Sergei Mironov is preparing to “clean up” Zakhar Prilepin’s associates for the sake of an alliance with Yevgeny Prigozhin

Changes in the Socialist Revolutionary Party may occur at the congress in May

According to Vorstka sources, at the spring congress of the party “A Just Russia - For Truth!” (SRZP) people who joined the party in 2021 together with the writer Zakhar Prilepin may be removed from the leadership of the organization. Their places could be taken by “the people of Yevgeny Prigozhin,” the founder of the Wagner PMC. SRZP leader Sergei Mironov has already announced a “strategic alliance” with the head of Wagner and called for a return to the decision to give parties the right to recall the deputies elected from it in order to make room “ for the heroes of the SVO.”

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According to two Vverstka sources in the SRZP, changes in leadership may occur at the party congress scheduled for May 20. Regional branches are already selecting delegates for the event. Formally, the main issue there should be the next re-election of Sergei Mironov as leader of the SRZP, as well as a discussion of the upcoming regional elections on September 10. Delegates will also have to elect all governing bodies of the party.

“Here, on the sly, the people who came to us under the banner of the For Truth party will be purged,” a party source told Verstka. Their places will be given either to technical figures loyal to Mironov and the central apparatus of the party, or it will immediately turn out to be people from the Wagner Center,” says one of the interlocutors of “Vestka” (a second source has also heard about this, who claims that the “Prigozhinskys” can enter the party structures). He indicated that the changes, first of all, should affect the secretaries of the central council of the party - the main permanent governing body.

Of its 14 members, four are predicted to resign : the first deputy leader of the faction in the State Duma, political strategist Dmitry Gusev, his closest ally Marina Kim, as well as a political scientist, author of the book “The Fox of the North. Vladimir Putin’s grand strategy” to Alexander Kazakov. All of them came to the party as supporters of Zakhar Prilepin at the beginning of 2021, with the merger of A Just Russia with the For Truth party! and "Patriots of Russia". The second interlocutor in the party said that there is “a certain redistribution of spheres of influence” in the SRZP.

“Only two will remain from the Prilepinites - in fact, Zakhar himself as co-chairman of the SRZP and head of the party chamber of deputies. And State Duma Deputy Speaker Alexander Babakov, who knew Mironov back in the 2000s and was an investor in both For Truth! and SRZP,” says a source in the party. After the congress, “it is planned to thin out” the regional departments, where the writer’s associates are in charge. We are talking, in particular, about SRZP cells in the Smolensk and Voronezh regions .

Party deputy Dmitry Gusev told Vorstka that all decisions on personnel changes will be made at the SRZP congress in May.

“There are only rumors” about the appearance of Yevgeny Prigozhin personally among the leaders of the SRZP, which “make him almost the fourth co-chairman of the party.” The businessman and the SRZP leader sharply intensified their cooperation in December 2022. Then Prigozhin publicly thanked Mironov for his help in burying the Wagnerian Dmitry Menshikov, who died in the war, in St. Petersburg. Mironov himself announced that he would demand in the State Duma the legalization of private military companies in the country . And already in January, he visited the St. Petersburg Wagner Center, where he praised Prigozhin’s structures for teaching those who want to control drones and renting space “for one ruble” for “creative youth helping the front.” Mironov then called Prigozhin himself his “good friend.” Around the same time, the leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries received a gift in the form of a sledgehammer from the Wagnerites. With it in his hands, Mironov happily posed for the party press service, accompanying the shots with words about the full support of the PMC. On February 1, Mironov immediately called the experts’ assumptions about the upcoming electoral alliance with Prigozhin “innuendos” and immediately announced that he would continue to look for “patriotic allies” who would bring “our victory” closer, mentioning “Wagner” along with the Ministry of Defense and the Russian National Guard.

Zakhar Prilepin’s departure to war as part of the Russian Guard may slow down the squeezing of his people from the party. “The process of Mironov digesting us is almost complete. The hitch arose only because Zakhar, unlike him, is on the front line. But they will see out the situation. A press release on behalf of Mironov that Zakhar is only the 70th volunteer from our party to go to war is hanging for everyone to see. Mironov’s waving of a sledgehammer right in his reception room also adds spice, with which he seems to be hinting that why do we need Prilepin when we will accept the whole “Wagner” into the party tomorrow,” says the source of “Vestka”.

