Putin Reaches Down to the Assembly Line for First Appointment MOSCOW - Russia's newest political star, anointed here on Friday in an elegant conference room, speaks volumes about what matters to President Vladimir V. Putin. Mr. Putin's first high-level appointment as president was Igor R. Kholmanskikh, 42, a tank factory worker from the Urals who is famous for one thing: offering to travel to Moscow with a gang of assembly-line workers to chase antigovernment protesters off the streets. "If the militia, or the police, as it's now called, can't handle it, then me and the boys are ready to come out and defend stability," Mr. Kholmanskikh said during a live television broadcast in December, bringing a broad, happy smile to Mr. Putin's face. "Of course, within the boundaries of the law," he added hastily. The Kremlin seized on Mr. Kholmanskikh as a living rebuke to the throng of iPad-toting office workers which had materialized in Moscow, chanting "Putin is a thief" and "Russia without Putin." Mr. Putin was so grateful that hours after it became clear that he had won the presidential election in March, one of his first acts was to reach out to Mr. Kholmanskikh via a video link. "You showed who the Russian people are, who the Russian working man is," Mr. Putin said emotionally. You showed that you are a head taller than any good-for-nothing or loudmouths. Mr. Kholmanskikh's appointment as presidential envoy to the vast Urals district surprised everyone, and he conducted his first interviews in an apparent state of shock. Some people made fun of the decision; Nikolai V. Levichev, head of the opposition party A Just Russia, commented in mock gravity to the Interfax news service that "the biggest mystery is who will now be named to the vacant position as the head of the assembly line." But as the day went on, the comments became increasingly serious. Elections in December and March left the country with deep new political divisions, and Mr. Putin has rewarded someone lavishly for offering to threaten the opposition with force. He also seemed to signal a disregard for qualifications among the bureaucratic corps, privileging loyalty above all else. "It's a symbolic position - the envoy isn't the head of the region - but as far as his status is concerned, he is the most important person in the Urals, and here they put in this nobody whose entire talent is in bootlicking," said Leonid Volkov, an opposition leader in Yekaterinburg. The moral is that the better you do it, the higher you climb. "There is one message," Mr. Volkov added. I am the czar here and I do what I want. Enough playing around with democracy. Moscow has been waiting tensely for signals of how Mr. Putin will cope with an increasingly assertive opposition - by cracking down, or by adjusting his governing style. Friday was supposed to mark the first reading of a draconian draft law that would raise the maximum fines for organizers of unsanctioned protests from $1,600 to $48,000. Participants" fines would increase from $160 to $32,000. But the vote was abruptly delayed until next week, laying bare disagreements within the government. Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev on Thursday criticized the bill, even though it was put forward by United Russia, the party he will lead beginning next week. The head of the Communist Party said his deputies would stage a walkout if the bill were debated in its current form. Gleb Pavlovsky, a political consultant who worked with the Kremlin until last year, said top officials were eager to crack down but feared provoking a new wave of dissent. "This is not a very loud discussion, because not many people are involved - let's say two or three - but I think it is really going on, and there is not a decision yet," Mr. Pavlovsky said. He said hiking the fines would be "very stupid," because most Russians could not pay them unless the state seized their apartments. "To take an apartment from a person, it is a huge scandal, and it's dangerous," he said. This would arouse an additional wave of protest among jurists and intellectuals who work with the authorities and so forth. So we have what I would call a conceptual pause. The evening news broadcasts led with the news of Mr. Kholmanskikh's appointment, along with accounts of his resume: He studied for a degree in wheeled and track vehicles and followed in the footsteps of his parents to the factory, Uralvagonzavod, which is almost entirely dependent on government orders. Now chief of tank assembly, Mr. Kholmanskikh's political experience dates back several months to late 2011, when he organized a committee to support Mr. Putin. His offer in December to help Mr. Putin proved a crossroads for Mr. Kholmanskikh, who was stung by criticism from opposition bloggers. He widely condemned the opposition, writing that "they call us cattle," and he began traveling as part of Mr. Putin's campaign. When the Kremlin organized a pro-Putin rally in Yekaterinburg, he proposed arriving in a tank. United Russia hailed Mr. Kholmanskikh's appointment on Friday evening; one top official said it showed that Mr. Putin relies on people who "know what life is." But from other quarters the criticism was withering. Leonid Gozman, the former head of the Right Cause party, told the Russian News Service that "it is difficult to imagine a stranger appointment." "Jumping from the post of the head of the assembly line to the rank of vice-premier is madness," he said.