Vladislav Surkov
Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov is a Russian politician and businessman.
He served as First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia from 1999 to 2011, where he played a central role in shaping domestic political strategy. During this period, he was widely credited with formulating and promoting the concept of sovereign democracy.
From December 2011 to May 2013, Surkov was Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, later returning to the Presidential Executive Office as a close aide to Vladimir Putin. Between 2013 and 2020, he was responsible for overseeing Russian policy toward Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Ukraine. He was dismissed from this role in February 2020.
Surkov has been described as an influential political strategist and is sometimes referred to as a "grey cardinal" of Russian politics. He has also been linked to literary works published under the pseudonym Nathan Dubovitsky.
Early years
According to Surkov's official biography and birth certificate, he was born on 21 September 1964 in Solntsevo, Lipetsk Oblast, Russian SFSR. As per other statements, he was born in 1962 in Shali, Checheno-Ingush ASSR. His birth name is sometimes reported to be Aslambek Dudayev. His parents, the ethnic Russian Zinaida Antonovna Surkova and the ethnic Chechen Yuriy Danil'bekovich Dudayev, were school teachers in Duba-yurt, Checheno-Ingush ASSR.Following the separation of his parents, his mother moved to Lipetsk and he was baptized into Eastern Orthodox Christianity. In an interview published in June 2005 in the German magazine Der Spiegel, Surkov stated that his father was ethnic Chechen and that he spent the first five years of his life in Chechnya, in Duba-yurt and Grozny. Surkov has claimed to be a relative of Dzhokhar Dudayev, the first president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.
From 1982 to 1983, Surkov attended MISiS, but did not graduate from it. From 1983 to 1985, Surkov served in a Soviet artillery regiment in Hungary, according to his official biography. However, former defence minister Sergei Ivanov stated in a 2006 TV interview that Surkov served in the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff during the same time period.
After his military training, Surkov was accepted into the Moscow Institute of Culture for a five-year program in theater direction, but spent only three years there. Surkov graduated from Moscow International University with a master's degree in economics in the late 1990s.
Business career (1988–1998)
In the late 1980s, when the government lifted the ban against private businesses, Surkov started out in business. In 1987, he became head of the advertising department of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's businesses. From 1991 to April 1996, he held key managerial positions in advertising and PR departments of Khodorkovsky's Bank Menatep. From March 1996 to February 1997, he was at Rosprom, and since February 1997 with Mikhail Fridman's Alfa-Bank. At Alfa-Bank, he worked closely with Oleg Markovich Govorun.In September 2004, Surkov was elected president of the board of directors of the oil products transportation company Transnefteproduct, but was instructed by Russia's prime minister Mikhail Fradkov to give up the position in February 2006.
Political career (1999–2020)
After a brief career as a public relations director at the television channel ORT from 1998 to 1999, Surkov was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia in 1999. According to the Dossier Center, he has supported far-right groups since at least 2000.Early in his tenure, Surkov often appeared in public and international media as a spokesperson for the Kremlin. In August 2000, he confirmed that Gazprom would acquire Vladimir Gusinsky's Media-Most, then the owner of NTV, Russia's only nationwide independent television channel. In September 2002, he announced that the Kremlin would not reinstate the statue of KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, which had been removed during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. After the 2003 State Duma election, when United Russia won 37.6% of the vote, Surkov said: "We are living in a new Russia now."
In March 2004, he was additionally appointed aide to the president.
Since 2006, Surkov has promoted a political doctrine he called sovereign democracy, intended as a response to democracy-promotion efforts by the United States and European states. Western media often described the doctrine as controversial, while Russian media and much of the political elite generally endorsed it. Surkov described the concept as a distinct Russian political language for use in relations with the outside world.
As a leading advocate of sovereign democracy, Surkov gave two major speeches in 2006: Sovereignty is a Political Synonym of Competitiveness in February and Our Russian Model of Democracy is Titled Sovereign Democracy in June.
On 8 February 2007, Moscow State University marked the 125th anniversary of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's birth with a conference titled "Lessons of the New Deal for Modern Russia and the World", attended by Surkov and political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky. Surkov compared Roosevelt's policies to those of President Putin, describing the New Deal as a potential model for modern Russia. Pavlovsky suggested that Putin should follow Roosevelt's example and seek a third presidential term.
