The most secret governor of Russia

What is worth the appointment of a Putin guard by the head of the Kalinigrad region

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, July 28, transferred the Governor of the Kaliningrad Region Nikolai Tsukanov to the post of presidential envoy in the North-Western Federal District. He appointed Evgeny Zinichev, a new leader of the region, a person without a biography, which is known only to the fact that he worked in the Security Service of the President and other power structures. The first press conference of Zinichevtook 49 seconds, but on it he managed to announce the appointment of the regional prime minister-before that the position was empty for six years. At the request of Medusa, the chief editor of the local site Rugrad.eu Vadim Khlebnikov figured out a complex combination, as a result of which Zinichev came to power, and how regional elites react to the new governor.

In the summer of 2012, the Polish company OSW launched material about the situation in the Kaliningrad region under the heading A Captive Island (Plana island). At that moment, the metaphor was perceived by local residents as unreasonable exaggeration. Small border movement with Poland (MPP) has just been launched, which meant that Kaliningraders can travel without visas to the cities of North Poland. The Kaliningrad retailers record revenue recordly, and in a panic they published custom -made materials in the local press about how to unprofitable to go to Poland for cheese and sausages. Everyone understood that buying food and equipment in Kaliningrad networks-expensive and stupid, and every weekend tens of thousands of cars lined up in long lines on the Russian-Polish border. It was then that the joke “Chief Kaliningrad Resort is Sopot” (Sopot - the Polish city and the resort) became especially popular.

Four years later, everything changed. Kaliningrad was at the epicenter of the geopolitical confrontation of Russia and the West. The heads of local hospitals began to complain that young personnel could not lure into the region: potential employees said that they were afraid to connect their fate with the region constantly mentioned in the context of military exercises. Poland unilaterally temporarily suspended the effect of the MPP, and the specialized person of the Kaliningrad region was appointed special forces Evgeny Zinichev, about which at the time of his approval by the head of the region, local residents were not aware of anything - and a day after the statement it became known that he had previously served as a guard of Vladimir Putin.

Prime Minister for the governor

On the day of the presentation of the new head of the regional elites, Evgeny Zinichev began his performance by announcing the appointment of Deputy Prime Minister of the regional government Anton Alikhanov Prime Minister. Before that, the place of the Prime Minister has been empty for six years - since the creation of the position. In fact, the authority of the head of the regional government was executed by the governor.

Alikhanov, a 29-year-old native of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia, is very popular with regional entrepreneurs. “This is an absolutely adequate person. There are questions in which he understands the economy, but there are topics that are not close to him, but he can adequately discuss them that it is completely uncharacteristic for the team of Nikolai Tsukanov ( the previous Governor of Kaliningrad, now appointed envoy in the North-Western Federal District-approx. Medusa ). But the most important thing is that Alikhanov is probably the only person in this government who is convinced that it is only necessary to live on a salary, ”says the head of the Kaliningrad company, who asked not to mention his name.

The first press conference of Yevgeny Zinichev lasted 49 seconds and began with the story about the priorities of the new governor: first-attracting investments, then-stabilization of the socio-economic situation and the growth of the well-being of the population. In all likelihood, this hierarchy determines the appointment of Alikhanov, who, as Meduza told a company employee, one of the largest regional investors, a “completely perfect character” from the point of view of investment attractiveness.

Thus, the governor's position in Kaliningrad in its usual form ceased to exist. Now the region has two chapters: Zinichev is responsible for the stabilization-representative, for the economic and technocratic-the prime minister. “When Alikhanov will fall into interests in his work, Zinichev will turn on with his power support,” the familiar local prime minister believes.

Among other things, Alikhanov will write a new law on the Kaliningrad region. A long-term lobby for the idea that the western region needs its own law, which would record its special status and formed something like the Hong Kong principle “one country-two systems” is an opposition deputy of the regional Duma of Solomon Ginzburg. Ginzburg began in the 1990s in the administration of the First Kaliningrad Governor Yuri Matochkin-a politician whose authority in the region is still indisputable: one of the streets in the city is named after it; It is generally accepted that he saved the area from hunger and poverty. At one time, Matochkin achieved from President Boris Yeltsin permission to assign the status of a special economic zone, where it was allowed to import foreign goods and raw materials for local production. The region has been moving on this economic motor for the past 20 years.

On April 1, 2016, customs benefits were replaced by direct federal subsidies. If earlier the business itself administered its income through the capitalization of benefits, now a significant part of the revenue passes through a long consultation chain at different state levels - it begins with the annual consideration of the federal budget. Since subsidies are carried out through the regional budget, in 2016 the formal level of subsidation of the Kaliningrad region exceeded the Crimean - and came close to Chechen.

