Changes on the Western Front

On the first of September this year, the sun shone brightly in Kaliningrad and was hot in a summer. On the porch of the recently complemented primary school building, one of the city gymnasiums appointed a month ago, the acting governor of the region, Yevgeny Zinichev, in the company of Mayor Alexander Yaroshuk, watched the solemn ruler. In front of them was performed by a strange dance dressed in grotesque suits of foxes, cat, monkeys and dragon teenagers. The mayor, as usual, laughed in a voice, and a painful half -smile froze on Zinichev's face. “If the ringing is heard, you should know where he is,” the children sang on the motive of the “evening ringing”. The acting governor clearly did not understand why he was here, why these incomprehensible foxes and kisa dance around him, and also what he should do with all this.

Fatal stadium

The very fact of the existence of Evgeny Zinichev is the vast majority of Kaliningraders, and indeed Russians learned on July 28, 2016. On the day when Nikolai Tsukanov, who ruled in the region in the region, suddenly resigned, and President Vladimir Putin appointed this laconic person in his place. Although he headed the local FSB department for more than a year, in the public Zinichev appeared literally a few times. After the appointment of Zinichev, the administration of his biography could not tell reporters absolutely nothing - and did not even find photos. Almost by chance, in the TASS photo archive, photographs were discovered in which Zinichev was next to Putin, and signatures to them reported that he was an employee of the Federal Security Service.

After the appointment of Zinichev about his biography, they could not tell reporters absolutely nothing - and did not even find photos

Nikolai Tsukanov committed what was historically considered impossible. He was the only one by the head of the Kaliningrad region for a second term, having received a confident majority of votes in the elections in September 2015. Tsukanov did not have real competitors, but the campaign was launched by a very large -scale, massaged and doubtful agitation from the point of view of the law, through everything funded from the budget of the media, with the mobilization of all social institutions, with the decoration of all possible vertical surfaces with Tsukanov’s face.

All the more amazing was his sudden disappearance from the life of the region - in the literal and figurative sense. Rumors about the possible resignation of Tsukanov went from the very beginning of his reign and in six years everyone was so tired that few took them seriously. Perhaps the main factor with which Tsukanov’s departure and movement to the position of President’s plenipotentiary in the National Security and Defense Council was not particularly significant in the current configuration was a sad story for the construction of the 2018 World Cup in Kaliningrad, which was not particularly significant in the current configuration. The region was one of the mundial matches at the last moment, withstanding the harsh competition with Krasnodar, where the infrastructure was actually ready and was not required to build anything. Subsequently, the design and construction was accompanied by numerous scandals - criticism from the Minister of Sports Vitaly Mutko, the change of the designer (the first contractor, the company Mostovik, went bankrupt). Finally, this summer, the charge against local officials from the developer, Araz Agalarov Crocus Group, in low -quality preparation of soils on a marshy island selected for the construction of the stadium. The Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov flew to extinguish this fire. As the eyewitnesses say, climbing the plane of the aircraft on the way back to Moscow, he threw him from behind: "It's time to plant." However, only one person sat - Nikolai Tsukanov, in the chair of the president’s envoy.

Watching at the act

For 71 days, the acting governor of the Kaliningrad region, Yevgeny Zinichev, did not pamper the public. After presenting the Cabinet of Ministers and other elites, he spent a record in speed, a 49-second briefing for the press. Then he looked at the strange dances of animals on the line on the day of knowledge. He voted in the elections on September 18, and by the number of ballots issued to him, journalists realized that the new head of the region had not yet managed to register in Kaliningrad by that time. The rest of the appearance of Zinichev in public took place in the format of a special operation: secretly, without an invitation of the press, only accompanied by a couple of operators of loyal television channels.

Accordingly, Zinichev simply did not manage to do anything noticeable to the region of the region or declare anything memorable to its inhabitants. Perhaps the only fundamental decision that he made was announced on the very first day: he appointed the acting Prime Minister of the local government then another 29-year-old Anton Alikhanov. A native of Sukhumi Alikhanov managed to work at Min-Just and the Ministry of Industry and Trade by this moment, and in September 2015 he arrived in Kaliningrad and took up the post of Deputy Prime Minister in the Tsukanov government. The Kaliningraders who followed the local policy tried to understand why the young economist was sent to the region. The most popular was the version of "Watching Money." Features of the excellent economy led to the emergence of the Problem-2016 phenomenon: the local business, which used customs benefits within the framework of the SEZ since 1996, lost them from April 1, 2016, not least thanks to the entry of Russia to the WTO. To prevent a radical reduction in production and the socio-economic crisis, the Government of the Russian Federation took a rather absurd step: to subsidize customs duties to those who continue to export goods produced in the region to “large Russia” in the new conditions. To do this, in the federal budget, an astronomical amount was reserved by local standards: 66.7 billion rubles. Trusting such funds to provincial officials after a series of corruption scandals was dangerous. So the emergence of a metropolitan controller here, not related to local financial and industrial groups, looked quite logical. In addition, for six years of Tsukanov’s work, the governor through the government has passed so many random and inexplicable people that another sudden Deputy Prime Minister surprised few.

