The scandal through the eyes of experts and “participants in the events”
Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation published an investigation dedicated to Dmitry Medvedev. The main topic is real estate objects (they were filmed by quadcopters from a bird's eye view) belonging to funds and companies that, according to the authors of the publication, are associated with the Prime Minister.
This caused a predictable scandal. However, all the components of the scandal also do not go beyond the predictable.
Representatives of the authorities refuse to discuss the “delirium of a criminal” (quote from United Russia General Council Secretary Sergei Neverov). Navalny parodies the statements of his opponents and calls for voting for himself in the 2018 elections.
The only thing that is fundamentally new so far is the scale of suspicions leveled against the prime minister and the leader of the ruling party. Actually, this makes us wait for some other development of events. After all, according to the laws of dialectics, the amount of compromising evidence must sooner or later transform into a new quality of the political situation. In short, there are two pressing issues on the agenda: will Medvedev be removed and Navalny imprisoned? We asked well-known Russian experts and troublemakers themselves to answer these and a number of other questions.
“The struggle for the position of prime minister has intensified”
Valery SOLOVEY, professor at MGIMO, political scientist, historian.
- Many people see in Navalny’s investigation what we usually call a “leak.” Do you have a different opinion?
This is a natural assumption that cannot but arise in “Byzantine” Russian politics. But, judging by the nature of the film, work on it went on for quite a long time. This is the fruit of serious work. The fact that someone from the competent authorities could know about this work but did not interfere is another matter. Of course, this may be beneficial for someone. It is believed that Medvedev's position has recently weakened somewhat - even before the film appeared. The struggle for the position of prime minister has intensified: there are several people in the upper echelons of power who are vying for this position. In addition, Dmitry Anatolyevich has long-standing ill-wishers, very powerful and influential, who are fighting against him to the best of their ability. All this, I emphasize, does not mean at all that these people are, as we say, customers.
Navalny follows his political logic. It is transparent - to compromise the most prominent representatives of the elite. This causes: a) attention to you; b) if not panic, then confusion among the elite. This is always beneficial to the opposition, there is nothing so tricky here.
- Do the contenders for the prime minister's post expect to replace Medvedev after the presidential elections?
In most cases, the point is that the issue should be resolved before the elections.
- To what extent will Navalny’s investigation affect the prime minister’s political prospects?
It will have an effect, but in a paradoxical way. This will allow him to strengthen his position. Because the rule in power is: never retreat and never make excuses.
- So Navalny, it turns out, is strengthening Medvedev’s position?
In fact, yes, and this, by the way, is also an argument against the fact that someone allegedly ordered him to investigate. So I think, I’m even convinced that Navalny acted completely independently, following his own logic. Well, those who knew about it simply did not interfere.
What consequences could this have for Navalny himself? Today the question of whether he will be imprisoned or not will be actively discussed.
This would be stupidity on the part of the authorities. Thus, she would sign for the correctness of those accusations and hints that appear in the film. So of course she won't do it. Well, as for Navalny’s participation in the presidential elections, the issue, in general, has been resolved. I can say that even before the film there was a clear consensus on this issue in the corridors of power: Navalny should not be allowed to participate in the elections. And the scandal caused by the investigation will only “cement” this anti-Navalnov consensus.
- Well, what goals does Navalny himself pursue in this case? Short term, long term?
Navalny believes that the fight against corruption can bring political success. This is evidenced by the experience of a number of countries, including the USSR; one can recall Yeltsin’s revelations of the nomenklatura. But, in my opinion, the situation in Russia is different now. An anti-corruption campaign can and does attract some attention to the person who is doing it, and promotes recognition. But it does not automatically turn him into a serious political figure.
Corruption in Russia today is the norm. There is a mass belief that power - simply because it is power - has the right to be corrupt. And it even has to be corrupt. From my point of view, the opposition should formulate a different message to society, based not on the fight against corruption, but on something else. On certain basic interests of society, which are quite easy to read. However, Navalny prefers to follow an anti-corruption strategy. I repeat, it is not without meaning, but politically it does not look that effective.
Sergei MARKOV, General Director of the Institute for Political Studies.
- Is the FBK information its own investigation or a leak?
