Staff mobilization – Newspaper Kommersant No. 226 (7427) dated 12/06/2022

In the State Duma on Monday, the first reporting meeting of the “Headquarters of Zakhar Prilepin” was held. Representatives of the regions spoke about the problems they face on the ground and how they help to solve them, focusing on topics related to the special military operation (SVO). And the co-chairman of the Just Russia-For Truth (SRZP) party, Zakhar Prilepin, admitted that he does not want “constructive relations” with the regional authorities if they work in bad faith.

The meeting was attended by heads of 13 operating headquarters and representatives of 15 regions where headquarters are just getting ready to open or initiative groups have been created. But the plans of Zakhar Prilepin’s team are larger: it is planned to open headquarters in all regions of Russia and even in neighboring territories.

Recall that in August 2021, the reception of Zakhar Prilepin opened in Nizhny Novgorod, where he now lives. After the elections to the Duma-2021, the writer and politician refused the mandate of the deputy, which was transferred to Dmitry Kuznetsov. The reception was retrained into a headquarters that specialized in investigations in the areas of housing and communal services, healthcare, cultural heritage, transport accessibility, education, etc. Then headquarters began to appear in other cities, and on January 28, 2022, a presentation of the federal headquarters, created to coordinate the work colleagues in the regions.

As Dmitry Kuznetsov said at the presentation, the headquarters is a structure within the party, which “is aimed at identifying problematic issues in the life of the country and working out options for their solutions.” The deputy called federal investigations the “key vector” of the headquarters’ work: the headquarters was supposed to become “a kind of center for adjusting regional policy.” But the SVO made adjustments to these plans: the headquarters were largely reoriented to help refugees, work with the mobilized and their families. Headquarters also appeared in new territories – Luhansk-Donetsk and Kharkov-Zaporozhye. And on September 15, there was a presentation of the “patriotic rating” of governors in the conditions of the NWO.

Opening the meeting on December 5, SRZP chairman Sergei Mironov recalled that his Duma faction had unanimously supported the SVO. “Starting from 2014, we helped our brothers in every possible way, those who, with arms in their hands, defended their right to speak their native Russian language, to honor real heroes, including the heroes of the Great Patriotic War, and not these bastards and scoundrels in the person of Bandera and Shukhevych,” said the party member. According to him, since the beginning of the NMD, the party, with the participation of headquarters and centers for the protection of the rights of citizens, has been transferring quadrocopters, body armor, helmets, and cars to the front.

The Saratov headquarters is engaged in investigations in the field of cultural heritage, healthcare and road infrastructure, and also collects humanitarian aid for residents of new territories, its head, regional Duma deputy Artem Chebotarev, reported. “I personally hold meetings with the mobilized, escort them to the front, say parting words. I had a desire to come up with an initiative that a deputy of any level should be able to take patronage over the mobilized,” the deputy said.

The head of the Krasnodar headquarters, Tatyana Arkadyeva, said that once a month her team collects humanitarian aid to be sent to Mariupol. In addition, she shared her know-how: “We stopped sending letters to administrations and regulatory organizations, they are inundated with appeals. We involved bloggers in the work, we go with them to places where citizens raise sensitive issues, we shoot videos.” According to her, the chairman of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, promptly responded to one of these videos about the low salary of medical staff, instructing them to conduct an audit.

The head of the Omsk headquarters, Alexander Barko, said that his colleagues sent guitars, harmonicas and sports equipment to the front, which caused delight among the mobilized – “thirty-year-old guys jumped and rejoiced.” And the head of the Kherson headquarters, the leader of the For Truth movement, Roman Khrenov, said that his headquarters was engaged in the supply of humanitarian aid and helped people look for relatives. “They took under their patronage one of the battalions of the Donetsk people’s militia, which was located in Kherson. Thanks to us, they are dressed and shod. I won’t exaggerate if I say that we are helping them, in fact, only we,” said Mr. Khrenov.

Summing up the meeting, Zakhar Prilepin lamented that “in every region there are bosses who do not participate in the SVO, sabotage, are lazy, and steal.” And with such a regional government, he would not want “constructive relations,” the politician admitted. “When I receive a call from the region with a request to pacify my Red Guards, I understand that the headquarters is working,” he said.

Political scientist Alexei Makarkin believes that the factor of Zakhar Prilepin played an important role in the reorientation of A Just Russia, which was a moderate socially colored party, and after merging with the For Truth party, became perhaps the most active and radical supporter of the SVO in the Duma. “But the main speaker on this issue was the much more politically experienced Sergei Mironov. So Prilepin brought an ideology, but did not become a hardware winner, ”the expert states. In his opinion, after the elections to the Duma, the authorities “slowed down Prilepin’s project,” but it can be used in the presidential elections in 2024, and in this sense, the headquarters will come in handy.

INSOMAR Director of Political Analysis Viktor Poturemsky believes that Zakhar Prilepin “looked brighter” at the time of joining the SRZP than he does now. But now all opposition parties are experiencing difficulties, because the current situation primarily works for the ruling party, the expert explains. The opposition, on the other hand, “has problems with finding its own agenda and its own way of communicating with voters, and they do it with varying degrees of success,” sums up Mr. Poturemsky.

Ksenia Veretennikova