Russia's new government was thrown into chaos last night when Mr Alexander Shokhin resigned as a first deputy prime minister in charge of financial relations just nine days after his appointment.

Mr Shokhin's abrupt departure was sparked by the reappointment of reformist Mr Mikhail Zadornov as Finance Minister after a fierce political wrangle within the cabinet. Mr Shokhin said Mr Zadornov had been discredited by the devaluation of the rouble and the effective default on government domestic debt on August 17th.

"I consider that for the authorities to regain the trust of the people, it is necessary to purge ourselves and form a new government," said Mr Shokhin, who was the third-most senior member of the cabinet.

Mr Yevgeny Primakov, Prime Minister, condemned Mr Shokhin's "capricious" act as irresponsible. But the latest political upheaval highlights the difficulties Mr Primakov has faced in trying to form a coalition government. The Communist party, which strongly backed Mr Primakov's nomination, has already distanced itself from the new government. Rumours are rife that the party may press Mr Yuri Maslyukov, a former Communist MP, to quit as the other first deputy prime minister.

"It is a vaudeville government but unfortunately the audience is not in the mood for vaudeville," said Ms Tatyana Malkina, commentator for the Vremya newspaper.

"But Mr Shokhin did not have time to do any good or any serious harm in the government."

Western banks seeking negotiations over the government's effective default were surprised and disappointed by Mr Shokhin's departure.

Meetings with him had been considered constructive, achieving a further extension of the deadline for exchanging GKOs, permission to submit alternative solutions and clearance to create a Moscow Club of creditors.

Earlier, Mr Shokhin had urged a visiting mission from the International Monetary Fund to back the government. "It would be shameful to leave Moscow without cheering up the world by announcing results," Mr Shokhin said.

However, the IMF appears to be growing increasingly irritated by the Russian government's apparent attempts to frog-march it into disbursing the latest $4.3 billion (£2.9 billion) tranche of its loan.

The IMF said yesterday that Russia was in a "critical" situation, warning that loan payments would remain suspended until Mr Primakov devised a credible strategy to haul Russia's crippled economy out of collapse.

In a terse statement, the IMF said it had failed to reach agreement with the cash-strapped Russian government on lifting the freeze on the $4.3 billion payout, although it acknowledged that some progress had been made.

A day earlier, a senior IMF official told reporters the fund did not react well to attempts to "blackmail" the institution by threatening to default on international debts if future loans were not forthcoming.

He also criticised some of the "most fantastic suggestions" coming out of Moscow about how to salvage the economy, and warned of the dangers of igniting hyper-inflation.

The official said the concept of a "controlled inflation" was similar to that of being half pregnant. "The IMF does not like countries to be half pregnant with inflation. People do not want to be paid their arrears in fake money," he said.