I’m almost sure that Navalny’s structures helped process the materials, but the primary information came from other sources that attack Medvedev. These could be political figures who want to replace the Prime Minister. But some believe: on the contrary, these are figures from the prime minister’s entourage who are interested in leaving him. After all, the president will never allow the removal of a person against whom an external attack has begun.
Perhaps it was, relatively speaking, the CIA or British intelligence that gave the material to Navalny, or perhaps someone is masquerading as the CIA and British intelligence. Perhaps this is some kind of revenge for the fact that Medvedev did not approve state support for some business projects. The last version seems to me the most plausible - practice shows that most of these types of conflicts are related to business.
- How will the publication of the investigation affect Dmitry Medvedev’s career?
I think that Medvedev, or rather not even him, but one of the government departments, will be forced to provide a clear and precise explanation for all the assets that are mentioned in the investigation. But this most likely will not affect Medvedev’s political career.
- And if we talk about the influence on Navalny’s positions?
There is no legal way to interfere with Navalny’s publication; he cannot be prosecuted for libel. But he may become a personal enemy of Dmitry Medvedev... I do not expect any plus or minus for Navalny in terms of participation in the elections. But he attracted more attention to himself than he had before - in terms of positioning himself as the leader of the radical opposition against the authorities. I think that Kasyanov and Yavlinsky are jealous of Navalny.
Ilya SCHUMANOV, Deputy General Director of Transparency International-Russia, gave us a legal assessment of the FBK investigation:
In my opinion, there is potentially a situation of unresolved conflict of interest that is an offence. It concerns the relationship between the deputy chairman of the board of Gazprombank Ilya Eliseev and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev - both in the context of the existence of personal and friendly relations between them, and in the formal possibility of Mr. Medvedev’s influence on the organizations on the board of which Mr. Eliseev is.
It is extremely difficult to diagnose formal corruption violations in other stories. This raises more questions from the ethical side than from the legal side.
- Is it realistic to conduct an investigation due to a potential conflict of interest?
In Russian practice this is real. But Dmitry Medvedev is a political figure, he is the leader of the party, he is the prime minister. And Navalny is his opponent on the political agenda...
Strange parallels
The FBK investigation was published on March 2. Meanwhile, on February 15, “Interlocutor” published an article on its website under the heading “Medvedev’s GIFT. How are the prime minister and the financial-industrial group connected” - its structure is largely repeated in Navalny and Co. We talked about this strange coincidence, which made us talk about a centralized “leak,” with the author of the article in Sobesednik, deputy editor-in-chief Oleg Roldugin, and an employee of the FBK investigation department Georgy Alburov.
Oleg ROLDUGIN:
It's hard to believe, but we really worked in parallel, independently of each other. I don’t think that Navalny stole anything from me, although we wrote about many of the facts he mentioned in the film several years ago. He doesn't refer to them, but that's the format. There is another weak point in Navalny’s investigation, in my opinion - it mainly relies on photos from Instagram, geographical maps and extracts from official registers. However, there are not enough conversations with real people. In my next investigation on one of the topics raised by Navalny, there will be, for example, such a conversation, and I took up this topic even before Navalny.
- Still, what do you think, does Navalny collect information himself or do they bring him ready-made investigations?
He has all the information from open sources, why leak it - you just need to find it correctly.
Why did you take on Medvedev and right now, a year before the presidential elections? His supporters claim that all this is a deliberate “drain” of the prime minister...
A familiar topic. So there's nothing more to say. But in this case, I didn’t understand what the presidential elections had to do with it. Have we announced that Medvedev wants to compete with the president?
Question to Georgy Alburov:
- How do you explain the coincidences with the publication in Sobesednik? A coincidence seems unlikely to many.
Our investigation lasted six months: on several flights (of quadcopters over real estate - “MK”) everything was beautiful and green, very different from what is now visible on the street.
About the DAR fund (mentioned by FBK - "MK") They started writing back in 2011, they write about him regularly, but the same thing, without indicating a new texture. We learned about the Sobesednik investigation from the announcement of their article, and we were very nervous: someone had written to us before! But they only had one new part.
If you have been studying a topic for six months, then those at the top could not help but find out about it! It’s even easy to record the flights of quadcopters, not to mention wiretapping and so on.
