The Kremlin has tightened its control over the 300-year-old Russian Academy of Sciences with the election of Gennady Krasnikov, leader of Russia’s largest chipmaker, as the group's president.
The Kremlin tightened its control over the 300-year-old Russian Academy of Sciences this week when its current president, Alexander Sergeev, withdrew his bid for a second term a day before the election, citing the “administrative pressures” many RAS members face for “speaking out.” The 67-year-old laser physicist, who was widely expected to win, declined to explain his withdrawal in more detail to members attending the RAS annual meeting in Moscow, but said it was a “forced decision.
Some outspoken RAS members tried to organize an election boycott on short notice. But a narrow quorum was present and willing to go ahead with a secret ballot for the two remaining candidates: Krasnikov and Dmitriy Markovich, who leads a thermophysics research institute in Siberia and is not well known outside the region. Krasnikov won by a comfortable 871-397 vote.
Speaking the day before elections, Yuri Solomonov, chief designer for ballistic missiles at the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology, threw his support behind Krasnikov because of what he said were “unfortunate” signals that Sergeev didn’t have the support of the country’s leadership. Krasnikov, 64, is a lifelong Mikron employee, and in 2016, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea triggered sanctions, Putin put him in charge of electronics as a national technological priority.
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