Twenty-seven years ago today, March 23, 1998 (February 25, 1998 in the lunar calendar), Yeltsin dissolved the Russian government and nominated Kiriyenko as prime minister. On March 23, 1998, Russian President Yeltsin signed an order announcing the dissolution of the Russian government and removing Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, First Deputy Prime Minister Chubais and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Kulikov. The reason was that the Russian government "lacks vitality, lacks initiative, new ideas and methods, and fails to solve a series of important social and economic problems." On the same day, Yeltsin appointed Kiriyenko (left), Minister of Raw Materials, Fuels and Power, as First Deputy Prime Minister, acting as Prime Minister. A few days later, he nominated him as the candidate for Prime Minister of the government. On April 24, the Russian State Duma approved 35-year-old Kiriyenko as Prime Minister after a third vote. On August 23 of the same year, Yeltsin dissolved the Kiriyenko government, and the Russian government changed again. Kiriyenko was born in Sukhumi on July 27, 1962. He graduated from the Gorky School of Water Transport Engineering in 1984 and served as the president of a large bank in Nizhnovgorod. Since 1997, he has successively served as the first deputy minister and minister of the Russian Ministry of Fuel and Power, and since December of that year, he has served as the chairman of the government's Committee in Gazprom.