At a meeting with the former Cabinet Ministers on Wednesday, Mr. Putin said there were two reasons for the move – a political reason and an administrative and organizational reason.

“What is happening is almost a planned event. A question arises why this was done and whether it was right to do it three weeks before the elections. I had two reasons for doing so – a political reason and an administrative and organizational reason,” the President said.

Being both the incumbent President and election candidate, Mr. Putin considered it necessary to acquaint the public with the new Prime Minister.

“If we look into the Constitution of the Russian Federation, we will see that the government resigning after presidential elections, leaves, and a new government can be formed within a timeframe specified in the Constitution – until the beginning of June 2004. This creates additional difficulties for the process of the administrative reform. Given that we want to implement this reform to the end – and the government is working on it – the government will be ‘suspended’ twice during this period until June. First, due to the fact of being appointed. Secondly, the government will be in the process of being reformed. Top government officials will not know how and in what capacity they shall work,” Mr. Putin said.

The President stressed that these were the reasons why he decided to dismiss the government before the elections.

The former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and acting Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko were present at the meeting.