The last months of Burkov’s work were accompanied by regular scandals.
President Vladimir Putin has dismissed social-revolutionary Alexander Burkov from his post as governor of the Omsk region. The last months of his work were accompanied by regular scandals, but Burkov himself tried to keep his job. But even long-standing ties with the leader of his party, Sergei Mironov, did not help. The Socialist-Revolutionaries had only one governor’s seat left. Now Burkov is matched for one of s in his small homeland – in the government of the Sverdlovsk region.
The SR was replaced by Vitaly Khotsenko, 37, who worked as Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic. He is already the second civil servant from the new regions who has received of governor this spring. The “personnel elevator” through the NVO zone, which was widely talked about in the presidential administration, began to work with might and main.
Alexander Burkov is unlikely to know the exact day of his dismissal. Judging by the website of the government of the Omsk region and the official account of the former governor’s telegram, Burkov did not pack his things in his office, but got into a routine. For example, on March 28, he approved a plan to support the “creative sector of the economy” until 2030. And all the last days, until the day of his resignation on March 29, he continued to give back account of the formation of humanitarian supplies for the Donbass. And he recounted how Omsk officials “share the trials and hardships” of frontline life on an equal footing with NWO participants.
On the region’s government website, there was no posting about Burkov’s resignation for the whole day. And in his “charrette”, the governor, who suddenly became a former governor, thanked only serving Omsk residents for their support, promised to remember the time spent in the region “with warmth and love and announced that he was moving to a “new workplace”.
Burkov meeting with Putin, May 2021. Photo: kremlin.ru Obviously, Burkov’s subordinates, at least media officials, did not expect this either. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the appearance of a furious rebuttal of the report on the impending resignation of the governor, published by RBC a few days ago, in the authorities-controlled Vecherny Omsk newspaper. The text, we must pay tribute to journalists, hangs on the Vecherny Omsk website, and Burkov is seen by employees of the publication with an article about his achievements. About half of which – such as landscaping and new trolleybuses – are the responsibility of municipal authorities. And another part – like the construction of the G-Drive Arena (for the money of Gazprom Neft) and the arrival in Omsk of the developer “Brusnik” (these are Burkov’s compatriots from Yekaterinburg) probably does not concern the success of Burkov, but on the fact that he knows how not to interfere with the work of others.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin did not mention Burkov in a single word, sending his successor, DPR Prime Minister Vitaly Khotsenko, to Omsk. On the other hand, he spoke a lot about the problems of the region which, according to the president, is in fact one of the most comfortable to live among those located beyond the Urals. And in general, judging by the instructions given to Khotsenko, voiced by Putin, he was hardly satisfied with Burkov’s governorship.
Putin and Khotsenko, March 2023. Photo: kremlin.ru “The Omsk region is very important for us, very important. Now I’m not going to list all the settings you need to pay attention to. I know that you participated in it, including with the administration of the President of the Russian Federation. From the point of view of the development of the economy and the social sphere, much remains to be done so that the life of the inhabitants of this region corresponds to what they deserve.
There are still many unsolved tasks here,” Putin said. And instead of Burkov and his team, after such an assessment, everyone will shiver. After all, since many tasks have not been solved and people are not living as they deserve, this situation must have specific culprits. And Khotsenko, with his experience of interacting with various security forces in the DPR, can begin to introduce them to the Kremlin and ordinary citizens.
Moreover, the questions to Burkov really piled up. The last to raise them aloud were Secretary of the General Council of United Russia Andrei Turchak and Minister of Education of the Russian Federation Sergei Kravtsov. At the very end of February, during a party conference call, they naturally smashed the SR team. They have been blamed for the missed deadlines of several schools for which federal funds have been allocated. And Burkov had to look for funds for this, which “went up” to Moscow, already at the regional level.
The governor of Omsk, despite the fact that the “Socialist-Revolutionary”, instead of some kind of response to United Russia Turchak and Kravtsov, gave in and promised to quickly fix everything. Now Khotsenko will deal with it. According to Bloknot’s sources, surrounded by Burkov, in recent weeks he even turned to the presidential administration with a request for clarification of his fate, and if they “decided to shoot him, then how can they say so, and do not torment him with uncertainty.” It is not known whether Burkov received such a response from the Kremlin administration. Another thing is known – a former close friend and adviser, and now a sworn enemy of Burkov, former State Duma deputy Alexander Chetverikov regularly provided his critical messages about the work of the social-revolutionary governor with photographs in the context of the AP building or even indoors.
