Senator Semenov will move to the government of the Krasnoyarsk Territory

The representative of the Legislative Assembly of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in the Federation Council (SF) in the coming days will surrender the mandate of the senator and go to work in the regional government, Vedomosti found out. According to two Vedomosti sources close to the region’s leadership, Semyonov will become the region’s vice-premier, concurrently responsible for the work of his permanent representative office in Moscow.

“On the one hand, this will allow him to permanently stay in the capital, and on the other hand, it will make it more comfortable for the new leadership of the region, with whom he is not connected in any way (April 20, 46-year-old Deputy Minister of Finance, a native of the region, Mikhail Kotyukov, became acting governor. – “ Vedomosti),” says one of the interlocutors of Vedomosti.

Senator’s assistant Olga Rodionova did not answer Vedomosti’s call. Vedomosti sent a request to the government of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. “I had no doubt that Valery Semenov would be offered a worthy position, where he would gladly move,” Viktor Zubarev, former deputy chairman of the government of the Krasnoyarsk Territory (until 2014), State Duma deputy, told Vedomosti.

Semenov, 62, is a member of the Federation Council Committee on Federal Structure, Regional Policy, Local Self-Government and Northern Affairs. The senator has been representing the Territory Legislative Assembly in the Upper House of Parliament since 2014, before being a member of the Regional Legislative Assembly since 2001. Until 2004, he also held senior positions at Norilsk Nickel.

Semyonov will give up his place in the Federation Council to ex-governor Alexander Uss, as Vedomosti wrote. On April 24, Vedomosti reported that he, as the leader of the region-wide part of the United Russia list in the elections to the regional parliament in 2021, could become a deputy after the resignation of one of his colleagues elected on the list (this is necessary for him to be delegated to the Federation Council from the Legislative Assembly) .

Such a scheme was initially laid down during the formation of the party list in 2021, said a source close to the leadership of the region. State Duma deputy Zubarev, elected from the Krasnoyarsk Territory, told Vedomosti that the previously described scheme for the transition of Uss to the Federation Council is still relevant.

In recent years, the Federation Council has been replenished with a pool of former governors. For example, in 2022, the former heads of the Ryazan and Saratov regions, Nikolai Lyubimov and Valery Radaev, respectively, moved to the upper house of parliament, and in 2021, ex-governor of the Tambov region Alexander Nikitin became a senator.

Since April 20, the powers of the Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory have been temporarily performed by Kotyukov, who has worked in various federal positions since 2010.

Now he needs a team, including one based on local elites, says Ilya Grashchenkov, president of the Center for Regional Policy Development. “In many regions, such scenarios (the preservation of representatives of the old influence groups. – Vedomosti) have been implemented,” the political scientist noted. According to Mikhail Vinogradov, president of the Petersburg Politics Foundation, much will be determined by the configuration of business groups that will line up in the region following the replacement of the governor, “taking into account the fact that Semyonov comes from Norilsk Nickel.”

The current practice shows that leaving for the Federation Council for a politician often means the decline of a career, therefore the appointment of a deputy prime minister after the Federation Council is rather an exception, says Vinogradov. “Relaunches happen, but this is an exception to the rule – like Sergey Melikov, Dmitry Azarov, Rostislav Goldstein or Oleg Melnichenko in Penza (or, probably, Andrey Klishas and Andrey Turchak, who are counting on the further career),” he says.

However, as political scientist Vitaly Ivanov notes, Semenov goes to work in the government of the Krasnoyarsk Territory rather “not as a person of Norilsk Nickel, but as a former senator”: “After all, he left the company 20 years ago.”