Former Kremlin Insider Surkov Says No Regrets About Quitting Politics

Vladislav Surkov file photo

(RIA Novosti – July 27, 2013) Vladislav Surkov, who left his posts as deputy prime minister and government chief of staff in early May, has no regrets and was not sacked but resigned, he has said in an interview.

“I went of my own volition. That’s what it said in the presidential decree and that’s how it was,” he told the magazine Russkiy Pioner, according to RIA Novosti news agency on 27 July. He had spent two years thinking it over, he said, “so there was nothing impromptu”.

The reasons for going were “absolutely personal”, he said, to do with “purely subjective ideas of what I should reconcile myself to and what I definitely shouldn’t”.

He stands by his decision, he continued, and his views on Russia’s authorities and the opposition remain unchanged. He repeated something he had been reported as saying earlier, that Putin had been sent by God to save the country. “That’s right, God did call upon him, to save Russia from a hostile takeover.”

And he dismissed speculation that he might align himself with the opposition. “Rubbish,” he told his interviewer. “After all that’s gone between us? They’re not so much opponents to me as enemies pure and simple … They say that opposition can be useful but who needs stupidity and lies? No way can the country be healed by individuals consumed by frustration, inadequacy and aggravation. It’s not for them to heal society but for society to heal them.”

Surkov left his posts after ministers received a televised dressing-down from President Putin about poor implementation of his decrees and after a public disagreement with the powerful Investigations Committee about its examination of alleged financial misconduct at the Skolkovo business park. He was seen as an ally of Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev and was reviled by opposition figures as the Kremlin’s behind-the-scenes fixer and manipulator. The interview on the website at ruspioner.ru is an abridged version promising more in the magazine’s September edition.

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