By Alexei Anishchuk
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev introduced a new top police post on Monday to oversee transport security a week after a suicide bomber killed 35 people at Moscow's biggest airport.
Medvedev appointed Interior Ministry General Viktor Kiryanov, currently head of traffic police, to the new post in a move seen by analysts as a bureaucratic reshuffle designed to mask the state's inability to prevent such attacks.
"I believe that within the Interior Ministry we need to optimise work on transport security... Therefore I decided to create another deputy interior minister position," Medvedev said at a meeting in the Kremlin.
Medvedev said that Kiryanov had experience dealing with road safety and had the competence to improve safety and security on air, rail and water transport infrastructure which can be targeted by attackers.
Medvedev fired several transport police officers but left top officials in their posts after the January 24 bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, which authorities said was carried out by an attacker from the insurgency-plagued North Caucasus.
It came less than a year after suicide bombings in Moscow's subway killed 40 people last March.
"Stepping up individual measures after something had already happened is not right, systemic changes are required," said Yevgeny Minchenko, director of the International Institute of Political Analysis in Moscow.
"I don't think that this appointment will be welcomed by the public, taking into the account the negative image of the traffic police in the society," he said.
Russia's police is undermined by corruption. The Interior Ministry was involved in 43 percent of 6,000 graft cases initiated last year, according to official figures, with traffic police among the most frequent suspects.
Road safety is also a major problem in Russia, where some 26,500 people were killed in road accidents last year.
Kiryanov's driver ran down and injured a woman in 2008 while carrying his boss, adding to public anger at high-ranking officials who are rarely held responsible for traffic accidents.
(Editing by Maria Golovnina)
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