Naturally, in our office everything is completely wiretapped. You just need to talk less and communicate more via secure means of communication. When we filmed with quadcopters, we were never caught. Perhaps they simply didn’t notice because the drone was flying high. Or one time we might have been noticed, but loud snow removal equipment was working nearby.
Read comments on the investigation by press secretary Dmitry Medvedev and press secretary of President Vladimir Putin.
A scandal broke out at Kemerovo State University. The university, without explanation, did not renew the contract with one of the teachers for a long period. Neither her appeals to the rector nor the students' complaints helped. In response, senior lecturer at the Institute of Philology, Foreign Languages and Media Communications, candidate of sciences Nina Obeliūnas filed a lawsuit. She says: “The story of my dismissal is not unique. The only difference is that I’m the only one who spoke about it out loud.” Optimization, reorganization and consolidation are taking place in universities across the country. This means that teachers inevitably turn out to be redundant.
On February 17, a teacher at the Institute of Philology, Foreign Languages and Media Communications at Kemerovo State University, Nina Obeljunas, filed a lawsuit. The first hearing in her case is scheduled for March 9. She demands that the university recognize her dismissal as illegal, reinstate her at work, and return all hours of the 2016-2017 teaching load. and compensate for days of forced absence, as well as moral damages in the amount of 200 thousand rubles.
Nina Obeliunas is one of the few teachers who declared the violation of her rights out loud and decided to fight what she considers illegal. And the story of her dismissal began in the fall of 2016.
Teacher for six months
“As a teacher, due to the end of my contract, I have to go through a competition,” says Nina. - My employment contract was concluded until January 27, 2017. A competition for my place was announced in the summer of 2016, and I submitted the necessary documents accordingly.” The first stage of the competition - voting at the department - took place on November 24. “My candidacy was recommended for further passage in the competition, that is, it was nominated for consideration by the Academic Council of our Institute of Philology, Foreign Languages and Media Communications.”
At the meeting of the institute’s academic council on December 27, Nina Obeliūnas was not elected. The next day, the teacher wrote a statement addressed to the rector of the institute demanding that the decision be reversed, since a huge number of mistakes were made in the election procedure. The rector agreed with the statement.
In addition, at this stage it turned out that my documents were incorrectly formatted: everything was stuck in the list of publications and a report on the work done. When I prepared a new one (in five years, not three years), the academic secretary of the Academic Council of KemSU refused to sign it for me. Although, as it turned out later, only my signature should be on this list,” she says.
And on January 18, a second council of the institute was held, where Obeljunas was nevertheless elected by a majority vote.
“But with one unexpected detail that I was not prepared for: the council decided to recommend concluding a contract with me until August 31, 2017. Despite the fact that the academic council of the institute cannot recommend to the employer the term for which I should be elected, there is not a word about this in the text of the Regulations on the procedure for filling the positions of teaching staff belonging to the teaching staff,” she says.
Shift responsibility
Nina refused to sign such an agreement. And she explained her position to the employer in writing by the fact that she had not received notifications from the university about changing the terms of the contract two months before the expiration of the contract, which is provided for in Article 332 of the Labor Code, so she believed that the new employment contract, like the previous one, would be concluded on period of three years. In addition, the “Industry Agreement on organizations under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation for 2015-2017” states that “if a scientific and pedagogical worker successfully passed the competition, but subsequently the parties were unable to agree on an acceptable specific period employment contract, the employment contract with such a person is concluded for an indefinite period.”
The university decided that they were right, and the teacher, if she believes that her rights have been violated, can go to court and the labor inspectorate.
At the same time, Obeljunas says, on January 26, a schedule for the new semester with her last name appeared on the website, and on February 2 it was changed: the teacher’s last name disappeared from it. The second employment contract with her, according to which Obeliunas teaches students at one of the schools, was also terminated. With the same wording: due to expiration.
“Although this period has not expired. The employment relationship with the employer ends only on May 31,” she explains.
Students stood up for the teacher. They didn’t just write words of support on social networks and come to visit the teacher. The students tried to influence the situation. On February 8, they wrote a statement to the rector with a request to return her classes to the schedule.
“On February 10, they met with the rector. The students said that the rector said: if the recruitment does not take place next year, the workload may not be enough for me, so I was obliged to sign the proposed employment contract,” says the teacher.
