Reshuffle in sight for the Kremlin. In September Vladimir Yakunin, one of the most influential men close to the head of state Vladimir Putin, could leave the presidency of the Russian Railways (Rzd), a position he has held since 2005. This was confirmed by Yakunin himself to Forbes and the Rbc agency, after being was proposed as the new senator of Kaliningrad (the Russian enclave on the borders of Poland and Lithuania) by the current interim governor of the region, Nikolai Tsukanov.
On September 13, elections for the governor will take place, in which Tsukanov is running as the candidate of the ruling United Russia party. The RZD Board of Directors will meet the next day and "Yakunin plans to join the Federation Council," the upper house of the Russian parliament, State Railways spokesman Grigori Levchenko said.
The Financial Times underlines that becoming a senator could be a sort of demotion for someone who has led the rail transport monopoly in Russia for over a decade, unless Yakunin is appointed president of the Senate, one of the highest offices in the state according to the Constitution, albeit with mostly formal powers.
In any case, Yakunin's departure from the RZD would be the highest-level reshuffle in Putin's close group since December 2012, when Vladislav Surkov left his post as first deputy chief of the presidential staff.
A source close to the Kremlin hypothesized that the change at the top of Rzd could "be part of wider changes", while others recall that Yakunin has already been at the center of speculation (already two years ago there was talk of his resignation), but it always stayed in place.
