The Media Mirror - a review of today's Russian newspapers

Wednesday's newspapers focus on the Cabinet reshuffle, concentrating on the two women who've been made ministers. Their appointments have caused an avalanche of articles.

VREMYA NOVOSTEY publishes an article under the headline: “Academicians Prefer Blonds”. It says, the Russian Academy of Medical Science has great hopes in the appointment of Tatyana Golikova, the Minister of Healthcare and Social Security.

IZVESTIA has the headline: “Smart Girls Instead of Smart Boys”. The stunning blonde Tatyana Golikova is known in Government by the nicknames “The Human Computer” and “The Queen of Budgets”. Oriental beauty Elvira Nabiullina was the right hand of Minister German Gref for years and has now inherited the Ministry of Trade and Economic Development. She was also the head of the Centre of Strategic Studies, when the Centre was planning Vladimir Putin’s economic reforms.

KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA publishes the detailed biographies of the two ladies complete with interviews with their schoolteachers and childhood friends.

VREMYA NOVOSTEY claims the similarity between the structure of the old Cabinet and the new one is superficial. The promised restructuring, it says, has started in earnest. Minister of Finance Aleksey Kudrin has also become a Deputy Prime Minister, supervising the Economic block.

Dmitry Kozak, the new Minister for Regional Development, has been given carte blanche by the President to form a super-Ministry, says the paper. This Ministry will control the financial flow from the centre to the regions: all the state budget infusions into local budgets, all financial support for National Projects.

KOMMERSANT writes the Ministry of Regional Development is going to be turned into the main executive vehicle of administrative reform. It will assume a portion of the old functions of the Finance Ministry, plus some of the functions of the Ministry of Economic Development. The paper says that the list of new functions of the Ministry may be expanded even further in the near future.

Another piece from KOMMERSANT: A motion has been entered in the Duma to vote in a law on the Russian Technology Corporation, or Rostekhnologii. The corporation is the brainchild of Sergey Chemizov, the head of Rosoboronexport – the Russian State Company for Defence-related Exports. If supported by the Parliament, the corporation will become one of the biggest state enterprises in the country. The paper says former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov was against the concentration of such industrial potential in one corporation.