The head of the LPR, Leonid Pasechnik, held a direct line with citizens for the first time

Acting head of the LPR Leonid Pasechnik for the first time held a direct line with citizens. The head of the LPR began to answer questions from residents at 19.00, the conversation lasted about an hour and a half. During this time, he was asked almost 5,000 questions (3,200 were received in advance), which will be worked on by regional ministries and heads of districts. The online broadcast was conducted on a local TV channel, on Pasechnik’s Telegram channel and on his Vkontakte page.

The constitutions of the DPR and LPR assume that the heads of regions will be elected not by direct vote, but by deputies of legislative assemblies. Probably, the same mechanism will operate in the case of the governors of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, although this has not yet been regulated by law. The current leaders of the annexed territories have not yet announced their intention to be nominated for this post after the September elections of deputies to legislative assemblies. In any case, according to Kirill Cherkashin, Associate Professor of the Department of Political Science at Donetsk State University, direct communication with citizens is a normal practice for the leaders of Russian regions. Member of the Public Chamber of the LPR Alexander Protsenko added that the direct line is an innovation for the LPR. Such a step should “demonstrate the readiness of the republican authorities to conduct an open dialogue” with the people.

Residents asked Pasechnik about processing payments to the families of fallen servicemen, passporting older people, resuming the work of idle enterprises, starting preferential mortgages, stabilizing prices, collecting garbage and obtaining compulsory medical insurance policies. The head of the region, among other things, said that the Commission of Families of Fatherland Soldiers helps to process documents for payments for dead servicemen, while targeted assistance can also be obtained from the Fund for Support of Participants of the Military Special Operation Defenders of the Fatherland, recently created by the President of Russia.

For the passportization of the population, 30 departments of the migration service are working, to the aid of which about 300 employees of “migration workers” from other regions of the country arrived. Departures of mobile complexes for receiving documents were organized to remote areas. On the preferential mortgage, Pasechnik said that the selection of sites for construction and developers is underway, and Promsvyazbank, which operates in the region, has practically formed a mortgage fund. “We are doing everything to start construction this year,” the acting head of the LPR emphasized.

On the restoration of engineering networks, a decision was made to replace underground utilities as a priority, then – ground and intra-house. According to Pasechnik, some of them were laid in the 1930s. Pasechnik gave several instructions online to resolve a number of issues. For example, local authorities are instructed to determine, within two weeks, how many people over the age of 80 have not yet received passports in order to organize field receptions of documents. Also, the heads of local administrations were instructed to eliminate spontaneous dumps and report on garbage collection in the coming weeks.

“In fact, there are a lot of problems and we won’t be able to solve them overnight with a wave of a magic wand or a snap of our fingers,” Pasechnik summed up. Echoing his words, he said that after the May holidays he intends to hold nationwide subbotniks, where he expects all residents, including employees of ministries and departments, public utilities, and students. In total, the acting head of the LPR answered about two dozen questions.

For the first time in the LPR, such a communication between the acting head and citizens in a modern format took place, says Senator, Deputy Secretary of the General Council of United Russia Daria Lantratova: the request for such contact is huge, including after covid. Almost all regions of Russia have switched to modern methods of communication between people and authorities, and it allows you to quickly give feedback and respond to people’s problems, she noted, although they are special in the LPR, they require a thoughtful, deep and flexible approach. Some of them are related to the neglected infrastructure in Ukraine and the accumulated difficulties that now need to be addressed, Lantratova added.

Pasechnik’s colleague in the DPR, Denis Pushilin, has already communicated with citizens in a similar format. For the first time as head of the DPR, he answered questions from the population in December 2018, then in December 2019, June, September and December 2020. In October last year, he conducted a Telegram broadcast. During the previous communication with Pushilin, residents were interested in the resumption of passportization, which at that time was temporarily suspended, the accrual of pensions, compensations and other social benefits, the procedure for exchanging driver’s licenses and car numbers for Russian ones, plans to attract investors to enterprises.