Nina Obeljunas believes that the labor code guarantees her a certain minimum of rights, and the rector does not have the right to shift the risks of his activities onto her. “I think that this is largely due to my personal position: I have been standing in the crosshairs of the university for a long time,” she explains.
Complaints and protests
Nina Obeljunas is known at the institute as a defender of students' rights. In 2015, she wrote a statement to the city prosecutor’s office with a request to find out whether the students were legally removed from her pair to listen to the budget message of the governor of the Kemerovo region, Aman Tuleyev.
“The prosecutor's office supported me. The law prohibits campaigning activities on the territory of an educational institution. There are certain training rules. The students were forcibly removed from the couple. In fact, my class was disrupted,” she explains her position.
A year later, in December 2016, students wrote a complaint to the rector about paint and varnish work being carried out during classes with Nina Obeliunas. “I signed this statement for them to confirm that this fact took place, and advised them, if they want to get an answer, to take it to the rector’s reception, where they should register it,” says the teacher.
Photo: from Nina Obeliūnas’s page on facebook.com
Afterwards, Vice-Rector for Educational Management Maria Leukhova called the students to her place. Obeljunas knows what happened at the meeting from the words of the students: “They were led to believe that it was me who was to blame for the smell: I didn’t transfer the students to another classroom, and even forced them to write a statement (or even wrote it myself). Although I don’t understand why the university management didn’t organize the transfer of the pairs, since they were aware that they would be undergoing renovations. The children were told that all guilty persons would be given a warning, and for Nina Vladimirovna, if she uses repressive measures against students, there will be an article under which she can be fired.”
And such an opportunity has been found, Obeliūnas believes. Now she does not work at the university, she is waiting for a response from the labor inspectorate and for her case to be considered in court.
The university itself did not comment on the situation, noting that “the dismissal and placement of an employee is his personal matter.” “Where a person works, where he gets a job and why he quits - all this is personal data. The law prohibits the disclosure of this data, so you can find out all the information from Obeljunas herself, after the decision of the labor inspectorate to which she applied appears,” said Lolita Ionova, head of the personnel department.
Minus 1.5 million students
There is another side to the fact that the university needs to fire workers. The education roadmap adopted in 2014 provides for a reduction in the number of teachers. By 2018, there should be 12 students per teacher, up from 10.2 students in 2013. And the very number of students in the country’s universities over the same five years will decrease from 5.6 million people to 4.1 million people.
The Institute of Philology, Foreign Languages and Media Communications has appeared at Kemerovo State University since this academic year. It was formed by the union of two faculties: philology and journalism and the faculty of Romance-Germanic philology.
“This year there will be 10 budget places in journalism, 13 in philology. Although four years ago philologists had 40 budget places. We easily recruit a group of 20-25 students for journalism. But in philology the situation is different. It’s even more difficult for them to recruit students on an off-budget basis,” says Obeliunas.
In a situation where the number of students is decreasing, a reduction in teaching rates is inevitable.
If it is necessary to officially reduce the teaching staff, then this must be done according to the procedure provided for by law: with mandatory two-month notice and subsequent compensation. This is a serious expense for the university,” says Nina Obeljunas.
According to TV2, similar stories with the dismissal of teachers are happening in Tomsk universities.
According to Tomskstat, only from 2010 to 2015 the number of university students decreased from 81.9 thousand to 63.5 thousand people. And the number of students released decreased from 17.6 thousand to 13.8 thousand people.
Another circumstance is superimposed on the reduction of the contingent. According to the May decrees of the President, signed in 2012, by 2018 the average salary of university teachers and researchers should be twice the average salary in the region. According to official statistics, for 9 months of 2016, the salary of Tomsk teachers was at the level of 61.5 thousand rubles. With the average salary in the region being 35.3 thousand rubles. Often, in order to achieve the desired indicators, universities lay off some teachers and increase the workload of others.
FBK investigation: will Medvedev be removed and Navalny imprisoned?
Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation published an investigation dedicated to Dmitry Medvedev. The main topic is real estate objects (they were filmed by quadcopters from a bird's eye view) belonging to funds and companies that, according to the authors of the publication, are associated with the Prime Minister.
This caused a predictable scandal. However, all the components of the scandal also do not go beyond the predictable.
