The era of representatives of parliamentary parties in the regions is coming to an end

President Vladimir Putin dismissed the governor of the Omsk region, Alexander Burkov (Fair Russia). On March 29, most likely, the “short spring governor’s fall” of those heads of regions who were previously named in the media ended, an interlocutor close to Staraya Ploshchad told Vedomosti. “It was decided that during the hostilities it is not necessary to touch the leaders of the regions unnecessarily,” he says. “Unless there is something unexpected.”

During this month, President Putin replaced three regional leaders. On February 6, Vedomosti wrote that “targeted resignations” are coming in the spring. On March 15, as Vedomosti predicted, the president replaced the head of Chukotka, Roman Kopin. He was replaced by the first deputy chairman of the government of the LPR, Vladislav Kuznetsov, a native of the Sibur company who worked in several regions. And on March 17, the governor of the Smolensk region, Alexei Ostrovsky, one of the two governors from the Liberal Democratic Party, resigned. Instead of him, Vasily Anokhin, head of the regional development department of the Russian government, who worked for some time in the region, was appointed acting head of the region.

An ambiguous situation, as Vedomosti wrote on February 6, is with the head of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Alexander Uss, but the deadline for making a decision “has actually passed.” His fate is not fully understood, two other Vedomosti sources say.

March 29 “will be the last day of resignations, which were semi-officially announced in the media,” political analyst Vitaly Ivanov believes. According to political scientist Mikhail Vinogradov, it is premature to finally close the topic of resignations, because in some regions, where the term of office of governors ends, they are “waiting for a signal” to continue work.

Burkov is a well-known Ural politician, whose long political career was in no way connected with Omsk until 2017. In 1994, he was elected a deputy of the Sverdlovsk legislature, and in 1999, Burkov, together with political strategist Anton Bakov, created the May movement – its representatives captured administrations of municipalities and demanded that the mayors repay wage and pension arrears. In 1999, on the wave of popularity of this movement, Burkov went to the second round of the gubernatorial elections, losing in it to the head of the region, Eduard Rossel.

In 2007, Burkov joined A Just Russia and became a member of the State Duma, was re-elected in 2011 and 2016. In 2016, he organized elections for the party, after which he moved to Omsk: some of his fellow political technologists went with him, retaining influence in the Sverdlovsk region: Andrei Kuznetsov, a former “ideologist” of A Just Russia, became the head of the party branch there and one of the main projects of Burkov – “Centers for the Protection of Citizens’ Rights”.

Sergei Mironov, the leader of A Just Russia, was considered Burkov’s main intercessor before the Kremlin. An old acquaintance of the president, Mironov “temporarily” sent Burkov to the Omsk region when such an opportunity arose, the Vedomosti source notes. The interlocutor of Vedomosti, close to the presidential administration, says that there were no special complaints against Burkov.

But Burkov was not the strongest governor, notes political analyst Alexander Kynev: “Now there is a kind of equalization of parties – they took the region from the Liberal Democratic Party, now from A Just Russia (a party representative now leads only Chuvashia). It is to be expected that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation will also have fewer governors. One gets the feeling that support for the parliamentary opposition parties seems to be less significant now.”

Vitaly Khotsenko, ex-president of the government of the DPR, has been appointed interim head of the region. During a meeting with the president of the Aerospace Forces, he said that when he was offered a position in the DPR, he immediately agreed, because “for me, the place is dear, I was born there, in Dnepropetrovsk.” Now many objects in the DPR are being restored by the chief regions, Khotsenko reported, “a lot has been done and there is still a lot to be done.”

Putin appointed him acting head of the Omsk region, where “a lot needs to be done to ensure that people’s lives correspond to what they deserve.” The President asked him to focus “on people who are well aware of the problems of the region.” And Khotsenko promised that when he was in his new post, the Omsk region would continue to support the city of Stakhanov in the LPR.

Khotsenko, 37, was the first Russian official to be appointed to a high post in Donbass after the launch of a special military operation. He took the post of Chairman of the Government of the DPR on June 8, 2022. Since 2010, he has held positions in the state authorities of the YaNAO, in 2013 he became the Minister of Energy, Industry and Communications of the Stavropol Territory. And in 2019, he was appointed to the post of director of the industrial policy and project management department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

He, like most of the appointed interim, is a graduate of the “school of governors”, and is also a member of United Russia. In the DPR, he called the integration of the region into Russia a priority, in addition, he paid great attention to construction, which was carried out, in particular, in Mariupol.

“Donbass hides everything,” says a source close to the presidential administration. “If someone wanted to be appointed to the region through their connections, he lost, and the one who through work in the Donbass won.” This is the birthplace of new elites, states the federal official. Veteran governors are definitely more stress-resistant and better understand the needs of the front and new territories, the provision of which is now among the priorities of the heads of the remaining (“old”) regions, says political scientist Ivanov.

Sergei Gavrilyuk, Donetsk, participated in the preparation of the article