Putin sacks Yeltsin's daughter
MOSCOW, Jan 3: Acting President Vladimir Putin made a symbolic break with the past Monday, sacking the scandal-tainted daughter of former leader Boris Yeltsin as a Kremlin aide at the start of his first full week in office, reports AFP.
Putin signed a decree dismissing Tatyana Dyachenko as a senior presidential advisor and re-assigned Yeltsin's chief spokesman Dmitry Yakushkin to other duties.
Dyachenko, the ex-president's favourite daughter and chief image-maker, played a key role in Yeltsin's 1996 re-election campaign and had come to epitomise the power of a tight-knit group of Kremlin aides over the country.
Reputedly the "gatekeeper" who controlled access to the man who ruled Russia for the past eight years until his shock resignation Friday, Dyachenko has been credited with helping engineer the dismissals of several premiers.
"It was inevitable. A new man, a new entourage, and new close advisors," Yakushkin told Echo Moscow radio. The former Yeltsin aide said he had himself seen Dyachenko "tidy her desk and collect her things" from her Kremlin office.
Dyachenko, who turns 40 later this month, embodied what Russian media derisively refers to as "The Family," a close-knit cabal of shadowy figures, unelected and unaccountable to parliament, who pull strings behind the scenes.
The group also includes billionaire businessman Boris Berezovsky, oil magnate Boris Abramovich, ex-Kremlin chief of staff Valentin Yumashev and the current holder of that post, Alexander Voloshin.
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