Translated material
Critical situation
The leadership of the Chelyabinsk region declared itself a victim of a political order
The team of Chelyabinsk Region Governor Petr Sumin considers itself a victim of a political order - for several weeks now, negative materials about the work of the South Ural authorities have been appearing one after another in the central media. First Vice-Governor Vladimir Dyatlov publicly announced that all this was not without reason. The suspicions of officials were aroused by a series of stories in the federal edition of the Vesti program and publications in Rossiyskaya Gazeta. At the same time, the administration of the Chelyabinsk region was outraged by the absence of its position in these materials.Journalists from the Rossiya TV channel first talked about the “picture” case related to the illegal acquisition by the head of the governor’s administration, Konstantin Bochkarev, of paintings for the new residence of Pyotr Sumin, and then about the difficulties with the implementation of the national project “Affordable Housing” in the region. Rossiyskaya Gazeta published a publication about the plight of residents of the city of Karabash, where the Karabashmed plant operates. Vladimir Dyatlov states that all these stories and publications do not correspond to reality: it is too early to deal with Mr. Bochkarev’s case, since the court has not made any decision, there are problems with the national project throughout the country, and the situation in Karabash is constantly improving, and the means that Karabashmed allocated funds for environmental programs that significantly reduced the negative impact on the environment of the old Soviet enterprise.
“The Rossiya TV channel is not a private shop, and nothing just appears there,” says Mr. Dyatlov, and based on this he concludes that there is a serious custom campaign against the administration. At the same time, this is a well-founded conclusion: in addition to the journalists of the two state media, who are by no means inclined to criticize any authorities within the country on their own initiative, the prosecutor’s office is seriously interested in the work of Chelyabinsk officials. During the last on-site meeting of the heads of law enforcement agencies of the Ural Federal District, which was conducted by the new Prosecutor General of Russia Yuri Chaika, it was officially announced that the largest number of investigations into corruption were in the Chelyabinsk region.
In the Southern Urals, criminal cases are being initiated against mayors with enviable regularity; several years ago, First Vice-Governor Viktor Timashov was removed from office and is a defendant in a criminal case, and the case against Konstantin Bochkarev is the second this year against employees of the governor’s administration. Although at the same meeting of security officials they spoke about the standard nature of Chelyabinsk criminal cases - such, if desired, can be initiated in every subject of the Russian Federation against almost any official of the local administration.
However, law enforcement agencies began to initiate such cases en masse in the Southern Urals. And they immediately sparked a lot of rumors that the federal authorities were trying to remove a number of unwanted officials before the resignation of Governor Pyotr Sumin, who celebrated his 60th birthday this year and has serious health problems. However, a high-ranking employee of the Ural embassy, who asked not to be named, assures that there is no federal order in this situation, nothing threatens the head of the region - he will work at least until March 2008, until the presidential elections in Russia. He advises looking for a party interested in stirring up passions in the Chelyabinsk region itself, or more precisely, among the State Duma deputies elected from this region.
Chelyabinsk First Vice-Governor Vladimir Dyatlov admits: a number of deputies of the federal parliament are trying to create a negative image of the region. He does not name his last name, but in the current situation, local observers have no differences in their assessment of the situation: the only parliamentarian who has problems in relations with the authorities is First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Security Committee Mikhail Grishankov. For several years now he has been credited with wanting to become governor, and in January 2005 he was named one of the initiators of initiating a criminal case against the director of Mayak PA Vitaly Sadovnikov, Mr. Sumin’s confidant. The investigation and consideration of this case lasted a year and a half, which made the Chelyabinsk authorities seriously nervous.
Now, when the number of criminal cases forces residents of the South Urals to talk about some kind of custom campaign, the regional administration is again pointing to Mr. Grishankov. The parliamentarian himself does not comment on this situation, but tries to distance himself from the current Chelyabinsk government. Last December, when Chelyabinsk residents were electing a regional legislative assembly, and the United Russia party list was headed by Petr Sumin, Mr. Grishankov did virtually no campaigning in his single-mandate constituency to support his party.