Sergei Kiriyenko (Сергей Владиленович Кириенко) was born on July 26, 1962, in Sukhumi, Georgia S.S.R. He grew up in Sochi.

Education: Shipbuilding, Gorky Institute of Water Transport Engineers, 1984. Finance and Banking, Academy of National Economy, 1993.

1984-1986: Served in the Soviet armed forces

1986: Foreman at the Krasnoye Sormovo shipyard. Secretary of the shipyard’s Komsomol committee and then first secretary of Gorky regional Komsomol committee.

Late 1980s: Head of AMK Youth Concern

1990: Elected to the Gorky regional council of people’s deputies

1993-1996: Chairman of the governing board of Nizhny Novgorod-based Garantiya Bank

August 1994: Member of the Council for Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship under President Yeltsin

1996-1997: President of NORSI-Oil. He was recommended to this post by Boris Nemtsov, then governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region.

1997: Moved to Moscow to become first deputy fuel and energy minister at the request of now-First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov

October 1997: Appointed head of the Interagency Commission for the access of independent organizations to the natural gas transport system of Gazprom

October 1997: Member of the State Representatives Collegium at Transneft

November 1997-1998: Fuel and energy minister, replacing Boris Nemtsov. Against Gazprom's resistance, the Fuel and Energy Ministry drafted regulations forcing the monopoly to open 15 percent of its pipeline capacity to other producers.

April-August 1998: Prime minister (story). Touted as a young reformer, Kiriyenko resigned after the government defaulted on some of its debt and allowed the ruble to fall against the dollar (story). Kiriyenko had also made enemies among the so-called oligarchs — the handful of banking, media and oil moguls who have gotten rich off of government connections. All of Kiriyenko's ministers were fired with him, including Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, until then a Yeltsin favorite, who survived the March reshuffle.

1998-2000: Head of Novaya Sila, a part of the Union of Right Forces electoral block

1999: Ran for mayor of Moscow, coming in second place to incumbent Yury Luzhkov

1999: Co-chair and leader of the Union of Right Forces

December 1999-2000: Elected to the State Duma. Elected leader of the Union of Right Forces faction in the Duma.

May 2000-2005: Plenipotentiary representative of the president in Volga Federal District, appointed by President Putin

May 2001-present: Chairman of State Committee on Chemical Disarmament

November 2005-2008: Head of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency. Kiriyenko was also co-chairman of the intergovernmental commissions on trade and economic cooperation with Iran and Kyrgyzstan.

December 2007-present: Director general of Rosatom, the state nuclear holding

Kiriyenko is an active practitioner of the Japanese martial art aikido and is head of the Russian Aikido Union.

He is married and has three children.