Chetverikov accuses Burkov of corruption (there would have been embezzlement on the Grain of Siberia project) and managerial incompetence. Although just a few years ago they were close friends – they sat together in the State Duma, and Burkov is even Chetverikov’s godfather, that is, the godfather of his child. Now we can reconcile.
The “socialist-revolutionary” staff of Alexander Chetverikov did not help Burkov at all. For example, in September last year, Anna Stepanenko, who had just won the elections for the city council of Omsk, celebrated her success again and had a fight in her own house. She broke down her neighbor Camila Adamson’s door and asked her to “sell the apartment and get out” of that house. Even the head of the TFR, Alexander Bastrykin, took an interest in the incident, but a month later it turned out that Stepanenko got off with a fine for petty hooliganism and severe disparagement from colleagues and party members. Behind closed doors.
Burkov’s new job no longer only excites him and his subordinates. The fact is that he was one of the two Socialist-Revolutionary governors who remained in Russia. The latter is also a former State Duma deputy, Oleg Nikolaev, who is in charge of Chuvashia. Before leaving for Omsk, Burkov was one of the most influential members of the SRZP party.
It was he who “governed” the party’s elections to the State Duma in 2016. He also came up with the idea of ​​creating “Centers for the Protection of Citizens’ Rights” – organizations where residents of cities could apply to solve their communal problems. Sergey Mironov, the head of the SRZP, liked the project so much that he even started an exemplary center in his homeland in St. Petersburg and even negotiated with the Ministry of Labor the budgetary financing of the centers for hundreds of millions of rubles per year. . Despite, to put it mildly, a not very sympathetic resignation, Burkov can quickly regain the status of a party functionary if he finds himself in Moscow again.
Center for the Protection of Citizens’ Rights in Omsk. Photo: Wikipedia Whether Sergei Mironov needs such a person “behind his back” as he prepares for the May SDSR congress is an ambiguous question. After all, Mironov, as expected, could try in the congress to sharply weaken the position of the supporters of the writer Zakhar Prilepin, who accompanied him to Mironov’s party in 2021, before the last Duma elections.
Also, it is not excluded that people from businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner PMC, with whom Mironov has been actively flirting for several months, will appear in the party leadership.
“Not everyone likes such gestures at the party. It cannot be said that there is a real threat of a “reverse congress”, when in place of Mironov someone else will appear suddenly at the head of the party. But from Burkov it is quite possible to quickly shape an alternative leader, if someone wants it. And it would be better if Mironov nipped in the bud the very possibility of a such a scenario, “says Bloknot’s interlocutor in the SRZP office. Therefore, unofficial information about Burkov’s return to his small homeland, in the Sverdlovsk region, seems much more reliable to party members. Where, allegedly , they are already preparing a place for him in the government of the region.
The personality of Burkov’s successor is also interesting. Vitaly Khotsenko, 37, became the second new governor in March to hold after working in new Russian regions. Previously, Vladislav Kuznetsov went to lead Chukotka from of Deputy Prime Minister of the Lugansk People’s Republic.
Khotsenko and Kuznetsov are united not only by work in new territories, but by the fact that without it they did not seem to have administrative heights. Khotsenko held positions with the general title “fetch” in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and the Stavropol Territory, then he was a middle official in the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation. And Kuznetsov, having allegedly failed to appoint him governor of the Orenburg region, had no career prospects in of deputy governor of the Kurgan region. The careers of both were saved by a trip to the Donbass.
To receive a promotion, you must in practice assume the risks associated not only with Western sanctions and the solution of very complex problems of new territories, but also with the physical risks to life – after all, it there are military operations there. Now Khotsenko and Kuznetsov can serve as an example for other officials – that stories about the “career lift” of Donbass production are not just words, but also real examples, ”explains the interlocutor of Notepad, close to the presidential administration.
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