Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Monday that a new economic crisis in Russia might lead to regime change, RIA-Novosti reports.
“The country was affected by a similar crisis, caused by falling oil prices, in 1990 and 1998,” he said in an interview with the MK daily newspaper. “That ended in what was effectively a change of government. It could happen again.”
“The threat of division will always be an element of our history,” he said, admitting however that there was probably no danger of the country’s disintegration.
A longtime Putin ally, Kudrin was fired as finance minister and deputy prime minister last year following a row with President Dmitry Medvedev over budget issues including rising defense spending.
