Vladimir Putin sacked Vladislav Surkov, one of his chief advisers and the architect of Russia’s Ukraine policy.

The dismissal of the 55-year-old Surkin was announced on the Kremlin website but there was no indication of what his new job would be.

In recent years, Surkov was in charge of the Kremlin’s Ukraine policy and cultivated close ties with the separatists who have carved out “people’s republics” in the ex-Soviet country’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.