What is happening today with Yakemenko and his projects

Yakemenko's "tools" in the fight against the opposition - drums and girls in bikinis, a toilet bowl and sex that can be used to hit corruption - are on the back burner. The pro-Kremlin youth swore allegiance. There are rumors that Seliger is “living out” his last days, and there is a split in the Nashi movement. Is there life after Yakemenko, the correspondent of Novaya found out.

Yakemenko's "tools" in the fight against the opposition - drums and girls in bikinis, a toilet bowl and sex that can be used to hit corruption - are on the back burner. The pro-Kremlin youth swore allegiance. There are rumors that Seliger is “living out” his last days, and there is a split in the Nashi movement. Is there life after Yakemenko, the correspondent of Novaya found out.

Potupchik and "gnomes"

Exactly a year ago, it became known that Kristina Potupchik was leaving the “hardworking gnomes” and leaving Nashi because she was tired. Her resignation from the post of press secretary logically fit into the general trend: Surkov moved from the presidential administration (AP) to the White House, Yakemenko resigned from the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs, and the activity of the Nashi movement faded to nothing.

Today, Potupchik, the Kremlin’s chief specialist in Internet projects and media (as the Izvestia newspaper dubbed her, and other media after her), heads the FUND (Open New Democracy Foundation) to support non-profit social projects on the Internet. In February of this year, Izvestia's sources in the Kremlin reported that the FUND intended to work under the leadership of the internal policy department of the Presidential Administration. His immediate curator is Timur Prokopenko, deputy head of the department.

Potupchik did not deny the involvement of the Presidential Administration in his new project, but did not confirm it either. “So far, there is nothing special to support. You are trying to divide between me, the Presidential Administration, the Kremlin and other organizations of a demiurgic nature, not only the skin of an unkilled bear, but a bear that has not yet been born properly.” Let us recall that in February at a press conference on the establishment of the FUND, Potupchik promised that the first results of her work would be available by summer. “I hurried. Before, I didn’t really deal with bureaucracy.” When asked if she cooperates with the AP in any other format, Potupchik tried to laugh it off: "All kinds of media write a lot of things."

According to our source in the Kremlin, Potupchik and ex-head of MGER Timur Prokopenko are in charge of the media in the Presidential Administration. Volodin's right hand, Prokopenko, does the work that Pavel Zenkovich, Konstantin Kostin and Aleksey Chesnakov did before him: calls newspapers and TV channels, resolves all issues.

To determine whether Potupchik is close to the Kremlin or not, according to our interlocutor, is easy. “Volodin has a worst enemy, a birth injury - the communist Valery Rashkin, who wets him all his life. So, if Potupchik fights Rashkin on his blog, then she is dating Volodin.

Volodin infuriates

In May last year, Yakimenko announced that he would create and lead the "Party of Power", which Volodin personally approved. The ex-head of Rosmolodezh was full of enthusiasm and was preparing to bring the “people of the future” to power in 2016. However, at the end of the summer there were rumors about difficulties with the registration of the party, and already in January it became known that the project was being closed. The "party of power" did not receive proper funding. “If you make a party with the money of United Russia, then you get United Russia. We have no other money in the country, ”Yakemenko explained the failure of his project.

Aleksey Makarkin, deputy general director of the Center for Political Technologies, is sure that the closure of the project is due not so much to the weakening of the position of Yakemenko's patron Surkov, but also to the fact that the party could take away votes in the regions from United Russia. “This process, among other things, was facilitated by the name of the party, which misled people,” he said. According to a source close to the Kremlin, the closure of Yakemenko's party logically fit into the general trend. “Everyone got something at one time: Yakemenko - a party, Sergey Minaev - a TV channel, Anatoly Lysenko - Public Television, Konstantin Kostin - a foundation. However, time has shown that their projects are closed or losing their influence,” he notes.

From the party, Yakimenko went into business - he opened the Eat Pie cafe. Either the business turned out to be unprofitable, or the ambitions were unsatisfied, but a year later he again declared himself. At the end of May, the media reported that Yakemenko met on Seliger with commissars who had previously participated in various pro-Kremlin youth projects such as Ours, Steel, and Walking Together. As a result of the meeting, it was decided to create a movement with the working title "Sincerely Yours", which will deal not with politics, but with public projects. It is noteworthy that the media presented this news under the sauce "split among the former commissars." So, according to Izvestia, most of the commissars, as well as Potupchik, did not take part in the event. Yakemenko himself declined to comment.

