About Sergei Stepashin
Sergei Vadimovich Stepashin (Russian: Сергей Вадимович Степашин; born 2 March 1952) is a Russian politician who briefly served as Prime Minister of Russia in 1999. Subsequent to his tenure as Prime Minister he was elected to the State Duma, but resigned to serve as Chairman of the Accounts Chamber of Russia, from 2000 to 2013. Stepashin served in the Soviet Internal Troops and graduated from the Lenin Military-Political Academy. Prior to his premiership, Stepashin became a member of the Russian Congress of People's Deputies in the 1990 election. He defected from the parliament during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis and was appointed as director of the Federal Security Service by President Boris Yeltsin in 1994. Stepashin resigned in 1995 as a consequence of the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis. He later served as Minister of Justice from 1997 to 1998 and Minister of Internal Affairs from 1998 to 1999. During his brief tenure as prime minister, he succeeded in negotiating an IMF loan for Russia and a restructuring of its debt. He also represented Russia at the G8 summit in 1999. Stepashin was unable to get Yeltsin and first deputy premier Nikolai Aksyonenko to accept his choice of Alexander Zhukov in a post responsible for economic issues. On 5 July Stepashin met Syrian President Hafez al-Assad during his first visit to Moscow since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
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