Moscow, Oct 29: Moscow press today reported that President Vladimir Putin's powerful Kremlin Chief of Staff had resigned in protest at the arrest of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky in a widening political scandal on the eve of Russian parliamentary elections. A business daily reported that Putin had accepted Alexander Voloshin's resignation on Monday night after meeting for several hours with top Kremlin officials.
The Kremlin press office refused to comment on the reports, but the daily said that a formal announcement about Voloshin's dismissal would not be made for several days until his replacement had been found. Russia's official news agency quoted an unnamed Kremlin source as saying that Putin had not yet signed any decrees about changes within his administration.
Newspaper reports said that Voloshin had handed in his resignation on Saturday only hours after Khodorkovsky was hauled in by secret service men at gunpoint in a Siberian airport and flown to Moscow for questioning. Voloshin is seen as one of the last figures in the Kremlin that have hung on from the era of Putin's predecessor Boris Yeltsin and a leader of an administration clan known as "the family" that battled the hawkish "Siloviki" camp of former secret service agents that recently emerged in Putin's court.
His potential resignation had been rumored in Moscow for months as the family -- which supported big businesses including Yukos -- was being squeezed out by the "Siloviki" clan. Bureau Report