Moscow

Ilya Klebanov, a deputy prime minister with close links to Russia's military industries and its arms-exporting companies, has been appointed the country's new head of industrial and scientific policy. As such, Klebanov will control the new Ministry for Industry, Science and Technologies, which ‘swallowed’ the former Ministry of Science and Technologies.

Former science minister Mikhail Kirpichnikov says the decision to found the super-ministry (see Nature 405, 384; 2000) was taken “virtually at the moment of signing the presidential decree on the new cabinet”, and neither he, Yuri Osipov — the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences — nor Klebanov were consulted.

Kirpichnikov has expressed his concern to prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov about whether the new cabinet structure is the best way of managing Russian science. He says he was told this was a chance to unite scientific research ‘scattered’ over many programmes.

Osipov says Aleksandr Dondukov, the new minister of industry, science and technology, has promised to consult the academy before taking decisions on basic science, and hopes to build a powerful ‘scientific unit’ within the ministry.