He made the announcement on his Twitter account and posted a picture of his application to the prime minister.

      “I request you to relieve me from public service as deputy finance minister of the Russian Federation starting from January 9, 2013,” reads the paper.

      Aleksey Savatyugin was appointed deputy minister during the tenure of former finance chief Aleksey Kudrin. Prior to that, he spent six years as head of the financial policy department at the ministry overseeing financial markets, the banking and the insurance sectors.

      It is not clear why he decided to resign. One of the theories is that he has remained loyal to Kudrin and has not been able to get along with the new minister, Anton Siluanov.