Translated material
A week to think
The Kremlin sent the mayor of Moscow on vacation
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov went on vacation again. Moreover, this time, unlike the vacation during the Moscow smog that became a prelude to a political scandal, he agreed on the terms of his vacation with the presidential administration. On Friday, the mayor of Moscow announced his intention to leave for a week. “It is clear that Yuri Mikhailovich is now going through a difficult period in his life, and he, of course, needs time to think,” a source in the presidential administration told RIA Novosti.According to Vremya Novostey, the need to “think” while on vacation arose for Mr. Luzhkov as a result of his visit to the Kremlin. On Friday, he was invited behind the “wall”, where he met with several senior officials of President Medvedev’s administration. Let us recall that by this time the NTV channel was already in full swing announcing the Saturday screening of the television film “Dear Elena Nikolaevna” about the mayor’s wife Elena Baturina. Obviously, at meetings in the Kremlin they discussed the forms and timing of Luzhkov’s resignation. As a result, the topic of a short-term vacation arose, for which each of the parties, apparently, has its own ideas. The mayor might want to play for time and continue the struggle for power. The Kremlin, by not dismissing Luzhkov, allegedly gives him the opportunity to make further political mistakes.
Speaking about where he plans to spend his 74th birthday on September 21, the capital's mayor said that he would do it in Austria. According to media reports, his wife actively invested in the resort business in Kitzbühel. “We will celebrate the holidays with our family - an incomplete family circle. This is what we always do,” Mr. Luzhkov said, without explaining who would ignore a family vacation. His deputy Vladimir Resin will act as mayor in his absence.
On Saturday, just before leaving, Mr. Luzhkov spoke at a meeting of the general council of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR). Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also took part in the work of the General Council. The fact of their simultaneous appearance in one place caused excitement among observers, and some media even suggested that it was on the sidelines of the House of Unions that Luzhkov’s meeting with Putin would take place, which could become decisive for the fate of the Moscow mayor both in terms of the conditions of his resignation and in terms of timing.
The Prime Minister's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters following his chief's visit to a trade union meeting: “Such a meeting was not planned, and therefore it did not take place.”
According to Vremya Novostei, the situation is approximately the same in the mayor’s relationship with the person on whom, according to the law, his career depends—the president of the country. The newspaper's Kremlin sources explain that Mr. Luzhkov has not yet requested a meeting with Mr. Medvedev, including during his Friday conversations with the administration. At the same time, the Kremlin says almost openly that if a meeting between the president and the mayor of the capital takes place, it will certainly be the last for the capital’s mayor in his current position.
Going on vacation caused a natural resonance - discussions about whether Luzhkov would return to work after a week. Surely the Kremlin foresaw this effect and probably counted on it. “This is his form of escape: relaxation, birthday party. That is, he is already an emigrant, since he went there,” said LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In his opinion, the mayor “will fax his resignation from Austria for health reasons.” The mayor's press secretary, Sergei Tsoi, said that he conveyed Zhirinovsky's statements to his boss, to which Mr. Luzhkov exclaimed: “To Moscow, to Moscow, to Zhirinovsky! To wash tarpaulin boots with him in the Indian Ocean.” One way or another, Mr. Tsoi is clearly not destined to rest for a week - until Luzhkov returns to the capital, if that happens, he will have to convince the public that the mayor will really return.
Before Mr. Luzhkov's departure, the REN TV channel finally aired the interview with the mayor that had been announced all week. In it, he categorically denied statements from a source in the Kremlin administration that the mayor was trying to drive a wedge into the relationship between the president and the prime minister. “As a statist, I have no interest in weakening state power. As for the talk that I am driving some kind of wedges, I categorically reject this,” the mayor emphasized. Yuri Luzhkov is confident that the development option is not applicable to him events in which he would be asked to resign voluntarily, as recently happened with the President of Bashkortostan Murtaza Rakhimov “Such a situation would definitely not have happened, since our leaders are people who understand what’s what. If this really happened. I would ask my question: what are the real grounds for this?” - said the mayor.
According to him, the “real reasons” would be “the mayor’s loss of support from Muscovites” and the “collapsed city economy.” “If this is significant, then I won’t think about it for a second,” said the capital’s mayor.
However, the mayor will undoubtedly call any survey of Muscovites that shows a “loss of support” slanderous. And there are no other measures of citizens’ trust left after the cancellation of the gubernatorial elections. At the beginning of last week, the research center of the recruiting portal Superjob.ru surveyed 2,500 residents of the capital, asking them the question: “How do you assess the activities of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov?” The survey data showed that almost half (49% compared to 21% in 2007) believe that Luzhkov’s activities as mayor are not beneficial to Moscow. At the same time, 25% of respondents have a rather negative attitude toward his work (“The beginning of his work was excellent, but his constructiveness quickly ended”), and 24% sharply criticize him: “In recent years, he worked for himself, and not for the city,” “Continuous corruption, old Moscow has been destroyed!” Only 5% of respondents assessed the work of the Moscow mayor as unequivocally positive (three years earlier - 17%).
Luzhkov, however, still demonstrated full combat capability on Saturday. At the ceremonial meeting in the House of Unions, he spoke for more than 20 minutes, although the main listener was not in the hall: the mayor was given the floor before Vladimir Putin appeared. The mayor said that the capital has the lowest unemployment in the country, habitually criticized the “privatization named after Chubais,” and listed the main problems “that concern us” (migration, people with disabilities, youth employment, support for large enterprises). And he ended with praise: “I ask the Russian Federation of Trade Unions to add one fact that is extremely significant to the book of records of the federation - it should already be started.” This “highly significant fact” is that the mayor of Moscow spoke at all rallies and meetings held by Moscow trade unions.
In an interview with the REN channel, the mayor confirmed his intention to sue federal television channels, considering the stories shown about him and his family to be slanderous. Meanwhile, the information television attack that began on September 10 continued last weekend, although with clearly less intensity. On Saturday, the NTV channel aired a widely publicized special episode of the Russian Sensations program called “Dear Elena Nikolaevna.” It was mainly about the path to the formation of Mrs. Baturina’s business: from the supply of computer classes, plastic buckets and chairs to the creation of cement, construction and development companies. The authors of the program connected her first steps in business with the founder of the Stolichny Bank, Alexander Smolensky, who lent Baturina half a million dollars. The film also talked about Baturina’s well-known expensive hobbies: golf, horse racing, horse breeding and collecting imperial porcelain.
Answering the question whether the TV channels' stories spoiled his mood before his vacation, Mr. Luzhkov said: “In general, of course, they did not bring joy to anyone, especially those who watch them.” Yuri Luzhkov's official term of office expires in June 2011.