Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich could inherit the Skolkovo Innovation Center

Acting Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich won’t join Dmitry Medvedev’s new cabinet, and the newspaper Vedomosti says he might be put out to pasture as the next head of the Skolkovo Innovation Center, which he helped found with then President Medvedev in 2010. Dvorkovich is already a member of Skolkovo’s board of trustees.

Since the beginning, the billionaire Viktor Vekselberg has served as Skolkovo’s president, but that arrangement might need to change, in light of American sanctions announced in April against “Russian oligarchs.” As a result, the U.S. government has frozen as much as $2 billion in assets controlled by Vekselberg’s Renovo Group conglomerate. To weather the storm, Vekselberg has asked the Russian government for refinancing help, preferential treatment, and a boatload of tax breaks.