Filimonov, the governor of the Vologda region, confronts billionaire Mordashov

Orthodox-pagan Stalinism against billions of dollars. The new governor of the Vologda region, Georgy Filimonov, is fighting with businessman Alexei Mordashov. “Chronicles.Media” tells how, due to personnel changes, the conflict is moving towards a duel.

Plywood scandal

On September 12, 2024, an entry appeared in Governor Filimonov’s telegram channel that one of the world’s largest plywood producers, the Sveza company, refused to complete the second stage of the investment project in Veliky Ustyug, citing the fact that there was no money.

Until 2023, the enterprise was one of the assets of billionaire Alexei Mordashov. After he came under international sanctions, the company was transferred to its top managers. However, the entrepreneur is not known for plywood. Its steel mills are the backbone of the Vologda region's economy. In the ranking of the most influential businessmen in the North-West, which was compiled by Chronicles.Media in 2024, Mordashov took fifth place out of ten.

In the same September, Sveza announced that it would change jurisdiction from the Vologda region to another region. This happened precisely because of a conflict with the governor, the Delovoy Petersburg newspaper wrote, citing a source.

And on September 27, Filimonov replaced the senator from the Vologda region, appointing his deputy Evgeny Bogomazov. At the same time, the powers of the previous senator, the former long-term head of the region Oleg Kuvshinnikov, ended. When Putin made Filimonov acting governor in 2023, the president hoped that the former and future managers would work “in tandem.” “The tandem did not work out,” Kuvshinnikov wrote in a farewell post on his Telegram channel.

It would seem, what does the former governor have to do with it? The fact is that he also comes from Mordashov’s structures.

World champion against microsociety

Passions ran high, and on November 15, an entry appeared on Filimonov’s telegram channel in which the governor challenged “one “especially gifted” person - an individual representative of a part of an industrial microsociety with a transnational “ebb”.” The head of the region explained this by saying that his opponent “lacks the intellectual abilities for an honest and open dialogue.” The post also contains hints that Filimonov’s unnamed enemy “absorbs prohibited substances.” The governor writes that the reason for such a tirade was “custom gossip” that the addressee of the message allegedly spreads about Filimonov. The official signed his name modestly: “Governor of the Vologda Region, Honored Master of Sports of Russia, World Champion.” There is nothing surprising in this; Chronicles.Media has already written about the eccentric character of the new owner of the Vologda region.

Only one person in the region falls under the definition of “an individual representative of a part of an industrial microsociety with a transnational overtone” - Alexey Mordashov.

On November 18, a response to the accusations from Sveza arrived. The Kommersant newspaper, citing a statement from the company, reported that the company abandoned the second stage of the investment project because the agreements on it were concluded before Russia came under international sanctions, but now calculations show that the construction will bring only losses.

Steelworkers - on their way out

People associated with Mordashov’s business have been leaving the authorities of the Vologda region en masse since the governor changed in the region.

Thus, in the summer of 2024, the chairman of the regional parliament, Andrei Lutsenko, left his post. “Chronicles.Media” wrote about him.

Also, over the past six months, six deputies have left the regional parliament, in which 34 people sit, without much explanation: Alexander Gordeev, Pavel Gorchakov, Igor Datsenko, Denis Dolzhenko, Vladimir Zhiltsov and Lyudmila Guseva. Most of them were not directly associated with big business. Only Guseva, before entering politics, worked in the structures of Mordashov’s Severstal.

The secret faction of Severstal still remains in the regional parliament. This is not only former speaker Lutsenko, but also other deputies who started their career in a metallurgical company: Larisa Kozhevina, Andrey Pulin, Sergey Dobrodey, Nikolay Shamurin and others.

The purges of the ranks did not spare the executive branch either . If the first vice-governor of the region, Anton Koltsov, who came from Severstal, left the government several months before Filimonov’s arrival, then the former head of the administration of Governor Kuvshinnikov, Inna Sinyagina, initially remained to work with the new owner, receiving a promotion to deputy governor, but a month later she left resign. The official also began her career at Severstal.

Some heads of the regional executive authorities associated with Severstal also resigned: the head of the Department for the Protection, Control and Regulation of the Use of Wildlife Objects Oleg Kislitsyn, the head of the Department of Natural Resources Dmitry Bannikov and the head of the Department of Labor and Employment Oleg Belov.

The head of the Moscow region's representative office, Marina Sokolova, was also dismissed. Chronicles.Media has already mentioned its connection with Severstal.

The exodus is also observed at the municipal level. Thus, in the main city of Severstal, Cherepovets, nine out of 26 deputies have already left the local parliament in recent months. What is typical is that for several convocations the legislative power in the city has been represented exclusively by United Russia. After the resignation of the City Duma deputies, it is now unable to assemble a quorum and has become incompetent, so by-elections will be held on February 2, 2025.

The first to “refuse” the mandate was the head of the city , Margarita Guseva . Moreover, Filimonov himself announced this a few days after he became governor. It is significant that in Cherepovets the manager received one of the lowest results in the region - 53.6%, with a regional result of 62.3%.

Before the City Duma, Guseva worked at the Regional Problems Fund, which manages Severstal’s media assets. Since October of this year, the “Fund” has been led by the former chairman of the regional parliament, Andrey Lutsenko.

Most of the other deputies who abandoned their mandates were also associated with Severstal: Mikhail Kolbichenkov , Igor Lagunov , Anna Leonova and Sergei Makarov . The latter temporarily acted as head of the city after the departure of Margarita Guseva.

***

In an interview with the Kommersant newspaper, Filimonov called such a large-scale change in power in the region a pragmatic decision, saying that those who left did not work well.

Filimonov was appointed governor in order to “be involved in the ‘equidistance’ from the power of Alexei Mordashov,” wrote URA.ru media (cooperates with the Kremlin, according to the Project publication). Allegedly, after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Severstal was offered to support the fighting, but the entrepreneur refused, citing his status as a “public global company.”

Mordashov, three weeks after Filimonov’s post about the fight, said that he had no conflict with the governor.