(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - People in Russia are divided in their assessment of the ministers and officials working under Dmitry Medvedev, according to a poll by Bashkirova & Partners. 43.2 per cent of respondents think the changes in the new cabinet are too insignificant to improve government performance, while 39.6 per cent think there will be an improvement.

Vladimir Putin was elected to a second term as president in March 2004 with 71.31 per cent of all cast ballots. In April 2005, Putin ruled out seeking a new mandate, saying, "I will not change the constitution and in line with the constitution, you cannot run for president three times in a row."

Russian voters renewed the State Duma in December 2007. United Russia (YR)—whose candidate list was headed by Putin—secured 64.1 per cent of the vote and 315 of the legislature’s 450 seats. On that same month, Putin endorsed Medvedev as a presidential candidate, and Medvedev said it would be of the "utmost importance" to have Putin as prime minister.

In March, Medvedev easily won Russia’s presidential election with 70.28 per cent of the vote. In May, Medvedev was sworn in as president. His nomination of Putin as prime minister was confirmed by the State Duma in a 392-56 vote.

On May 12, Medvedev re-appointed three politicians close to Putin into different jobs in his new administration. Former Putin government chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin was named head of Medvedev’s administration; Vladislav Surkov, a prominent Putin advisor, became the first deputy chief of staff; and Alexei Gromov, Putin’s former press secretary, was named deputy chief of the presidential staff.

Georgy Bovt, a political analyst, commented on the cabinet shuffle, saying, "I don’t think the appointment of Sergei Naryshkin as head of the presidential administration is the decision of Dmitry Medvedev; I think it is the decision of Vladimir Putin and I don’t actually see any appointments apart from [new justice minister Alexander] Konovalov that you can put down exclusively to Dmitry Medvedev."

Polling Data

In mid-May, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev confirmed a new cabinet. Which of the following views about the new Russian government comes closest to your own?

Source: Bashkirova & Partners
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,500 Russian adults, conducted from May 16 to May 22, 2008. Margin of error is 3.4 per cent.

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