Last year, President Dmitry Medvedev made 13 decisions on governors. Not counting the forced replacement of the head of the Irkutsk region after the death of Igor Esipovsky, in about half of the cases Medvedev did not change anything: five were reappointed, seven were dismissed. In 2008, there were many more resignations: 20 against two reappointments.

Since 2009, candidates have been nominated by the party with the majority in the regional Duma. At the same time, a presidential personnel reserve is being created. But only two "reservists" have been awarded the highest posts: Andrei Turchak (Pskov Region) and Anatoly Brovko (Volgograd Region). Other "reservists" have lost, for example, State Duma deputy Igor Barinov to the current Kurgan governor, 59-year-old Oleg Bogomolov.

At the same time, according to United Russia and Kremlin officials, it is not so much the party that selects candidates, but officials. For example, according to a party member, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin, who promoted deputy Vyacheslav Timchenko, and First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov, who supported Bogomolov, fought for Kurgan. And the new Khakassia Governor Viktor Zimin was a man of the Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu, political scientist Yevgeny Minchenko states. Apart from Zimin and Esipovsky, not a single deputy nominated by United Russia went to the region.

Several old heavyweight governors were dismissed – Viktor Ishayev, Eduard Rossel, Yegor Stroyev, but Bogomolov, who has headed the Kurgan region since 1996, and Alexander Volkov, who has headed Udmurtia since the early 1990s, remained at the helm.

Mikhail Vinogradov, President of the Petersburg Politics Foundation, has compiled a summary portrait of the appointed governor. The average year of birth is 1957, the probability of being born in your region is 42%, the most popular education is engineering (35%), experience in the region is 71%, experience at the federal level is 71%, and experience in business is 50%.

In general, it is now more difficult to become a governor, since a candidate must be approved by two leaders, and also be on the list of nominees from United Russia, the Kremlin official states. According to him, priority is given to people from the region who have experience working at the federal level; if there are none, then they consider simply authoritative people of federal significance, and then look at regional officials.

There is no logic in the appointments, not only externally – for the population, but also internally – for the elites, Minchenko believes, hence the heterogeneous composition and the delay in the appointments.

President Medvedev made governor appointments unpredictable