According to Solomon of Ginzburg himself, on July 29, he made a regular run in the city stadium when his mobile rang. A gloomy voice gave the opposition a request to come to Zinichev’s performance and make a speech. The head of the apparatus of the regional government, the right hand of the former governor Nikolai Tsukanov, the odious regional politician Alexander Egorchev spoke with Ginzburg. He translated the request of the curator of the Kaliningrad region in the administration of the President Viktor Dubenetsky.

The invitation of Ginzburg to the rostrum was a surprise to everyone - on this occasion, they even interrupted the video broadcast of the event for journalists. In his speech, the deputy spoke about the need to continue working on the Law on the Kaliningrad Region, creating a strategy for the development of the region and radical cleaning of the Cabinet of Ministers. Evgeny Zinichev welcomed the performance of the opposition, who was not shown on regional television for four years, and personally thanked him. In the last decade, one of the main theses of Ginzburg was that it was necessary to divide the governor's power into a representative function and the premier - which happened at the end of July.

Several more officials performed at the representation of the head of the region, but their speech was protocol in nature. Only a replica of the head of the internal policy department of the Presidential Administration Tatyana Voronova stood out that, in his previous work, Zinichev knew all the audience well (the new governor headed the local department of the FSB for more than a year).

The era of Tsukanov

The years of the governorship of Nikolai Tsukanov, although coincided with the most economically prosperous period of the life of modern Russia, many representatives of the local establishment left a sense of qualitative decline and degradation. It seemed that the more money came to the region, the lower the qualifications of those who master it.

The former governor, a close associate of the former mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, Georgy Boos built a stable system of regional authorities, against which the activities of the Tsukanov administration looked like a scatter and staggering. About a hundred high -ranking officials passed through the regional government. As early as March 2013, the head of the representative office of the Chamber of Commerce of Hamburg in Kaliningrad, Stefan Stein, admitted that the constant rotation of officials in the regional government was not associated with political issues, but “with business and money”, that is, trading positions. After this remark, the prosecutor's office suspected that the recently appointed Minister of Tourism of the region Andrei Ermak lobbies the interests of his former employers. Nevertheless, Tsukanov did not dismiss the minister.

Tsukanov’s stay ended in the governor’s post and completely with a scandal. His wife Svetlana Tsukanova wrote on Facebook that she and her husband on the family council decided to give a large family their apartment in Gusev, a 37,000th city in the east of the region, which was headed by Tsukanov before the governor. Kaliningrad journalists became interested in how this apartment turned out to be the wife of the governor. As a result, a scheme was revealed , demonstrating how Tsukanov’s family earned a bunker in a deaf rural area and resale of it to the regional government at real estate prices in the regional center.

In standby mode

The appearance of Yevgeny Zinichev in the Kaliningrad region in the summer of 2015 coincided with strange events at the positions of the head of the Federal Security Service. On June 10, a message appeared on the Kremlin’s website about Tsukanov’s resignation, after which he was supposed to go to the elections as a temporarily acting governor (a kind of mandatory ritual of receiving approval from Vladimir Putin) - however, the message disappeared on the same day. The press secretary of Vladimir Putin explained his appearance by a technical mistake, noting that there was no question of early resignation. It became clear that the governor would change in the Kaliningrad region, since Tsukanov was already withdrawn from Tsukanov.

However, after some time, a message appeared on the Kremlin’s website that Putin accepted Tsukanov’s early resignation - which meant the participation of the governor in the elections and the obvious victory in the absence of rating competitors. In September 2015, that is, in the month when the elections were to be held, Anton Alikhanov arrived from Moscow to the region: the new Deputy Prime Minister began to actively build relations with local elites-with a strong resistance to the Tsukanov team. The interlocutors Alikhanov explained his appearance quite simply: "I was asked." The meaning of this phrase became clear a year later-apparently, the request was to help the former guard of the president to understand the difficult Kaliningrad economic situation (and probably work with a beautiful picture for investors, that is, to support the Governor-Slovik).

Both Zinichev and Alikhanov, apparently, were waiting for almost a year when the number of potential retirees and appointments in the rotational matrix coincided, and Putin will conduct a personnel special operation . The resignation of the head of the Federal Customs Service, Andrei Belleininov, was the trigger of the mechanism. His place was taken by the presidential envoy to the NWFO Vladimir Bulavin. The Kaliningrad Governor Nikolai Tsukanov sat in the seats of the envoy. And his position, in turn, was reserved near Zinichev and Alikhanov. For several years, rumors discussed in Kaliningrad about the replacement of the reputation of the problematic governor became a reality.

Vadim Khlebnikov

Kaliningrad