The mayor of Kaliningrad returns to medicine

The mayor of Kaliningrad, Yevgeny Lyubivy, resigned of his own free will, the city council granted his application. Information about the departure of the head of the city appeared the day before: the head of the Communist Party faction in the Legislative Assembly of the Kaliningrad region, Maxim Bulanov, published a scan of Lyubovy’s statement dated March 17. “The head of the urban district “City of Kaliningrad” Yevgeny Lubivy – that’s it! Resign!” the communist wrote. The question of the resignation of the mayor of Kaliningrad was put on the agenda of the City Council meeting at the last moment. The original draft agenda, posted on the council website, does not contain this issue.

At the meeting, Yevgeny Lubivy explained his decision by his desire to continue to practice medicine professionally. “The President of our country, the governor of the region, sets very serious tasks for healthcare, and it is not a secret for any of you that I have been engaged in medical art all my life, starting from the age of 14. Medicine does not let me go, ”he admitted. According to the mayor, in parallel with his work in the City Council, he “continued to deal with the emergency hospital known to all of you.” “This is a very complex multifaceted organism that requires daily participation, presence,” Lyubivy said, adding that “it is impossible to cut off a living thing.”

The mayor of Kaliningrad asked the deputies to support his decision in order to “keep doing what you love, to benefit people, their health, the health of the nation.” “At the same time, I remain your colleague, my political activity does not end there,” he stressed. The deputies drew attention to the fact that the mayor leaves his post less than a month before he was supposed to submit a report on the work done for the year to the City Council. Lyubovyy replied to this that “you don’t need to be tied to the date.” “There is a twofold situation here. I ask you to support my decision from a human point of view,” said the head of Kaliningrad. The deputies appointed Deputy Mayor Yury Salomokhin as interim mayor. He will lead the city until the election of the mayor from among the deputies of the City Council.

Yevgeny Lyubivy has been heading Kaliningrad since September 19, 2021. Before being elected to the city council, he served as chief physician of the city clinical emergency hospital for almost four years. Until 2017, a native of the Belgorod region, Lyubyvy had no relation to Kaliningrad. For 18 years he worked at the Russian Scientific Center for Surgery named after academician B.V. Petrovsky.

The average tenure as mayor of a Russian city is now very short, political analyst Alexander Kynev told Vedomosti. According to him, individual mayors serve more than one term, and mostly resign during the first term. “It is very difficult to find people capable of working in these positions. For public politicians, the post of mayor is of little use due to limited powers. And for business executives it is difficult because of the lack of resources and high potential conflict potential,” he explained. According to Kynev, “it is strange to expect a successful mayor who came out of doctors.” “An ordinary classical mayor, as a rule, from economic leaders. It is very difficult to recall successful examples of mayors who came from the social sphere,” Kynev concluded.