Igor Levitin (Èãîðü Åâãåíüåâè÷ Ëåâèòèí) was born on Feb. 21, 1952, in the village of Tsebrikovo in present-day Ukraine.

Education: Leningrad Academy of Railway Forces and Military Transportation, 1973. Railway engineering, Military Logistics Support and Transport Academy, 1983.

1983: Military Commandant of a section of the Baikal-Amur railway line, then deputy director of military transportation for the Moscow railway system

1985-1994: Worked on the Moscow Railway, rising to deputy chief of military transportation

1994-2004: Held various business posts: Financial-Industry Railway Transportation Company (1994-1995, rose to vice president), Pheonix-Trans (1995-1996, head of transportation), Severstal (1996-2004, rose to logistics specialist for the steel giant's transportation arm)

March 2004: Appointed Transportation and Communications Minister by Mikhail Fradkov. Levitin was an obscure figure at the time, and his appointment was a surprise to many. Some industry watchers viewed it as a reward for the very public pro-Putin stance taken by Severstal billionaire Alexei Mordashov. Levitin's lack of experience in the communications sector was noted by critics.

Levitin had been a member of a special group formed to work out strategies for overhauling the Railways Ministry, a task that concluded in 2003 with the creation of Russian Railways, a new natural monopoly that had assets of more than $50 billion in 2004.

May 2004-present: Transportation minister. Levitin assumed his current position when President Vladimir Putin de-merged the Transportation and Communications ministries, which had been joined in March. Putin's decree returned Leonid Reiman to his old position as Communications Minister. Levitin's tenure as transportation minister has seen some successes, such as the introduction of the Sapsan high-speed train, but Russians remained generally dissatisfied with the state of the country's road and rail networks.

Levitin is married and has a daughter.