Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu Russia’s most popular politician – survey

(Interfax – MOSCOW, May 20, 2013) Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is the most popular and one of the most influential members of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s government, a survey among prominent figures in the media and politics suggests.

First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are the others in the top troika on a 28-name ranking list put together after the survey by Interfax, the Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) radio, the RIA Novosti news agency and Moscow daily Izvestia in connection with the Medvedev government’s first anniversary.

The bottom rung on the list is taken by the minister for the development of the Far East, Viktor Ishayev. Directly above him is Labor and Social Security Minister Maxim Topilin. The third from the bottom is Natural Resources and Environment Minister Sergei Donskoi.

The list only includes people who have been in office for the whole or most of the year. Vladislav Surkov, who resigned as deputy prime minister recently, is also listed.

Medvedev is not on the list but has seen it and questioned some of the rankings.

The survey was carried out by an expert board whose members assessed the government’s performance from different points of view.

They included current and former political figures – Federation Council Chair Valentina Matviyenko, State Duma Chair Sergei Naryshkin, Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, A Just Russia party leader Sergei Mironov, co-leader of the Republican Party of Russia-Party of People’s Freedom (RPR-PARNAS) Boris Nemtsov, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, and ex-chief of the presidential staff Alexander Voloshin, Oleg Sysuyev, who was deputy prime minister in 1997-1998, and former economics minister Yevgeny Yasin.

Other board members were senior figures in the media – Interfax General Director Mikhail Interfax, first deputy general director of the ITAR-TASS news agency Mikhail Gusman, RIA Novosti editor-in-chief Svetlana Mironyuk, chairman of the Izvestia board of directors and general director of the News Media publishing house Aram Gabrelyanov, editor-in-chief of the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily Pavel Gusev, and editor-in-chief of the Vedomosti daily Tatyana Lysova.

Olga Kryshtanovskaya, head of the Elite Studies Center of the Sociology Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was also on the board.