Who is Mikhail Mishustin…Russia's New Prime Minister?

Mikhail Mishustin, chairman of the Russian Tax Authority, is set to assume the post of Prime Minister after the government's sudden resignation.

The Russian parliament approved on Thursday the appointment of Mishustin as PM, who was nominated by President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

 Everything you need to know about the new prime minister of Russia…

The 53-year-old Mishustin was born in Moscow in 1966. He has worked in the tax field since 1998 and headed the Federal Tax Service since 2010.

He graduated from Moscow State Technological University “Stankin” in 1989. He has a Ph.D. in economics.

Mishustin was appointed as an Information Technology (IT) expert in the 1990s at the International Computer Club.

In 2008, he was also appointed as the head of the Russian investment company UFG, which was working with Germany's Deutsche Bank at that time.

Mishustin has been widely interested in digitalizing the Russian tax system. This contributed to reducing tax evasion as well as attracting many smaller businesses into the state’s economy.

The newly-appointed prime minister is a big lover of hockey like president Putin. He has attended many matches with security services officials.

He is also a member of the board of Russia's Ice Hockey Federation. Mishustin is married with three sons.

He was listed as the 54th best-paid state official in 2015 with earnings of 183.31 million rubles (around $3 million; €2.7 million), according to Forbes.

His wife reported earnings of 47.709 million rubles in the reported period, according to Reuters news agency.

What do other people think about him?

Former opposition lawmaker Gennadiy Gudkov called Mishustin "a new faceless functionary without ambition" who embodies a system that is "detrimental for the economy."

Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center took to social media to call Mishustin a "technocratic placeholder," saying that he has no political experience or popularity with the electorate.

Analyst Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Putin adviser, told the Interfax news agency that Mishustin is "a splendid bureaucrat, in the best sense of the word."