Governors measured patriotism – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

The Just Russia – For Truth Party (SRZP) on Thursday evening presented a “patriotic rating of governors” in the context of a special military operation in Ukraine. Its leaders were the leaders of the Crimea, Chechnya, Chuvashia and St. Petersburg, and the outsider was the governor of the Smolensk region. Regional leaders have not yet commented on the rating, and the expert calls it “petty blackmail”.

The patriotism of the governors in the conditions of the special operation, the Spravorossy decided to evaluate according to 15 criteria, accruing a certain number of points for each of them. Among these indicators, in particular, are the public and personal position of the heads of regions on this issue; the adoption in the constituent entity of the Russian Federation of its own laws on support for participants in a special operation in Ukraine and their families; assistance to the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics; “propaganda of exploits and heroism of countrymen in the fight against Nazism.” At the same time, five criteria (for example, the adoption of their own laws, financing measures to help families of participants in a special operation from regional budgets, providing assistance to refugees) were evaluated with a maximum of one point, and for other accomplishments one could get from 1 to 3 points.

As a result, the maximum number of points (31 each) was scored by four leaders: Sergey Aksenov (Crimea), Ramzan Kadyrov (Chechnya), Oleg Nikolaev (Chuvashia) and Alexander Beglov (St. Petersburg).

Three of them are members of United Russia, and Mr. Nikolaev is a member of the SRZP. The patriotism of their second representative in the governor’s corps, the head of the Omsk region, Alexander Burkov, was assessed more modestly by members of the same party, placing him in the middle of the rating with 18 points. As for the bottom part of the table, Alexander Sokolov (Kirov region), Evgeny Kuyvashev (Sverdlovsk region) and Vladimir Mazur (Tomsk region) got 10 points each. Mr. Sokolov is not officially a member of United Russia, and the other two are members of the ruling party. Finally, the governor of the Smolensk region, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, Alexei Ostrovsky, who scored seven points, closes the rating.

SRZP leader Sergei Mironov explained to reporters that only open sources were used in compiling the rating. “Many of the governors from the first days of the special operation declared their position, but there are those who are silent, and we did not find any of their statements on this subject,” Mr. Mironov noted. He stressed that the governor is a “political leader”, whose task is not only the socio-economic development of the region. The leader of the SRZP also said that the party will make such a rating on a regular basis and the next issue will be released in November.

Zakhar Prilepin, co-chairman of the SRZP, tried to put himself in the place of the “not the most patriotic” governors and speculated about their possible motives. “We do not know for what reasons certain leaders took this or that position. Someone may have been careful looking at the center. And someone is worried about their particular forms of property that he or his relatives may have abroad, ”the politician suggested. He also expressed surprise that there are still people who “hope that in this flourishing world they can still move across borders, across continents, across countries and have all sorts of business affairs or maybe even personal affairs.” at the end of their term as governor.

Another co-chairman of the SRZP, Gennady Semigin, promised that in the future the party would develop criteria for evaluating the performance of governors in a broader sense.

But you can go even further and expand the scope of such a study, he added. “Probably, we need to look at other officials. Governors are all right. But I want to talk about the federal ministers,” shared Mr. Semigin.

Kommersant failed to get comments from the governors themselves due to the end of the working day.

Political scientist Konstantin Kalachev does not see much point in the patriotic rating of governors, calling it “petty blackmail”: they say, “we are in charge here, we will raise who we want, we will lower who we want.” “SRZP already simply does not know how else to promote on the topic of a special military operation. Everyone wants to be an inquisitor,” the expert states.

Ksenia Veretennikova