Eduard Rossel loses his team

An unexpected dual power arose in the Sverdlovsk United Russia

The well-coordinated team of the governor of the Sverdlovsk region, Eduard Rossel, is beginning to fall apart: last week, Galina Kovaleva, the first deputy prime minister of the local government, responsible for the entire economic bloc, wrote a letter of resignation. The official reason is reaching retirement age (a member of the Cabinet is now 57 years old), but there are even 60-year-olds in the government, so another version is much more popular - the ambitious first deputy prime minister was simply offended by the governor for not appointing her as the new head of the regional government.

As the Vremya Novostei newspaper has already reported, in mid-June, Alexey Vorobyov, who held this position for 12 years, left the post of Prime Minister of his own free will. Mr. Vorobyov did not hide the fact that he was leaving for health reasons. Acting Galina Kovaleva was appointed prime minister, who for 12 years replaced the chairman of the cabinet of ministers in difficult situations. But it was not she who became the new head of the cabinet, but the Minister of Foreign Economic Relations, a historian by training, 42-year-old Viktor Koksharov.

Even during the confirmation of the new head of government in the regional Duma, Ms. Kovaleva did not hide her anger and a day after Mr. Koksharov officially took office, she wrote a letter of resignation, received a refusal from the governor and went on vacation. It lasted until July 31. On Tuesday morning, the first deputy prime minister met with the governor again and submitted her application again. Eduard Rossel did not dissuade her and, admitting that Ms. Kovaleva was leaving in difficult times, signed the statement. Official representatives of the governor's administration denied the fact of resignation until Friday, but on August 3 they admitted that Galina Kovaleva no longer works in the government.

Various candidates for the vacant position are now being considered: mainly bankers. The most likely candidates are the head of Tagilbank Alexey Chekanov (the governor has a personal deposit in this bank) and the head of SKB Bank Mikhail Khodorovsky (the main shareholder of the bank is Dmitry Pumpyansky's Pipe Metallurgical Company). A source in the governor’s administration claims that the question of the resignation of the second first deputy prime minister in charge of industry, Vladimir Molchanov, and the head of the Ministry of Health, Mikhail Sklyar, has also been raised. It is expected that all personnel issues will be resolved by August 9, by which time Prime Minister Viktor Koksharov should return from a short-term vacation, and an extended government meeting on the results of the first half of 2007 will take place on Thursday.

And if the situation in the office becomes more clear to both politicians and businessmen, then what is happening in the Sverdlovsk branch of United Russia raises questions even among the party members themselves. The regional cell is headed by the same Alexey Vorobyov, who wrote a letter of resignation from this post, but later withdrew it. This caused confusion among Eduard Rossel, who had already found a new head of the department. According to the governor, the regional party cell should be headed by the head of his administration, Alexander Levin.

The federal leadership of United Russia has already agreed on the appointment of Mr. Levin as the head of the department’s election headquarters for the elections to the State Duma (Alexei Vorobyov was approved for this post in the spring), but has so far refrained from making further personnel decisions. As a result, a clear dual power arose in the cell, which everyone interprets in their own way: right up to the emergence of gubernatorial ambitions in the former chairman of the government (despite health problems). If this is so, the situation in the Sverdlovsk region promises to become very interesting.

Mikhail VIUGIN, Ekaterinburg