MOSCOW, January 21 (RAPSI) – The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, has in the first reading voted for a presidential bill proposing the establishment of a new post, a Deputy Chair of the Security Council.

The bill envisages a respective amendment of the law on security.

A nominee for the Deputy Chair of the Council is to be appointed to and dismissed from the post by the President of Russia, who is also to define the new official’s powers. The post is to make its holder a standing member of the Security Council.

Earlier, the President of Russia Vladimir Putin appointed Dmitry Medvedev a Deputy Chair of the Security Council by his executive order with a note that the federal law on security needed to be amended respectively.