Vladimir Putin will meet with participants of the fifth stream of the “School of Governors”

President Vladimir Putin plans to hold a meeting next week with students from the “school of governors.” This was reported to Vedomosti by two interlocutors close to the presidential administration. The “School of Governors” is a program for the development of the personnel management reserve of the Higher School of Public Administration (HSGU) of the RANEPA. Now the fifth stream is being prepared for graduation from the “school of governors”, and the president will meet with students on it. Graduation at the fifth stream is planned in a couple of weeks, one of the interlocutors adds.

This is not the first time such a meeting will take place, the President met with each of the streams of the “school of governors”. There was no meeting last year. On June 17, 2021, the president met with the fourth stream via videoconferencing. Then Putin said that GSSU is “the pinnacle of the entire management training system, and in this system, which we will definitely continue to develop, all links are significant.” At that time, 300 people had passed through the courses. The meeting of the fourth stream was attended, for example, by the director of the regional development department of the government Vasily Anokhin – in March Putin appointed him acting governor of the Smolensk region, vice-governor of the Kurgan region Vladislav Kuznetsov – in March of this year he was appointed acting head of Chukotka, director of the department of regional industry of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Vitaly Khotsenko – in March he was appointed acting head of the Omsk region. Among the graduates was the current Commissioner for Children’s Rights, and then Senator Maria Lvova-Belova. Also on the fourth stream were the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Local Self-Government (LSG) Alexei Didenko, the head of the Federal Tax Service Daniil Yegorov, the deputy head of the presidential department for public projects Alexei Zharich, the deputy finance minister Pavel Kadochnikov, the acting head of Dagestan Sergey Melikov, the governor of the Perm Territory Dmitry Makhonin and others.

The meeting with the third stream was held on August 20, 2020, with the second – on April 17, 2019, with the first – on April 25, 2018. Face-to-face meetings were held with the first and second streams – even before the pandemic. Of the graduates of the “school of governors”, 49 became heads of regions, in addition, three federal ministers and 35 deputy federal ministers studied at the school. The “School of Governors” on the basis of the RANEPA was launched in 2017, after the Kremlin’s domestic political bloc was headed by Sergei Kiriyenko. Officials, deputies, senators, regional politicians, representatives of law enforcement agencies and state corporations study there. Many of them are participants in the “Leaders of Russia” competition, which is held by the ANO “Russia – the Land of Opportunities”. Trainings, sports events are organized for the participants, lectures are given to them on various subjects, among the lecturers there are well-known politicians and officials. As a result of the LSG Development Council, which the president held on April 20, a decree was signed on the creation of a similar “school of mayors” – for the development of personnel in the field of LSG.

Such meetings are symbolically important as recognition that the “school of governors” is a personnel lift, says Mikhail Vinogradov, president of the Petersburg Politics Foundation. “It is also a demonstration that a relatively young generation of managers sees themselves in the current political structure,” he adds.

The president’s meeting with the participants of the “school of governors” further raises the status and importance of such a school, said Rostislav Turovsky, vice president of the Center for Political Technologies. “Its graduates will also be seen as contenders for leadership positions to an even greater extent than they are now. In fact, this is a new way to purposefully form the personnel nomenclature,” the expert says. Of course, there are many channels for recruiting the elite, but the “school of governors” is presented as an exclusive channel, and the president is ready to emphasize this through his meetings, sums up Turovsky.