitution. On January 16, Medvedev was appointed deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council. Mikhail Mishustin, the former head of the Federal Tax Service, took over the reins as Russia’s new head of government.