Battle of the Winners

The revival of the half-forgotten scandal around the “Three Whales” is a sign that the struggle within the “St. Petersburg community” for control over the Prosecutor General’s Office has at least temporarily left the behind-the-scenes stage – and this, in turn, indicates the degree of its intensity. The problem is not only who will replace Ustinov, but also what to do with the former prosecutor general himself, who is still not employed.

Ustinov's resignation was only the first stage in this struggle, which the security forces lost, but not outright. Their complete defeat would be the simultaneous dismissal of the old Prosecutor General by the introduction of a new one - Kozak, Konovalov or any other figure not associated with the security group. In addition, the circumstances of Ustinov’s resignation - an unexpected blitz decision by the president without explanation, but also without defamatory language - gave him the opportunity to continue a successful career in government structures. Moreover, the prosecutor turned out to be very popular: as a just-conducted FOM poll showed, a third of Russians assessed his work positively and only 12% (liberal sympathizers of Khodorkovsky, whose opinions have long been ignored in the Kremlin) believe that Ustinov worked poorly. Indeed, under his watch they began to imprison businessmen and regional leaders, which met with the warm approval of the popular majority, which is always not averse to seeing another representative of the successful elite behind bars. Whether it was in Stalin’s 1937, the “Gdlyanovo-Ivanovo” (remember those truth-seeking investigators?) 80s, or in our market years.

And if so, then defeat in the first round could turn into revenge for the security forces in the second. They still have a significant hardware resource. It is no coincidence that the most prominent representative of Ustinov’s “power” team, Yuri Biryukov, became the acting Prosecutor General. Although this looks like a purely technical decision, it was possible to entrust the duties of the Prosecutor General to him - the Federation Council would vote for him in the same way as for the removal of Ustinov, appointing a new first deputy. If Biryukov (or someone else - the security group has a rather large “bench”; remember how the half-forgotten Mikhail Fradkov appeared in the White House) became a full-fledged prosecutor general, and Ustinov received sufficient compensation for his dismissal, then the security forces could celebrate victory .

Now this is unlikely. The current leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office in the public space is firmly associated with the scandalous "Three Whales" case, which (as leaks promptly launched in the media say), despite the opposition of certain high-status law enforcement officers, was investigated under the personal patronage of the president by the modest prosecutor Loskutov. So the nomination of a candidacy for the post of Prosecutor General from the old “power” circle is now becoming very unlikely. And Ustinov no longer looks like a formidable fighter against corruption, fired at its height, but as a leader under whom the “furniture business” dragged on for years and only developed after his resignation. However, no one accuses Ustinov of abuses personally, and the president said that the former prosecutor general will remain in the civil service, but now an “equivalent post” (again, Putin’s wording) will most likely become more like a sinecure than a continuation of a successful career . At the same time, the likelihood of a protégé of the “civilian” part of the St. Petersburg community coming to the Prosecutor General’s Office has increased, that is, the implementation of a scenario that was much talked about immediately after Ustinov’s resignation - but at that time unexpectedly postponed.

However, the history of the struggle for the post of Prosecutor General is interesting not only in itself (after all, we are talking about one of the most important posts in the state, the importance of which increases during the period of the fight against corruption directed from the very top) - but also as a sign of the intensification of the apparatus struggle in the presidential surroundings in general. The fact is that the people of St. Petersburg have lost the enemy. The entire fraternity - from avowed liberals to the toughest security officials - had the ability to quickly consolidate in the face of a common enemy, which was the Yeltsin elite of the 90s. Both on its own and in the person of its specific, most senior or ambitious representatives - from Mikhail Khodorkovsky to Mikhail Kasyanov. Let us remember the “YUKOS case”, where not a single “Petersburger” stood out from the general ranks, and their claims to Khodorkovsky differed only in stylistic shades. If there were disagreements, it was on secondary issues related to purely group interests - for example, whether to arrest Yukos shares after Khodorkovsky. And if arrested, then when exactly?

Now the game is over, the feast of the winners can begin. Khodorkovsky is in Krasnokamensk, Kasyanov is a political outsider, from under whom the Democratic Party he almost acquired was pulled out. Most of the iconic figures of the “Yeltsin” elite abandoned big political ambitions, realizing that the risks were prohibitive for them (and small, such as places on the election list of the “party in power” are not dangerous and even useful for the Kremlin, because these places are the federal government itself and distributes). However, it is precisely in such a situation, when the enemies are defeated, that pre-existing internal conflicts intensify. The feast turns into a battle in which only the recently formulated unspoken rules of the game cease to apply. Businessmen have only just come to the conclusion that proximity to the winners (to any of their groups) and distance from unreliable representatives of the “Yeltsin” elite can provide them with immunity from excessive attention from law enforcement agencies, as follows a clear refutation of this thesis in the form of those who find themselves in prison of the owner of the “Three Whales” and his associates.

In general, the events surrounding the Prosecutor General's Office showed the instability of the balance of interests within the St. Petersburg community. And the closer the “moment of truth” – 2008 – is, the more behind-the-scenes conflicts, like the prosecutor’s, will break out to the surface.