Candidate from the FSO

Why did the acting governor of the Astrakhan region become a native of the special services

There is such a tradition: in the fall, Vladimir Putin grinds the bag with the governors, strongly puzzling those who for some reason are still looking for at least some logic in his actions. This September is no exception: Kokova (Yuri) in Kabardino-Balkaria changed to another Kokov (Kazbek), Oleg Kozhemyako was transferred from Sakhalin to Vladivostok, and Sergey Zhilkin was replaced by Sergey Zhilkin. And this time, a certain logic in the President’s personnel decisions is just visible: the failures of the authorities in Primorye, Vladimir, Khabarovsk and Khakassia are changing the rules of the political game. All - the candidates themselves, local nobility, ordinary residents, political experts are already accustomed: Governor's elections are just a different name for the appointment of the head of the region. The Kremlin candidate always wins (well, almost always, to recalculate exceptional cases, there are enough fingers on the arm of an inattentive milling holder). Whom Putin will bless - that and the governor.

But the pension reform mixed the cards, and the scandal with the falsification of the results in Primorye launched a chain reaction. Andrei Tarasenko in Primorye Putin appointed, and then before the second round he personally supported personally during the Eastern Economic Forum, directly hinting that the elections are formality, and think about work after the elections, but instead of the triumph, a grandiose shame turned out to be.

According to rumors from the presidential administration, everything is just beginning: at least a dozen current governors will lose their posts by the end of the year

Pilot regions

The people in the field, as it turned out, are ready to vote literally for anyone, just to demonstrate their attitude to the current government, its undertakings and its representatives. The municipal filter ceases to work: now, it turns out, it is not enough to surround the correct candidate with rivals without names and persons. This is no longer a guarantee of victory.

It turns out that it is necessary to prepare for the elections in advance, and the candidates should be selected with all possible thoroughness. This is an unpleasant opening for the Kremlin. According to rumors from the presidential administration, everything is just beginning: at least a dozen current governors will lose their posts by the end of the year. And by the first appointments, one can judge the principles of the new personnel policy.

The choice of regions is not accidental. Primorye now is the main pain point for Moscow, the place from which unplanned scandals began. Oleg Kozhemyako, firstly, originally from there, and secondly, a politician with experience-managed to work as a governor in the Koryak Autonomous Okrug, in the Amur Region and on Sakhalin. By the way, this is a record - now he is the acting governor of Primorye, and before not a single politician worked as a governor in four different entities. Kozhemyako lost the election (did not become the governor of Kamchatka in 2004) and won the elections (on Sakhalin in 2015). The defendant of high -profile corruption scandals, despite the extensive track record, was not.

In Kabardino-Balkaria, something like a small civil war happened, and the head of the republic, Yuri Kokov, found neither the strength in order to deal with what was happening, nor even worthy words, to somehow evaluate what was happening. This was the end of the career. Kazbek Kokov Yuri is not a relative, but comes from a respected family-his father Valery Kokov led the republic 13 years old, from 1992 to 2005.

And a very special case is Astrakhan. Alexander Zhilkin has been in the governors since 2004 and, it seems, the Kremlin was satisfied. But in recent years, he began serious quarrels with security forces. They sat down - not in cozy chairs, but in prison - several members of his government, who were burnt, naturally for corruption. Some cases are completely anecdotal: the Minister of Social Development Ekaterina Lukyanenko, for example, collected tribute from the directors of subordinate institutions on March 8 and other holidays - 20 thousand rubles per nose. The result is 4 years in colony and a fine of 52 million rubles.

The area is clearly not one of the prosperous, Zhilkin was stuck in the eightieth place in the effectiveness rating of the effectiveness of the governors. His resignations had been waiting for a long time, but there wasn’t a series of failures in the 2018 governor’s election, Zhilkin, it would be possible to retain his post: after all, Viktor Zimin, who had a similar situation in Khakassia, and only after the disaster in the first round, played “voluntary resignation”. Zhilkin, by the way, also himself asked for another job. Tired.

The calculation is clear: an experienced security forces with Moscow ties, a native of the formidable special services is the only option in which you can safely finish the team of the previous governor

Security guard in governors

His successor Sergei Morozov has no political experience at all, but there are other advantages. According to the Portal of the Leningrad Region 47 News , he is from St. Petersburg (although he was born in Kemerovo): in the late 1990s he worked in the guard of the St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, but in 2003 he moved to Moscow and entered into the protection of the president. Gradually became a “larch” and received the title of General of the FSO. Then he went to work at the Ministry of Defense - to look after Minister Sergei Shoigu, where he was his assistant until September 2017. Further - the seventh deputy head of the Federal Customs Service Vladimir Bulavin, General of the FSB. There, Morozov acquired an important patron in the person, of course, the FSB General, 53-year-old Anatoly Seryshev, who in June 2018 became Putin's assistant on personnel issues .

Morozov has nothing to do with Astrakhan Morozov, but in the first interview as a do not without pride, he noted that he had been in the city several times.

And in general, he took from the place to the quarry: he immediately began to hold meetings, give promises, and portray stormy activities. He put a candle in the church for the prosperity of Astrakhan. The icon with the coat of arms of the region sticked the lapel of the jacket - all federal channels drew attention to this detail, the badge should prove to the Astrakhan that the guard who graduated in Leningrad, the River School and the Physical Institute, became a patriot of the Volga city overnight.

This, by the way, is the specifics of the new political cycle - the campaign has to start a year before the election, the risk that not everything will go smoothly in the next September is very large.

The calculation is understandable: an experienced security officer with Moscow ties, a native of the formidable special services is the only option in which you can safely finish the team of the previous governor. Local security forces will continue what they have begun, and residents will show the "effective struggle against corruption." Both those and others should be satisfied.

There is, however, in such a solution, their risks. Morozov is not the first person from the FSO to become a governor. And if in Tula the former Putin’s personal guard Alexei Dyumin somehow copes with the tasks of the politician and the business executive, then his colleague Evgeny Zinichev was much less in Kaliningrad: he was afraid of public events, did not know how to speak at all, and at one of the press conferences he simply ran away from journalists (the action lasted less than a minute). Zinichev did not last three months. I had to transfer to a more familiar job - first to the FSB, then to the Ministry of Emergencies. The guarantees that the Astrakhan "Federal" will be a more successful politician is no.

And the new situation requires just politicians. And this is the main problem of the Kremlin in the upcoming electoral cycle. You can shuffle the deck as you like, to transfer from the place to the place of bosses, who at least have not managed to scandal around (for our statesmen this is already dignity), or to plug the holes from the intelligence agencies, to whom the president trusts more than any other candidates. But politicians are not without real political competition, but for real competition (due to the abolition of the municipal filter, for example), the authorities cannot decide.

And how you decide to see with all possible visibility that the people now vote not “for”, but “against”. Not for the nominal competitors of the authorities, honestly working out their numbers within the framework of staging democracy, but against the authorities and its social policy.

It only remains what to produce retired guards to the mayor. It seems to be a lot of guards in Russia, but still, the bench is short.

By the way, on the Volga, in Ulyanovsk, there is already Governor Sergei Morozov. He has been sitting in his chair for a long time. As if they were not confused.