Aman Tuleyev sat in his chair

Daria Guseva

On Friday, the Kuzbass deputies will approve Aman Tuleyev for the fourth governor's term. “I'm sure everything will be fine, the people here are happy,” says Sergei Cheremnov, Tuleyev's spokesman, adding that only formalities prevent the next inauguration date from being set. “Rather, the Tunguska meteorite will fall to the ground again than the deputies will vote against Tuleev,” laughs Nina Ostanina, first secretary of the Kemerovo regional committee of the Communist Party. Tuleev is so far the only one of the regional " heavyweights" who was able to run for a new term.

Recently, Sverdlovsk Governor Eduard Rossel, President of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev, heads of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug Alexander Filipenko and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Yury Neyelov have not been reappointed or recused themselves. All of them, among the reasons for their departure, called the need to "give way to the young." Tuleev's current term of office expires on April 20 - a month before his 66th birthday, and by the time the new governor's term expires, he will already be over 70. In Kemerovo, the list of contenders includes First Deputy Governor Valentin Mazikin and State Duma deputy, member of the federal leadership of the ruling party Sergey Neverov, who used to be a deputy from Kuzbass. "All the candidates are absolutely equivalent," Boris Gryzlov, chairman of the United Russia Supreme Council, said at the time, adding that the main thing is "that the region be headed by an effective leader."

Last week, Dmitry Medvedev promised to fire governors for debts to state employees. Aman Tuleyev in the problematic mining and metallurgical region struggled with the crisis in a specific way, but, apparently, successfully. For example, the head of the region cannot repay wage arrears at a private enterprise at the expense of the budget, so payments in Kuzbass were processed as social assistance. “The subjects set up banks, extra-budgetary funds and buy out enterprises through them, not directly,” Yevgeny Fedorov, head of the Duma Committee on Economic Policy, explained to a Newsweek correspondent at the time. They say that Tuleyev threatened the owners with criminal liability or nationalization for non-payment of salaries. In July last year, he even sent a telegram to ArcelorMittal CEO Lakshmi Mittal and demanded that the world-class billionaire submit a plan to develop his company's coal assets in Kuzbass to the Kemerovo regional authorities. Allegedly, in a telegram, he even threatened to revoke the license for the Zhernovskoye deposit.