Dyumin, who previously worked as Putin's security guard, is considered a likely candidate to succeed him, but the prestige of the new position is in doubt. 

Putin returned to Moscow his former security guard Alexei Dyumin, who is considered one of the likely successors. The ex-governor of the Tula region was fired and received a post in the Kremlin: now he will become Putin’s personal assistant. 

According to Peskov, Dyumin will oversee issues of the military-industrial complex and sports , as well as be involved in the State Council. Work in the presidential administration as an assistant preceded the appointment of Nabiullina as head of the Central Bank, Sechin as head of Rosneft, and Beglov as governor of St. Petersburg. Dyumin has long been featured in the media as the most likely candidate to replace Putin. In some cases, appointment to the position of assistant may mean moving to the “reserve bench,” says political scientist Fyodor Krasheninnikov. 

According to him, the governor leads the region, and the assistant to the president is “a position without any special and public powers.” “What exactly does the presidential assistant lead? What does he even do? At best, they can be sent somewhere later, at worst, they will sit there until retirement ,” the expert said.

 However, in the case of Dyumin, an official comes to the Kremlin with whom Putin personally met less than two weeks ago and listened to his detailed report on the development of the Tula region. In the position of assistant to the president, Dyumin can be either very influential or end up in “retirement,” believes political scientist Abbas Gallyamov. 

“There are more chances for the former, it is on an upward trend ,” the expert emphasized. The position of assistant in 2013-2020 was also held by Andrei Belousov, who after that became the first deputy chairman of the government, and is now proposed by Putin as the new minister of defense. Final conclusions can be drawn after the new assistants “saturate” their positions and it becomes clear what they will do, political scientist Mikhail Vinogradov. 

According to him, Dyumin’s appointment now looks like a “situational weakening” of the Ministry of Defense. The Kremlin agency TASS chose Dyumin's photograph to illustrate the news about the new composition of the presidential administration. His name was also the first in the news headline.