Mikhail Mishustin

Biography

Mikhail Mishustin was born in 1966 in Lobnya, near Moscow. He graduated in systems engineering from the Moscow machine-tool institute STANKIN in 1989 and completed postgraduate study there in 1992, later earning economics doctorates at Plekhanov University (2003) and the Presidential Academy of National Economy (2010). In the 1990s he worked at the International Computer Club, an IT association, eventually chairing its board.

He entered the state tax service in 1998 and was soon deputy head, then deputy minister of taxes and duties until 2004. He went on to run the Federal Agency for Real Estate Cadastre and, from 2006, the agency for special economic zones, before spending 2008 to 2010 as president of the investment firm UFG Asset Management.

Vladimir Putin made him head of the Federal Tax Service in 2010. Over the next decade Mishustin built a reputation as a technocrat who digitised tax collection, requiring real-time transmission of retail and invoice data and sharply reducing uncollected VAT.

In January 2020, after Dmitry Medvedev's government resigned, Putin nominated Mishustin as prime minister and the State Duma confirmed him the same day with no votes against. His government led Russia's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which he himself was infected in 2020, and he was reappointed after Putin's inauguration in 2024.