Putin appointed State Duma deputy Mikhail Degtyarev as governor of the Khabarovsk Territory

President Vladimir Putin appointed State Duma deputy from the LDPR Mikhail Degtyarev as acting governor of the Khabarovsk Territory, TASS reports .

The State Duma deputy said that he is ready to lead the Khabarovsk Territory. “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, I’m ready. Thank you for the trust you have placed in me. I am ready to immediately fly to the Khabarovsk Territory,” he is quoted as saying on the Kremlin website.

A decree on the appointment of Degtyarev was also published there . The previous governor, Sergei Furgal, was removed from office “due to loss of confidence.”

On July 9, Furgal was detained in Khabarovsk for organizing murders and attempted murders of two or more people in connection with their official activities by a group of people for mercenary reasons. According to investigators, in 2004-2005 he organized the murders of several entrepreneurs. On the same day, Furgal was transported to Moscow and then sent to a pre-trial detention center.

Furgal unexpectedly won the election for governor of the Khabarovsk Territory in 2018, beating United Russia candidate Vyacheslav Shport, who led the region for nine years. Immediately after the arrest of the regional governor, protests of many thousands began in the Far East demanding the release of Furgal, which are still going on.

Mikhail Degtyarev is 39 years old. He began his career as a politician in Samara, where in the early 2000s he joined the Walking Together movement, the first youth organization created with the direct participation of the presidential administration.

Degtyarev did not join the new pro-Kremlin movement - “Ours”. Instead, he headed the local branch of the United Russia youth organization, which he led before leaving for the Liberal Democratic Party.

In 2004 he became a deputy of the Samara City Duma. Soon he became the head of the Samara regional branch of the LDPR and was nominated for the election of the head of the city, gaining less than 2% of the votes.

In 2011, he became a State Duma deputy, was twice nominated for the post of mayor of Moscow and both times took the penultimate place: in 2013 with 2.86% of the vote and in 2016 with 6.72%.