According to The Moscow Times, Surkov influenced the appointment of Ramzan Kadyrov as acting Head of the Chechen Republic on 15 February 2007. Kadyrov later served multiple terms as head of Chechnya and has been widely accused of human rights abuses.
In October 2009, Surkov warned that opening and modernizing Russia's political system—a reform agenda stressed by President Dmitry Medvedev—could lead to instability that "could rip Russia apart".
In September 2011, Mikhail Prokhorov resigned from the Right Cause party after five months as its leader. He described the party as a puppet of the Kremlin and called Surkov the "main puppet master of the political process", according to Korrespondent, as reported by The New York Times. The Kremlin responded that Surkov would remain in his role. At that time, Reuters described Surkov as the Kremlin's "shadowy chief political strategist", one of the most powerful men in the government and a close ally of then–Prime Minister Putin.
Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Modernisation (2011–2013)
On 28 December 2011, President Dmitry Medvedev reassigned Surkov to the post of Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Modernisation, a move widely interpreted as a consequence of the disputed 2011 parliamentary elections. Reflecting on his career at the time, Surkov stated: "I was among those who helped Boris Yeltsin to secure a peaceful transfer of power; among those who helped President Putin stabilize the political system; among those who helped President Medvedev liberalize it. All the teams were great."During this period, Surkov was involved in supporting pro-government youth movements, including Nashi. He met with movement leaders and participants several times and delivered lectures on the political situation. Nashi has been described by journalist Edward Lucas as the Kremlin's equivalent of the Soviet-era Komsomol.
File:Sergey Ivanov, Vladislav Surkov and Arkady Dvorkovich 7 May 2013.jpeg|thumb|Surkov on his last day as deputy prime minister, with Sergei Ivanov and Arkady Dvorkovich
Following Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency in 2012, commentators noted that Surkov became increasingly marginalized as Putin shifted toward more direct repression rather than the political management associated with Surkov. As deputy prime minister, Surkov criticized the Investigative Committee of Russia for pursuing cases against opposition leaders, arguing such matters should fall under the prosecutor general's office. The Committee announced that he had offered to resign on 7 May 2013, while Surkov himself said he submitted his resignation on 28 April 2013. Putin accepted his resignation on 8 May 2013.
Personal adviser to Putin (2013–2020)
On 20 September 2013, Putin appointed Surkov as an aide in the Presidential Executive Office, with responsibilities relating to Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Ukraine. His work immediately centered on developments in Ukraine during the November 2013 Euromaidan protests and the February 2014 Revolution of Dignity.Surkov had earlier been described as the Kremlin's "Éminence grise" or "Grey Cardinal" for shaping the concept of "sovereign democracy" and overseeing state media propaganda.
On 17 March 2014, one day after the Crimean referendum, Surkov was among the first eleven Russian officials sanctioned by the United States. The measures, enacted through the Specially Designated Nationals List, froze any US assets and barred entry to the United States. Surkov dismissed the sanctions, stating: "The only things that interest me in the US are Tupac Shakur, Allen Ginsberg, and Jackson Pollock. I don't need a visa to access their work."
On 21 March 2014, the European Union also added Surkov to its sanctions list, barring him from entry and freezing his EU-based assets.
In February 2015, Ukraine's security service accused Surkov of coordinating snipers responsible for killings during the January 2014 protests. The Russian government rejected these claims as "absurd".
Despite being under EU sanctions, Surkov joined Putin's delegation to Mount Athos in Greece in May 2016.
Academic research has highlighted Surkov's central role in efforts to promote a "Novorossiya" identity in eastern Ukraine, which largely failed to take root.
2016 email leaks
In October 2016, the Ukrainian hacker group CyberHunta released over a gigabyte of emails and documents alleged to belong to Surkov. According to the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, the 2,337 emails came from the official government account "prm_surkova". The Kremlin dismissed the documents as forgeries.Media outlets reported that the correspondence described Russian efforts to destabilize Ukraine and coordination with opposition leaders in separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine. Among the leaked material was a document sent by Denis Pushilin, then chairman of the People's Council of the Donetsk People's Republic, listing casualties between 26 May and 6 June 2014. Another file outlined a 22-page plan to support nationalist and separatist politicians and to push for early parliamentary elections in Ukraine, with the stated aim of undermining the government in Kiev.