It was, as has become customary in Vladimir Putin's Russia, a supremely Soviet-style sacking. A brief and uninformative item posted by the Interfax news agency yesterday morning tersely reported that Igor Ivanov, the secretary of the Kremlin's potentially extremely powerful security council, had "resigned" a fortnight ago to pursue academic interests.Few Kremlin watchers were surprised. A carefully controlled media campaign in the past week indicated that Mr Ivanov, for all his slavish loyalty to the president, was heading for a fall.
One television station called for an investigation into his financial dealings in the 1970s.
| How could anyone in Soviet Union in 1970s have 'financial dealings'? |
Given the state's heavy influence on an increasingly cowed media, most analysts agree that such stories can only have been placed. But if such methods seem redolent of Russia's communist past, the speculation that followed immediately after the announcement - which drew no comment from the Kremlin itself - was even more so.
| Some political scientists suggested that the Kremlin was preparing to strengthen the security council's power, preparing the way for Mr Putin to take over the body and retain sweeping powers. |
| Under Mr Ivanov the security council was largely sidelined. But its potential remit is enormous, ranging from defence to internal and foreign affairs, including intelligence. |
Several said that the campaign against Mr Ivanov, not regarded as one of the president's inner circle, was led by Viktor Cherkesov, a close friend of Mr Putin and the powerful head of the antinarcotics agency. He is said to represent a faction led by the former chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, and the oligarch Roman Abramovich, who owns Chelsea football club. "Ivanov's departure is either a sign that a reform is in the making to elevate the role of the security council or that some influential figure wants to take it under his control," said Andrei Ryabov, a leading political analyst.