Donbass matters – Newspaper Kommersant No. 54 (7499) of 30.03.
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On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin accepted the resignation of the head of the Omsk region, a member of Just Russia – For Truth, Alexander Burkov. His place was taken by Vitaliy Khotsenko, who previously led the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). This is the third gubernatorial resignation in March, and for the second time a representative of the parliamentary opposition loses his post. Also, for the second time, a manager with experience in new regions of the Russian Federation becomes a replacement for a retiree. In the context of the upcoming presidential elections, demand from governors is growing, and the “parliamentary quota” does not have the same value, Kommersant’s sources say. And work experience in the Donbass becomes an additional criterion when considering a candidate for the post of head of the region, the expert notes.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted the voluntary resignation of Omsk Governor Alexander Burkov and appointed to the post of acting head of the region Vitaly Khotsenko. Since June 2022, he headed the government of the DPR, and before that he worked in the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. A manager who graduated from the sociological faculty of Moscow State University meets the main criteria that the presidential administration has set for candidates for governor in recent years. In addition to working in new territories, Mr. Khotsenko was trained under a special program for the development of a personnel reserve at the Higher School of Economics, RANEPA, which is called the “school of governors” in the expert community, and in 2019 became a finalist in the Kremlin personnel competition “Leaders of Russia”.
On the same day, Vladimir Putin talked with Vitaly Khotsenko via video conference. After asking the official about the situation in the DPR, the president asked what he thought about the “offer” made to him. “Of course, this offer is very honorable for me,” Mr. Khotsenko responded.
This is the third gubernatorial resignation in the last two weeks: on March 15, he left his post head of Chukotka Roman Kopin, and on March 17 – Smolensk leader Alexey Ostrovsky. At the same time, Vitaliy Khotsenko became the second official appointed as acting governor after working in the Donbass: Vladislav Kuznetsov, who replaced Mr. Kopin, has been working as the first deputy chairman of the government of the Luhansk People’s Republic since June 2022 and, like Mr. Khotsenko, graduated from the “school of governors”.
It should be noted that Alexander Burkov headed the Omsk region in 2017 according to the so-called parliamentary quota, within which the Kremlin coordinates individual appointments of representatives of the parliamentary opposition as governors, so that these parties are also represented at the level of heads of regions. At one time, Alexei Ostrovsky, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, was also appointed according to the “parliamentary quota”.
Kommersant’s sources explained that on the eve of the 2024 presidential election, the Kremlin is especially attentive to personnel policy issues in the regions, and if governors fail to cope with some indicators, they can be dismissed regardless of party affiliation.
However, even after these resignations, both parties still have their own governors: Oleg Nikolaev, a native of the SRZP, heads Chuvashia, and Mikhail Degtyarev, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, heads the Khabarovsk Territory.
For the Omsk region, Alexander Burkov was a “Varangian”, and his previous political career was associated with the Sverdlovsk region. Associate Professor of the Department of Political Science at Omsk State University Ivan Zhukov believes that Mr. Burkov did not have any special achievements during his “five-year plan”: “Of course, he was credited with ending the conflict between the region and Omsk, but this was more of a federal will than a regional one. As a politician, he was good, but, in my opinion, he did not succeed in economic and economic terms. According to some indicators, the region has sunk. And as a minus, you can put a rather sluggish position in support of the special operation.
At the same time, high-profile resignations have regularly occurred in the Omsk government in recent years. So, in 2020, the governor successively fired two ministers of health – Dmitry Vyushkov, whose work in the fight against COVID-19 was criticized, and then Irina Soldatova, who replaced him, who soon became a defendant in a criminal case on abuse of power. In December 2022, Alexander Burkov dismissed the head of the Ministry of Construction, Mikhail Gubin, and his first deputy, Yevgeny Nesterov, for failure to fulfill their tasks. In January 2023, Minister of Education Tatyana Dernova resigned from the government, and about two months later, Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Sergey Kravtsov pointed to the risk of disrupting the construction of schools in the Omsk region. “It is difficult to admit shortcomings and accept criticism, but it is necessary,” Mr. Burkov reacted then.
Andrei Alekhin, the first secretary of the Omsk regional committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, believes that the extended meeting of the Board of the Prosecutor General’s Office, which was held with the participation of Vladimir Putin on April 25, 2022, influenced the resignation of the governor: “Then Igor Krasnov (Prosecutor General of Russia. – “Kommersant”) spoke very harshly in the Omsk region. Earlier, the supervisory authority has already noted problems in the region with the overhaul of residential buildings and resettlement from emergency housing.
The SRZP denies the existence of claims from the federal center to the now former head of the region. Party chairman Sergei Mironov stressed on Wednesday that his fellow party member and “close ally” had resigned of his own accord. “It was under his leadership that the Omsk Region formed the most balanced budget in its entire recent history. And this year the budget of the region is the budget of social stability,” Mr. Mironov emphasized.
State Duma deputy from SRZP Dmitry Gusev told Kommersant that, as far as he knows, there were no complaints about the work of Alexander Burkov either from the presidential administration or from the government, he “performed all the tasks assigned.”
“I still remain in the team of our President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,” Alexander Burkov himself wrote in his Telegram channel. He explained his resignation by the fact that now “it is very important to be exactly where you can bring maximum benefit to the Fatherland and the state.” The ex-head of the region promised to remember the time spent in Omsk with “warmth and love.” “Part of my heart stays with you!” he turned to the Omsk people.
As political consultant Maria Sergeeva notes, the Kremlin has repeatedly hinted that work and service in new territories will become a new personnel lift. In her opinion, after the second appointment to the governor’s post of an official who worked in the Donbass, one can say that this really becomes a “conscious personnel policy”, within which the fact of working in new subjects becomes an additional selection criterion: “In the end, graduates of the “school of governors” many times more than the regions of Russia. The expert also points out that in the new territories, officials actually have to work in a war zone with all the ensuing hardships and risks. “So half a year in such conditions can be considered several years of experience,” sums up Ms. Sergeeva.
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