Please do not disturb

As the Vedomosti newspaper writes on June 5, at the end of April, recommendations from the presidential administration were sent to regional parliaments with a list of issues on which they should not contact the federal authorities. That is, it’s not that it’s prohibited, but first you need to consult with the leadership of the party - Boris Gryzlov, Vyacheslav Volodin, Andrei Vorobyov. These questions relate to the work of the federal government and tariffs.

Questions from opposition deputies should be blocked altogether. All this, judging by the comments received by the newspaper, does not bother anyone. True, an employee of the presidential press service said that he knew nothing about the distribution of the list of questions. As it turns out, the regions have not bothered the president and prime minister with all sorts of stupid questions for some time now. There is also an unspoken directive for the media: the state of the region’s economy is the area of ​​responsibility of the local, not the federal government, Vedomosti writes with reference to Marina Ivanina, a deputy of the Oryol regional council.

A deputy from the Irkutsk parliament recalls that the last time they sent a request to the center last fall about the situation at the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill and received “the strongest pushback.” The Novosibirsk and Rostov deputies won’t even remember the last time they disturbed the top brass. In Nizhny Novgorod they stopped doing this in 2005.

A comprehensive explanation was offered by Oleg Ivaninsky, head of the executive committee of United Russia in the Novosibirsk region: “When the chairman of the government is the leader of the party and the president is nominated by it, we consider it at least pointless to address it publicly.”