Moscow Times
March 13, 2009
Surprise Pick for Agriculture Minister
By Maria Antonova / The Moscow Times
President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Yelena Skrynnik, the little-known head of equipment leasing company Rosagroleasing, as agriculture minister Thursday in a surprise decision praised by industry insiders.
Skrynnik, 47, who holds degrees in business management and medicine, will replace Alexei Gordeyev, who was nominated as governor of Voronezh last month after being minister for almost a decade.
She will be the third woman in the Cabinet and the first woman ever to head the Agriculture Ministry.
"You have been dealing with issues of rural areas and organizing agricultural production. I think you are doing this successfully," Medvedev told Skrynnik during a meeting at his Gorki residence outside Moscow, according to a transcript on the Kremlin's web site.
Skrynnik promised that the ministry would work "openly, clearly and effectively" and said she would meet with farmers during spring sowing in the fields.
Medvedev said he had known Skrynnik since he began overseeing the four national projects -- which include agriculture -- as a first deputy prime minister in late 2005.
Skrynnik became CEO of state-owned Rosagroleasing, which leases cattle, equipment and machinery to farmers, in 2001. She previously headed Rosleasing, an association of Russian leasing companies, and was one of the people who helped set up the leasing sector in Russia, according to an official biography provided by Rosagroleasing.
Last fall, she joined the Supreme Council of the United Russia party, which apparently was also caught off guard by Medvedev's announcement Thursday.
United Russia deputies rejected a motion by Communist Deputy Alexander Shirshov in the State Duma on Wednesday that an official request be sent to the government to appoint Skrynnik to the post.
Shirshov, who is not on the Duma's agriculture committee but has a -background in the industry, told The Moscow Times on Thursday that he did not know that Skrynnik would be appointed but he was pleased with Medvedev's decision.
He said the sector needed an urgent rescue, and Skrynnik was well acquainted with the issues. "We need a breakthrough right now, so we need a person with energy rather than a bureaucrat," he said.
Skrynnik is personally responsible for several successful decisions in the sector, including easing the imports of agriculture equipment, he said. "She has intuition, maybe because she is a woman, and women tend to do things that only intuition can explain," he said.
Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, who heads United Russia's faction in the Duma, and senior party official Vyacheslav Volodin both applauded Skrynnik's appointment on Thursday.
Skrynnik also won praise from the Russian Grain Union. "Under her guidance, Rosagroleasing was built from scratch," said union vice president Alexander Korbut.
Appointing a businesswoman as minister is both unusual and symbolic, said Yevgeny Minchenko, an analyst with the Institute of Political Expertise. "This is the start of a trend of attracting business managers to the government," he said.
Medvedev recently unveiled a "Golden 100" list of people who might be recruited for government positions, but while it included many businesspeople, Skrynnik was not on it.
Still, she is considered to be in "Medvedev's orbit" because of her work with him while he oversaw the national projects, Minchenko said.
"In this way, the number of Medvedev's appointees is increasing, while the group under Igor Sechin's influence is shrinking," he said, referring to the current deputy prime minister who is believed to have wielded enormous influence during Vladimir Putin's presidency. Gordeyev was seen as being close to Sechin's group.
Liberal-minded Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko, who like Skrynnik is from Chelyabinsk, probably played a role in her appointment, said Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank. "This would not have been done without Khristenko," he said, adding that Khristenko and Skrynnik are often seen together at official and nonofficial events.