According to another interlocutor of Vorstka, the writer serves in the commandant’s company on the border of the Russian Federation and the annexed Donbass regions, where he escorts cargo for the front. Zakhar Prilepin himself has been conducting his own vigorous activity since the summer: “Back in 2021, the party wooed him as our presidential candidate in 2024. And Prilepin took it seriously.” In the summer of 2022, he opened about ten “Zakhar Prilepin Headquarters” in the regions, and since December he has again intensified this activity. “10-11 new regional headquarters have appeared. Which have nothing to do with the party. They are opened by Prilepin’s associates, then they come to us, say that “this is for 2024” and ask for money. But no one understands what exactly they should be given for. Well, they don’t,” says one of the regional SRHR leaders. The frontman of the headquarters as Prilepin’s first deputy in the “Chamber of Deputies of the SRZP” is Senator from the Khabarovsk Territory Sergei Bezdenezhnykh, who joined the Federation Council as a member of the LDPR under Governor Sergei Furgal. After the arrest of the latter, Bezdenezhnykh broke off relations with the LDPR in 2021 and moved to the SRZP. “Prilepin and his people are “squeezed out” by Mironov both politically and financially. Zakhar has a long-standing conflict with his main sponsor Babakov . The party no longer needs his people, especially since there is the rapidly growing figure of Prigozhin nearby, both politically and financially. Which needs institutionalization,” notes a party interlocutor.

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Prigozhin is already facing discontent within the party apparatus. In early February, the head of the St. Petersburg (homeland of both Mironov and Prigozhin) branch of the SRZP, Marina Shishkina, resigned, openly declaring that she was against cooperation with the “Wagnerites.” Her place will most likely be taken by Mironov’s relative Nadezhda Tikhonova. Even experts do not see any prospects for a real merger between the party and the Wagnerites. “ Prigozhin can be useful to Mironov and the SRZP apparatus rather as a source of material resources for the elections . In exchange for them, he can receive the nomination of “his” candidates for passing seats in legislative assemblies. The benefits of ideological cooperation are questionable. The same Prilepin looked foreign in SRZP from the very beginning. In many regions, the SRZP has its own strong “party franchise holders” with their own tasks for the elections. And the central apparatus is far from certain that it will allow such an invasion of strangers,” says Golos co-chairman Stanislav Andreychuk.

Mironov is able to provide Prigozhin with the opportunity to nominate candidates, but is unlikely to lose control of the party. This is evidenced by his wealth of experience in cooperation with such strategic investors. The last major businessman who tried to enter the leadership of SRZP was the owner of the Tsargrad TV channel, Konstantin Malofeev. In 2019, he then joined A Just Russia, and the party itself was preparing to rewrite the charter, giving Malofeev the broadest powers as Mironov’s first deputy. Sources in the presidential administration then explained the businessman’s interest in the party precisely by his “desire for institutionalization.” As a result, Malofeev faced opposition from the central apparatus and the “old” party members “impressed by the impudence and outright nationalism of his people.” Malofeev’s investments were soon curtailed, and the businessman himself announced his resignation from the party a few months later. Now he is posing with Rodina leader Alexei Zhuravlev in Mariupol at the congress of the Union of Donbass Volunteers.

Three years earlier, another large businessman, the main owner of the Moscow Industrial Bank, Abubakar Arsamakov, tried to “institutionalize” in the same way. For control over the Voronezh branch of the party, a “passing” place in the Duma lists in the 2016 elections, a position in the party leadership, as well as on the election campaign itself, the banker, according to some party members, spent at least 700 million rubles . “There was a separate room at the headquarters, people came in, said a few words about how they would “move” Arsamakov and received a “cutlet” of cash,” one of the political strategists who worked with him at that time described Arsamakov’s spending. Such an expensive campaign did not help Arsamakov - according to the election results, he lacked several thousand votes to receive a mandate. Then the employees of the Voronezh election commission committed gross falsification, simply entering into the GAS “Elections” system false data from the voting protocols in the capital of Transnistria, Tiraspol (according to the “cut” of the Central Election Commission, the local polling stations were counted together with the Voronezh region) and adding SR in this way the 4 thousand votes necessary for the banker. The fraud was revealed and provoked a loud scandal. As a result, the Transnistrian votes were taken from Arsamakov, he did not get into the State Duma, and the head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, at a meeting with Vladimir Putin following the results of the campaign, separately talked about this story and insisted on organizational conclusions for local officials. “Initially, Arsamakov was promised that either Epifanova or someone else would “move” for his sake. But then the staff referred to a “terrible scandal,” which... supposedly, he won’t allow the banker to get into the State Duma right now,” the technologist recalls. The banker financed the Spravorossi for some time. But in 2019, a reorganization procedure began at the bank, and in November 2020, Arsamakov himself died from Covid.

Previously, large regional businessmen, for example, Kursk resident Alexander Chetverikov and Volgograd developer Oleg Mikheev, as well as several other lesser-known “regional oligarchs,” got into the State Duma with the help of Mironov’s party. When they ran out of money or got into trouble with the law, Mironov either publicly refused them or kept silent. And Mironov made the first “friendly takeover” at the federal level back in 2006-2007, during the formation of “A Just Russia” from his Russian Party of Life, “Motherland” and the Russian Party of Pensioners. Of the “Rodinets” and “pensioners” at the State Duma level, only ex-chairman of the RPP Valery Hartung, whose family controls the Chelyabinsk Forging and Press Plant, and Alexander Babakov have survived to this day in the SRZP.

Cover illustration: Mikhail Berezin

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