Our source among the commissioners, a participant in the event, said that meetings like this one have been taking place for 9 years. Usually in Pskov, but this year on Seliger. “Seliger will be drained, and we actually need to re-create it,” he says. Novaya Gazeta’s interlocutor is sure that if it weren’t for the intervention in Volodin’s case, no one would have known about the gathering. “Volodin demanded the renunciation of the activists in Izvestia (there was the first article about the split of Nashi into two camps) in order to show the presence of a political part of the movement devoted to him. In fact, the deputy head of the Presidential Administration suggested that they choose who they are with,” he says. In total, according to our information, 800 people took part in the event. All of them support Putin, but not “professionally”, that is, they are not included in any project related to the Kremlin. Two hundred people who refused to participate in the event, including Potupchik, work for the Kremlin. Surkov has nothing to do with Yours Sincerely.

A source close to Yakemenko's entourage believes that Volodin is destroying Surkov's entire legacy, just as Putin is destroying Medvedev's legacy.

- He is annoyed that Yakemenko does not want to work for him. However, he did not offer anything serious to him. The administration took the rally on Seliger sharply, since no one can gather together 800 people without a fee or an event. This is Yakemenko's resource. It turns out that the largest pro-Putin project is not controlled by the Kremlin and this is Volodin's blunder. It infuriates him wildly.

According to Makarkin, Yakemenko is creating a movement in the hope of staying in the socio-political sphere. “I don’t think that he goes head-on and has anything against Volodin. Yakemenko makes a move based on the considerations that movements in Russia cannot participate in the electoral process. He wants to prove his constructiveness,” he says. Our source in the Kremlin has a different opinion on this matter. He believes that Yakemenko, by his actions, achieves maximum distancing.

“He never seriously intended to deal with pies, and“ Sincerely yours ”is not even a spoiler. Yakemenko does everything to show that these children have nothing to do with him. Imagine you are leaving somewhere and you think one day you will return there. You have the opportunity to leave people there who will sit on the bubble and keep the organization. Are you not going to play this play?”

Rise of the Angels

The main page of the Nashi movement website has not been updated for more than a month. The latest news is that the official statement regarding the congress on Seliger concerns the founder of their project, Vasily Yakimenko, and is emphatically aggressive. "Nashists" report that they do not support the event, which was a private initiative of a number of commissars. “The idea of ​​the future of those who went to Seliger is at odds with the idea of ​​those who now determine the agenda of Nashi,” the report says. According to the activists of the movement, support for Putin's course cannot be a subject for discussion or refutation at any private meetings.

Today the Nashi movement is renewing its membership in the regions. So says the press secretary of the movement Anastasia Fedorenchik. However, a source close to Yakemenko has other information on this matter: the Nashi movement does not exist. It is noteworthy that the Smart Russia party, which was created on the basis of the Nashi movement, launched an active activity in the regions. "Umrosy" open branches of their party throughout Russia to take part in the elections on a single voting day: nominate candidates and fill polling stations with observers.

The failure of the Nashi movement, a source close to the Presidential Administration, explains the success of opposition actions, after which it became clear: the Nashi people go out into the streets only for money, the Kremlin does not have any asset comparable to the natural asset that ended up on Bolotnaya Square. “The point of no return was Manezhnaya Square, where they drove three thousand people with great difficulty (there was no money), declaring that there were fifty thousand of them. In fact, "Nashi" brought Surkov under the monastery. It was his concept - in no case should people be allowed to take to the streets themselves, to show self-organization, ”he says.

Recall that Yakemenko created the Nashi movement to prevent the threat of the Orange Revolution. However, the need to fight with an external enemy disappeared when it became clear that the enemy was inside. War with your own suggests other rules of the game.

According to Volodin's method, people should be taken to the streets not for money, but out of fear of loss. If you work at Gazprom, then you must put on thermal underwear and go outside. “According to this principle, they brought people to Poklonnaya Gora and proved the effectiveness of the method that worked in the Soviet years: an employee who goes on May Day gets a day off,” says a source in the Kremlin for Novaya Gazeta.

Volodin, unlike Surkov, is a politician, not a technologist. A politician is a person who lies and believes what he says. “That is why Putin likes him so much. Volodin is selfless in his hatred of enemies and traitors,” a source in the Presidential Administration notes. He recalls that political history under Surkov was based on the formation of an expert field, albeit a fake one.

- The authorities tried to balance the situation - to utter another opinion, and not make it the only one. Volodin showed that the observance of some sort of balance of power is an intelligent thing. At the same time, the authorities have a short bench, they need performers who do not disdain re-swearing. Yakemenko is Surkov's man, but Potupchik is not, she is the executor of the order. I believe that Surkov's team was not defeated, but, according to the glorious Surkov tradition, set itself up in order to leave in time and not be responsible for what would follow. Because now the political field has been cleared and simplified to such an extent that it can no longer be called anything other than "sabotage" - in relation to the authorities as well.