Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree dismissing Federal Penitentiary Service Director Alexander Kalashnikov, the Kremlin’s press service reported on Thursday.
Handing down another decree, the Russian president appointed Arkady Gostev to this post who served as Deputy Interior Minister.
Kalashnikov was appointed to the post of federal penitentiary head on October 8, 2019. Since 1987, he had served in federal security agencies. According to the Kommersant newspaper, before his post in the Federal Penitentiary Service, he had been the deputy head of department "M" in the Federal Security Service (counterintelligence support for law enforcement agencies), then he had a senior position in the Control Service of the central administration of the FSB.
From 2011 to 2017, Alexander Kalashnikov headed the department of the FSB in the Komi Republic. In May 2017, he was appointed head of the FSB for the Krasnoyarsk Region.
The newly appointed federal penitentiary boss started his service in the internal affairs agencies in 1981 in Moscow. He went up the career ladder from a detective in the Investigation Division of the Internal Affairs’ Administration of the Soviet District Executive Committee in Moscow, to Chief of the Division for investigating organized criminal activity of the Internal Affairs’ Administration in the Southern Administrative District of Moscow.
Since 2006, Gostev had served as the acting head of the administration for protection of public order of the Internal Affairs’ General Administration for the city of Moscow. Since June 2010, he worked as deputy chief of the Internal Affairs General Administration for the city of Moscow. On June 16, 2012, by the presidential decree he was appointed to the position of Russia’s Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.
