Yaroslavl governor puts his foot down – Picture of the Day – Kommersant

The competitive commission for the selection of candidates for mayor of Yaroslavl on Wednesday completed the acceptance of documents from applicants for this post. In total, seven people showed up, and among them there is a clear favorite – a native of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) Artem Molchanov, who has been deputy chairman of the Yaroslavl regional government since January 2022. The current Yaroslavl governor Mikhail Evraev also worked in the FAS, and Mr. Molchanov is a member of his team. The outcome of the vote for the mayor in the City Duma can be considered a foregone conclusion, since 34 out of 38 seats there are controlled by United Russia, which supports the governor.

Seven people applied for the competition for the position of mayor of Yaroslavl, Sergey Kalinin, speaker of the municipality (city duma) of the regional center, told Kommersant. He promised to name them on November 2, when the competition commission will evaluate all applications for compliance with the city charter and propose candidates for consideration by the municipality. It is planned to elect a new mayor on November 7 at an extraordinary meeting of the City Duma.

Recall that the previous mayor of Yaroslavl, Vladimir Volkov, who has held this post since December 2018, was a member of the team of the former governor Dmitry Mironov. In May 2022, the mayor unexpectedly resigned without warning Mikhail Evraev, Acting Head of the Yaroslavl Region, of his decision (he replaced Mironov, who was appointed Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation, in October 2021), and now heads Lyubertsy near Moscow. Deputy mayor Ilya Motovilov, who then acted as mayor of Yaroslavl, announced his resignation on October 10, 2022, and since then. about. The mayor is Vyacheslav Gavrilov.

“Kommersant” became aware of the names of three of the seven contenders for the post of mayor:

• Deputy of the municipality from the party “Fair Russia – For the Truth” Anatoly Kashirin,
• politician and journalist Alexander Simon
• Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Yaroslavl Region Artem Molchanov.

It is the latter, most likely, who will become the new mayor following the results of the November 7 vote. The official submitted documents for nomination on the last day of their receipt. Before moving to Yaroslavl, Mr. Molchanov worked for more than ten years at the FAS, where he first headed the department for the Kirov region, and then headed the legal department of the FAS. Governor Mikhail Evraev, who until February 2021 was in charge of public procurement as deputy head of the department, is also a native of the antimonopoly service.

Following the results of the elections to the municipality of Yaroslavl, held in September 2022, United Russia received 34 out of 38 mandates. And Sergei Kalinin, acting secretary of the local branch of the party of power, was recommended for the post of speaker of the City Duma by Governor Evraev (until 2012 he was in the federal bureau of Yabloko, but now he is non-partisan and was a self-nominated candidate for the 2022 elections). Therefore, local politicians have practically no doubts about the victory of Artem Molchanov.

Messrs. Kashirin and Simon also realistically evaluate their chances of winning, or rather, their absence. It should be noted that the latter unsuccessfully participated in two previous competitions for the position of the mayor of Yaroslavl, which were held in 2017 and 2018, and several times ran for mayor in direct elections until they were canceled in 2014.

President of the Center for Regional Policy Development Ilya Grashchenkov notes that as deputy chairman of the government of the Yaroslavl region, Artem Molchanov oversees property relations, “and it is known that this is the most important part of the audit.” “When a new governor takes office, he first of all conducts an audit for himself. Therefore, Artem Molchanov, I think, coped with this work and now he is moving to systematic work as the head of the city. Accordingly, there will be a mayor-lawyer-technocrat close to Mikhail Evraev. The governor trusts him as a lawyer, he is sure that he will not set him up with documents, ”the political scientist stated.

Alexander Tikhonov, Yaroslavl