Aleksandr Lebedev, Russian Duma deputy from the Fair Russia party, gave his impression of his meeting with Viktor Zubkov, the nominee for the Prime Minister’s seat.

Aleksandr Lebedev: I think the the future Prime Minister did quite well and he will enjoy quite a lot of support tomorrow. The general impression about him is that, first of all, he is fit for the job as far as his qualifications are concerned. He's got an economics degree, he’s spent quite a long time as a manager in agriculture, then he worked in the sphere of taxes and his last job was in the Financial Monitoring Service, which deals with a very important part of the Russian economy, which is the money that goes beyond governmental control. There is no gossip linking him to any private business interests – his wife is not on the Forbes list and she's not in construction.

From the point of view of the questions raised, I mean for example, we’ve been interested in whether the relations between the parliament and the government may improve. I’ve quoted, for example, my own experience of winning two cases in the Supreme Court over the regulation, which now rules the governmental relations with the State Duma. We got the impression that he will pay attention specifically to how to deal with the parliament. I believe we need to change the substance of these relations. We need to shift more responsibility to the parliament.

RT: Mr. Zubkov’s nomination yesterday was a bit of a surprise for practically everyone. Was it a surprise for the leaders of your party and for you personally? How do you explain this unexpected nomination?

A.L.: It is partially a surprise, but on the other hand his qualifications are quite adequate for the job, as I have said. Apparently Mr Zubkov is well known to people like Mr Mironov, so it wasn’t unexpected for them to say they support the president’s choice. So in a sense it’s not such a surprise.