The king was found in cabbage

And now Russia will have a "nano-president".

The king was found in the cabbage. And now Russia will have a "nano-president". The New Times dealt with undercover intrigues around the appointment of a successor

A narrow-shouldered man, 162 cm tall, who looks like Winnie the Pooh, who accepted the challenge of the fitness era, who knows a lot about suits from Brioni and Daniel Valente and striped "shovel" ties, will, apparently, become the president of Russia. The tears of tenderness on the cheeks of budget housewives had not yet dried up, as the beneficent paladin, like a small child, asked to be taken into the arms of his ancestor. Dmitry Medvedev cannot imagine how he will be able to enter the Kremlin without retaining "in the most important position in the executive branch - the position of Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation - Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin." The head of state did not rush to answer. It can be understood, according to the Kremlin.

On the sidelines

The fateful decisions of December 10-11 finally introduced the longed-for political certainty into the plans of the top federal bureaucracy and the investment community. But, as the newly appointed successor rightly noted, in order to ensure the continuity of the course, it is not enough to elect a new president - it is no less important to preserve the viability of the team. With the team, it must be admitted, things are much worse than with the course.

If the rumors circulating in the Kremlin are to be believed, only a part of the members of the “Novo-Ogarevsky club” (a narrow circle of security officials and businessmen admitted to the formation of the election agenda) shares the long-cherished dream of the head of state to capitalize on his huge political influence at once and leave the corridors of power forever. According to rumor makers, Putin planned to create on the basis of Gazprom, Surgutneftegaz, the North European Gas Pipeline, the Gunvor dealer network and a number of other logistics assets, a giant international transport and energy corporation, registering it at a respectful distance from the boundaries of the God-saved fatherland. On the side of Putin, first of all, people from big business close to him and included in this cyclopean plan: the head and main owner of Surgutneftegaz, Vladimir Bogdanov; brothers Yuri and Mikhail Kovalchuk, co-owners of Rossiya Bank, who control a significant part of Gazprom's financial flows; Gunvor co-owners Gennady Timchenko and Evgeny Malov, who manage about half of Russia's oil exports; leaders of Gazprom.

But the most influential Putin diadochi ¹ On the contrary, they do not even allow the thought of Putin "jumping off". The head of the presidential office, Igor Sechin, the director of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, as well as their antagonists - the director of the Federal Security Service, Yevgeny Murov, together with the head of the Presidential Security Service, Viktor Zolotov, see no other arbiter than Putin. He does not want to know any other political "roof" for his law enforcement businesses, covering such tidbits as customs, banking "cashing", the telecom market, the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Migration Service. But there are still funds from the National Welfare Fund and the Reserve Fund ... Being sophisticated people, they are well aware of how easy it is to lose all this: five or six personnel decrees of the new president and decisions of the new head of government, plus two or three demonstration, well-arranged landings by state television channels, will suffice .

They assure that before the beginning of November, the "Sechin-Patrushev group" honestly convinced the head of state to agree to one or another version of the third term. It is for this reason that the federal propaganda machine was created and accelerated to fantastic speeds, praising Putin as a national leader. It was under the third term in one form or another that the election campaign of United Russia was sharpened, officially announced by a referendum on confidence in the president. But he did not feed the horse: Putin, under all pretexts, was playing for time.

The joy of "family" veterans

Having lost patience, the leaders of the country's main power family focused their sympathies on the candidacy of Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, half-forgotten in the heat of the struggle for power. The alliance was formed more by calculation than by love. True, the 66-year-old prime minister and his closest confidant, the head of the prime minister's secretariat, Yuri Chikhanchin, have had friendly relations with one of the most influential Lubyanka leaders, the head of the FSB Economic Security Service, Alexander Bortnikov . According to the plan (which Igor Sechin, according to rumors, shared with the heads of the chambers of parliament), Zubkov was supposed to sit in the Kremlin for a short time and give way to ... the reader himself understands to whom.

The self-activity of the security forces seriously frightened the owner of the white and azure office on the third floor of the Senate building. As soon as he stopped the October conflict between the FSB and the State Drug Control Service, a deafening international scandal broke out around the investment fund IPOC, which controls OJSC MegaFon. I barely had time to pull apart the interested groups from the FSO and the FSB, who were respectively behind the Minister of Information Technologies and Communications Leonid Reiman and the Alpha consortium (his people allegedly leaked information to the authorities of the British Virgin Islands about who is the ultimate beneficiary of the IPOC fund), as Deputy Minister of Finance Storchak was arrested and an intrigue with Zubkov surfaced ... The security forces were clearly, visibly "getting rid of".

And then, having held out until the victory of United Russia in the elections and his own triumph as a national leader, Putin sharply mixed the cards for his entourage. Without waiting for the party congress scheduled for December 17, he unexpectedly appointed Medvedev as his successor, whom the security forces did not take into account due to his obvious weakness. But at the same time, Putin promised them that he would become prime minister under him. Not the secretary general of the ruling party, not the "national leader", but the prime minister. So the successor for Vladimir Vladimirovich is his own to tears, and the third term for his beloved comrades-in-arms is evident. The option of transferring presidential power, chosen by Putin after almost two months of verbal and hardware battles with the leaders of power clans, is a forced systemic concession to the security forces. That is how, apparently, the events of December 10-11 were deciphered by the top of the political class.

And what about our darling of fate, the curator of national projects that triumphantly failed one after another (read about this on page 34), due to his short stature, who in the corridors of power earned the gentle nickname “nano-president”? According to rumors, Medvedev himself found out about the possibility of a new round of his enchanting career only on December 4, on the day of Putin's stormy explanation with the prime minister who had played politics. The head of state, they say, made the final decision on December 7, during a meeting with the governor of the Chukotka Autonomous District, Roman Abramovich. He and another "family" veteran - the chairman of the board of RAO "UES" Alexander Voloshin, who stood at the cradle of Putin's first presidency eight years ago, blessed the kingdom and his successor. With whom, by the way, they get along well for a long time.

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1Diadochi - commanders of Alexander the Great, who after his death in 323 BC. as a result of long wars, which dragged on until 301 BC, they divided his empire among themselves.