Putin’s top aide resigns over Yukos

Making it clear that he would not compromise on the arrest of Russia’s oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, President Vladimir Putin today accepted his chief of staff Alexander Voloshin’s resignation. Voloshin had resigned in protest against the detention of the head of the Yukos Oil Company.

Putin accepted Voloshin’s resignation after a meeting with international investors and banking officials from across the world on Thursday. He assured them that Russia was not moving back to Stalinist methods, as a majority of Russian newspapers said on Friday.

Putin also appointed Voloshin’s deputy Dmitry Medvedev as his new chief of staff who belongs to Russia’s gas and oil monopoly Gazprom. In a bid to stop the money leaving the country, Russian prosecutors seized 44 per cent of Khodorkovsky’s shares in Yukos. In his first comment on the seizure of Khodorkovsky’s shares, Russian PM Mikhail Kasyanov said he was ‘‘deeply concerned’’ by the seizure of the shares.