St. Petersburg gift to the president

Vladimir Putin has been waiting for him for seven years

President Vladimir Putin continues to demonstrate full support for Valentina Matvienko, who gained more than 63% in the second round of gubernatorial elections in St. Petersburg and led the city. He will not change his usual habit of celebrating his birthday in his hometown, which is celebrated today. But this time the president will fly to St. Petersburg not so much to accept congratulations, but to present a bouquet of flowers to Valentina Matvienko. She, perhaps, gave the president the best birthday present. After all, her victory over Anna Markova, who received about 25%, a vice-governor from Vladimir Yakovlev’s team, means the final victory over Yakovlev for Putin himself. And the current head of state, we recall, led the campaign of Anatoly Sobchak in 1996, who then lost the gubernatorial elections to the current Deputy Prime Minister for Housing and Communal Services. It took more than seven years for revenge.

Anna Markova is now going to focus on defending her dissertation. They also say that she is going to the State Duma, however, the vice-governor herself denies such information. And Valentina Matvienko, already at night, as soon as the preliminary result became known, announced that she would fight to ensure that one of the branches of power was located in St. Petersburg. True, she did not specify who exactly needs to pack their bags in Moscow. It is clear that she would not have made such a statement without the approval of the president. According to the newspaper Vremya Novostei, the decision to transfer one of the branches of government to St. Petersburg has indeed already been made in Moscow, and we are talking about the servants of Themis - the Supreme and Supreme Arbitration Courts. According to our information, two buildings in the city center on Senate Square are going to be vacated for them - the Historical Archives and the Institute of Plant Growing. Before the revolution, the Holy Synod and the Ministry of State Property were located here.

At her first press conference after her election, the new head of St. Petersburg paid a lot of attention to freedom of the press, which she promises to defend with all her might. According to her, journalistic criticism will allow the governor “not to be forgotten.” Here there is a hint of the previous mayor, who apparently “forgotten”, for which he was forced to leave his post a year before his term. Under Yakovlev, who was opposed by the plenipotentiary, a formal journalistic dualism was observed in the city, when pro-Moscow mass media polemicized with pro-Moscow media. But after the appearance of Valentina Matvienko in the city, who received de facto control over St. Petersburg even before her election, there has been a complete consolidation of the media. However, according to the mayor, there is no reason to suspect the new government of persecuting the press. Moreover, Matvienko promises to financially support the Petersburg TV and Radio Broadcasting Company and ensure that it broadcasts throughout the country. According to unofficial information, a merger of the Petersburg TV and Radio Company with the local branch of the Rossiya television company is not ruled out. However, the new governor did not speak on this topic. But she promised to return St. Petersburg radio to the “first button” of the city wire broadcasting system. Let us remember that several years ago the local radio was removed from the “first button” for its pro-Smolny orientation and replaced with “Radio Russia”.

The new government promises not to arrange post-election showdowns, but Ms. Matvienko will contact law enforcement agencies with a demand to evaluate statements by her opponents that insult her and her family members. Evil, according to the governor, must be punished. The first among those punished were the young St. Petersburg “National Bolsheviks” - 23-year-old Natalya Lukovnikova and 26-year-old Sergei Grebnev. Immediately after the mayor’s first press conference, they bombarded Matvienko with offensive leaflets calling on the ex-plenipotentiary to resign from the governor’s chair, since the city ignored the elections. Indeed, turnout barely exceeded 28.4%. In addition, the girl swung carnations at the new head of the city, recalling the old Narodnaya Volya tradition of throwing bouquets at officials. True, revolutionaries from the century before last used to stuff flowers with explosives, but if the National Bolsheviks had carried out a terrorist attack, they would have received 15 years, not 15 days. This is exactly the term the Vasileostrovsky District Court sentenced the protesters to for petty hooliganism on Monday morning.

Vasily TITOV