Another care of Alikhanov was a new bill regulating economic activity in the region. Alikhanov himself announced the fact that work on creating a new mechanism for industry development in the bowels of the government was conducted in the winter of 2015. The theme of some new and special status for the region was discussed for a long time, but in 2012 the then vice-speaker of the State Duma, who was elected from the region, Alexander Zhukov, put a cross on this activity. “I do not agree with the point of view on the creation of an excan law,” Zhukov said then. Three years later, Alikhanov returned to this topic, saying: “It seems to me that we need a new large law or even the Code of Laws on the Kaliningrad Region. We need to formulate the regime that will arrange us, and make it constant and eternal. ”

On October 6, 2016, he only began to get used to the new, laconic and shift public of the acting governor of the Kaliningrad region shook again. Zinichev asked Putin to resign on his own, and the president appointed the same Anton Alikhanov to the vacant place. Three weeks before, Alikhanov turned 30 years old, and he became the youngest in the history of Russia as the head of the executive branch of the subject of the Federation.

Young Peacemaker

“The Kaliningrad region for a long time for the Kremlin was a headache for the Kremlin not only in the generally accepted political, but also in an economic sense,” said Vadim Khlebnikov, editor of the local business portal Rugrad.eu. - Tsukanov tried to approach this problem for a long time, but the longer he worked at his post, the more obvious it became that a person of such a way of thinking would not pull the implementation of a new economic mechanism, which suggests a strong increase in transparency of business in the region. Corruption claims to the Tsukanov team made his figure incomparable with the challenges facing the area. It is believed that about the same period, the assistant to the President of Russia on economic issues, Andrei Belousov, looked at the talented young man who could try himself on solving this problem. Alikhanov wrote the draft law, the local business in it interested and agreed on it, presumably, through the mediation of Zinichev with Putin. ”

Khlebnikov, however, believes that the disappearance from the political map of the region Evgeny Zinichev was sudden. Federal publications shortly after the departure of the “power” acting governor was resigned with reference to the Zamremlin sources that Zinichev’s “problems with publicity” were the key reason. The nature of his short work in Kaliningrad confirms the probability of this version. The President of the Regional Politics Foundation and the ex-deputy of the regional Duma Solomon Ginzburg is sure that a special meaning is visible in the sudden resignation of the acting and the appointment of the successor. “The president assigns some philistine hopes to the new acting governor, believes that he will try to reconcile Russia and the European Union as an experiment with the example of the Kaliningrad region,” said Ginzburg and compares Alikhanov with the late Boris Nemtsov, who was appointed Boris Yeltsin Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region and made a demonstrative indicative of the region. The site, where it was not ashamed to bring Margaret Thatcher. " “Putin will be able to say to the West: you are reproaching me with the“ Iskander ”, but here you have a young governor, without experience working in law enforcement agencies, freely speaking English and generally very open,” Ginzburg believes.

Crime inheritance

Now Anton Alikhanov has to fight the personnel of the predecessor. If he changed the economic block in the government almost completely, inviting the same young people like himself to the key posts of the same, then the Cabinet's domestic political segment is not yet possible. The closest associate of Nikolai Tsukanov in all the years of his work, the deputy prime minister in domestic politics and at the same time the head of the government apparatus, Alexander Egorchev immediately after the change of power showed enviable flexibility and swore allegiance to Evgeny Zinichev. And when he left back into the darkness of federal power structures, he immediately tried to show himself the extremely necessary Anton Alikhanov. As a result, Alikhanov, contrary to the expectations of many, said that Yegorychev "is so effective that it makes no sense to change him." Egorchev showed effectiveness during the election campaign in the fall of 2016, when United Russia in the Kaliningrad region did not give the worst result in the State Duma elections (43.4%) and improved positions in the local parliament, having received a qualified majority. However, Later Alikhanov changed his mind and on October 20 sent Yegorychev to resign.

“Putin will be able to say to the West: you reproach me with the“ Iskander ”, but here you have a young governor, without experience in law enforcement agencies, freely speaking English and generally very open”

Now Alikhanov needs to return the confidence of the Kaliningraders to power as a whole heavily undermined by sudden and in no way explained by the changes in the Governor’s shifts - and earn self -respect personally. The depolitization of Russian society is manifested in the Baltic Exclave especially. For Nikolai Tsukanov, more than 200 thousand of almost a million inhabitants of the region voted in the elections a year ago. An online patting addressed to Vladimir Putin with a request not to accept Tsukanov’s resignation and not to take him to St. Petersburg were signed by several dozen people. The rest did not react at all. In addition, no one really worked hard to explain to Kaliningraders the meaning of this governor's covers. Without a clear understanding of domestic political processes and intelligible media planning, to solve this problem by purely economic tools to Anton Alikhanov will be extremely difficult. Nevertheless, he already announced his desire to go to the governor's elections in the fall of 2017. The main thing now - taking into account the speed of the change in the heads of the Kaliningrad region - reach them.

Photo: Vitaly Nevar/"New Kaliningrad"/TASS