Skolkovo. Innovative tandem: Russia may have two Silicon Valleys

Modernization in Russia will soon be driven by one more engine: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has announced the creation of an agency responsible for developing national innovation.

Like Russia's new technology hub Skolkovo, the Agency of Strategic Initiatives will provide support for technology startups. It will also help young high-skilled professionals and fund various social projects.

Putin said the agency will focus on three basic priorities: new businesses, young professionals, and staff turnover in the state and private sectors.

Officials working on the first issue will "propose new ways to help business, lower pressure on new companies and build effective industrial control."

Those dealing with young professionals will "create the system of skills assessment that could clearly show the market and the society what skills any graduate really has at hand."

"We are already too late with introducing such a system," Putin said.

The third work group will ensure that new people will appear in business and politics to replace those who obtained their position through bureaucratic ties. Putin says it especially concerns the United Russia party, which "needs fresh, ambitious staff."

"The agency will be an elevator for brilliant projects and ambitious people that now lack funds or support," said the prime minister's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov. "The agency's participants will be able to meet with Putin and the ministers."

The agency, comprised of volunteers, will be under the control of the government. Putin said that the agency will be headed by one of his aides. Now all the innovations in the country are controlled by the Ministry of Economy.

It is expected that the agency will have the upper hand in all new projects in the country by 2012, when Russian presidential elections are scheduled.

Media reports have suggested that Putin's initiative appears to be an alternative to President Dmitry Medvedev's Skolkovo project and the Modernization Commission, which would play a secondary role once Putin's agency is established.

"The agency has a clear political pretext behind it," Igor Urgens, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, told the Vedomosti newspaper. "All along Putin's leadership, all the social elevators were stopped. The country's elite has been the same. Now, ahead of elections, he needs to show the youth that they have the chance to join the elite, too -- which will most probably not be the case."