THE EXILE - Who Is Viktor Zubkov, Russia's New PM?

Who Is Viktor Zubkov, Russia's New PM?
September 12, 2007

So we bid fare-thee-well to former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, a truly historical figure who will go down in history with Stolypin and Witte as one of the great transformers of Russian history…Lame sarcasm aside, if there’s one thing that Fradkov may be remembered for, it’s that unlike previous prime ministers, he didn’t serve the interests of some monster-sized business interest (see: Kasyanov-YUKOS; Chernomyrdin-Gazprom; Gaidar-IMF) or his own presidential ambitions (see: Primakov). Instead, like Sergei Kiriyenko before him, Fradkov was chosen primarily because he had no ambitions at all except to serve the President, and return power back into the Kremlin’s hands. The only thing that set Fradkov apart was his striking resemblance to Porky Pig. And like Porky, Misha Fradkov today said to the world, “A-bee, a-bee, a-bee, a-that’s all, folks!”

Now we enter the era of Viktor Zubkov. So, who is he? So far, the most interesting material we’ve been able to drudge up from the Russian internet is that he’s another figure from the Petersburg clan. But in Zubkov’s case, he’s specifically from the “silovik” clan, with close ties to powerful Kremlin officials Igor Sechin, who now runs Rosneft, and Viktor Ivanov, the other Big Silovik who also chairs Aeroflot. Zubkov is also tight with Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. Literally tight: Serdyukov is married to Zubkov’s only daughter. Sorta like how Sechin’s daughter married the son of ex-Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov. Not that marrying-for-influence is something silovik-specific: the Yeltsin “Family” started this practice back in the free-market liberal 90s with the love connection between Yeltsin’s powerful daughter Tatyana Dyachenko, who married Yeltsin’s chief of staff Valentin Yumashev, whose daughter married future oligarch Oleg Deripaska…meaning that Deripaska is Yeltsin’s grandson. Dang, those Western-backed 90s years really were so much different than today’s fascist/silovik era, weren’t they!?

But to get back to Zubkov…his blood connection to Defense Minister Serdyukov likely connects him straight to Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, one of the two favorites to succeed Putin next spring, since Ivanov used to hold Serdyukov’s post at Defense. Sergei Ivanov isn’t related to silovik Kremlin official Viktor Ivanov—but they’re all supposedly part of the same Petersburg silovik clan.

Confusing? Don’t worry, the Western hacks are sure to explain it to you in easy terms. We expect the full power of the Hack Machine to tell you tomorrow that Putin’s choice of Zubkov means VICTORY FOR THE SILOVIKI.

And you know those Western correspondents…they never fuck up anything about Russia.

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