Vladimir Putin's project will have its own management

The work of the All-Russian Popular Front (ONF) will be coordinated by the leadership of the public receptions of the leader of United Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In addition, the election headquarters has actually been moved from the party to the ONF: soon the Popular Front will have its own “office and management.” According to experts, this was done to show that “Putin is primary.”

Vladimir Putin’s public reception rooms will become a kind of “circulatory system” of the ONF in the regions. This was stated by the head of the executive committee of the Oryol United Russia, Andrei Uvarov. The head of the reception office in the Saratov region, Nikolai Semenets, also announced the new role of Vladimir Putin’s reception offices and was confirmed by Kommersant’s sources in the party. For example, in the Volgograd and Oryol regions, the heads of reception offices and vice-speakers of regional legislative assemblies Vitaly Likhachev and Alexander Labeykin will coordinate the FN, in the Leningrad region - deputy of the regional legislative assembly Tatyana Bezdetko, and in the Voronezh region - vice-speaker and head of the United Russia branch Irina Trankova . Mrs. Trankova will leave her party post in June and will also head the prime minister’s reception. In St. Petersburg, according to Kommersant's information, the ONF will also be coordinated by the head of the reception, State Duma deputy Irina Sokolova. As Kommersant reported, she is called a person from “Vladimir Putin’s entourage”: she was familiar with Speaker Boris Gryzlov even before his election to the State Duma and is familiar with the Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev.

“Branches of the Popular Front will be built largely around reception centers, and the regional head of the reception center will play the role of coordinator, similar to the one now played by the executive committee of the party in power,” explained Andrei Uvarov. At the head of the reception desk there will be “technical, organizational work,” while formally in the coordination councils of the ONF everyone is equal. The regions have already found a justification for such attention to Vladimir Putin’s reception rooms. According to Astrakhan party members, at the local reception “ordinary Astrakhan citizens appear who come not with requests, but with ideas that they propose to implement within the framework of the front.”

At the same time, the election headquarters of United Russia has actually been moved from the party platform to the ONF. As the press secretary of the head of government, Dmitry Peskov, told Kommersant, the Popular Front should have an “office and management” as early as this week. It will be “minimal, but necessary to operate given the regional scope” of the organization. The de facto head of the headquarters is already Deputy Prime Minister Vyacheslav Volodin, who, in the absence of Vladimir Putin, held a meeting of the FN coordination council.

As sources in United Russia told Kommersant, employees of the press service and information department of the Russian government may be involved in the ONF campaign. This direction at the headquarters will be led by the Prime Minister's press secretary Dmitry Peskov, who quite actively comments on the events surrounding the Popular Front. Let us note that a section on the activities of the ONF has already appeared on the official website of the Prime Minister. And in one of the largest cities in the Sverdlovsk region, Nizhny Tagil, billboards with a quote from Vladimir Putin have already appeared: “Create a broad popular front” (in addition to the quote, the logo of the local movement “Clean City” is posted).

In addition, the regions have now been given the instruction that the ONF is “serious and for the long haul.” “It is created for at least five years, that is, the parliamentary cycle,” a source in United Russia told Kommersant. In this regard, according to the secretary of the political council of United Russia in the Saratov region, Valery Radaev, the deadline for submitting an application to join the ONF is not limited for organizations. However, regional coordination councils of the ONF must be created locally before May 25, and before June 15, a discussion of the draft declaration of the Popular Front will take place in the regions. In addition, as a source in the ONF leadership told Kommersant, in the next two weeks a regulation should be prepared on holding primaries to select candidates for the list for the Duma elections. Kommersant's interlocutor emphasized that it takes into account the interests of the organizations included in the ONF.

“Initially, Peskov said that this association is not around United Russia, but around Vladimir Putin,” notes director of the International Institute of Political Expertise Evgeny Minchenko. “It is important that the entire agenda revolves around him.” According to the expert, “we are not talking about weakening United Russia” - the leadership of the ONF expects greater results from the “competition” between Mr. Putin’s followers and United Russia. This, according to Mikhail Vinogradov, head of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation, will allow him to “distance himself” a little from the party and “ideologically show that Putin is primary.”

Policy Department

"Popular Front" will wait in the reception area