Representatives of the authorities refuse to discuss the “delirium of a criminal” (quote from United Russia General Council Secretary Sergei Neverov). Navalny parodies the statements of his opponents and calls for voting for himself in the 2018 elections.
The only thing that is fundamentally new so far is the scale of suspicions leveled against the prime minister and the leader of the ruling party. Actually, this makes us wait for some other development of events. After all, according to the laws of dialectics, the amount of compromising evidence must sooner or later transform into a new quality of the political situation. In short, there are two pressing issues on the agenda: will Medvedev be removed and Navalny imprisoned? We asked well-known Russian experts and troublemakers themselves to answer these and a number of other questions.
“The struggle for the position of prime minister has intensified”
Valery SOLOVEY, professor at MGIMO, political scientist, historian.
Many people see in Navalny’s investigation what we usually call a “leak.” Do you have a different opinion?
This is a natural assumption that cannot but arise in “Byzantine” Russian politics. But, judging by the nature of the film, work on it went on for quite a long time. This is the fruit of serious work. The fact that someone from the competent authorities could know about this work but did not interfere is another matter. Of course, this may be beneficial for someone. It is believed that Medvedev's position has recently weakened somewhat - even before the film appeared. The struggle for the position of prime minister has intensified: there are several people in the upper echelons of power who are vying for this position. In addition, Dmitry Anatolyevich has long-standing ill-wishers, very powerful and influential, who are fighting against him to the best of their ability. All this, I emphasize, does not mean at all that these people are, as we say, customers.
Navalny follows his political logic. It is transparent - to compromise the most prominent representatives of the elite. This causes: a) attention to you; b) if not panic, then confusion among the elite. This is always beneficial to the opposition, there is nothing so tricky here.
- Do the contenders for the prime minister's post expect to replace Medvedev after the presidential elections?
In most cases, the point is that the issue should be resolved before the elections.
- To what extent will Navalny’s investigation affect the prime minister’s political prospects?
It will have an effect, but in a paradoxical way. This will allow him to strengthen his position. Because the rule in power is: never retreat and never make excuses.
- So Navalny, it turns out, is strengthening Medvedev’s position?
In fact, yes, and this, by the way, is also an argument against the fact that someone allegedly ordered him to investigate. So I think, I’m even convinced that Navalny acted completely independently, following his own logic. Well, those who knew about it simply did not interfere.
What consequences could this have for Navalny himself? Today the question of whether he will be imprisoned or not will be actively discussed.
This would be stupidity on the part of the authorities. Thus, she would sign for the correctness of those accusations and hints that appear in the film. So of course she won't do it. Well, as for Navalny’s participation in the presidential elections, the issue, in general, has been resolved. I can say that even before the film there was a clear consensus on this issue in the corridors of power: Navalny should not be allowed to participate in the elections. And the scandal caused by the investigation will only “cement” this anti-Navalnov consensus.
- Well, what goals does Navalny himself pursue in this case? Short term, long term?
Navalny believes that the fight against corruption can bring political success. This is evidenced by the experience of a number of countries, including the USSR; one can recall Yeltsin’s revelations of the nomenklatura. But, in my opinion, the situation in Russia is different now. An anti-corruption campaign can and does attract some attention to the person who is doing it, and promotes recognition. But it does not automatically turn him into a serious political figure.
Corruption in Russia today is the norm. There is a mass belief that power - simply because it is power - has the right to be corrupt. And it even has to be corrupt. From my point of view, the opposition should formulate a different message to society, based not on the fight against corruption, but on something else. On certain basic interests of society, which are quite easy to read. However, Navalny prefers to follow an anti-corruption strategy. I repeat, it is not without meaning, but politically it does not look that effective.
Sergei MARKOV, General Director of the Institute for Political Studies.
Is the FBK information its own investigation or a leak?
I’m almost sure that Navalny’s structures helped process the materials, but the primary information came from other sources that attack Medvedev. These could be political figures who want to replace the Prime Minister. But some believe: on the contrary, these are figures from the prime minister’s entourage who are interested in leaving him. After all, the president will never allow the removal of a person against whom an external attack has begun.
Perhaps it was, relatively speaking, the CIA or British intelligence that gave the material to Navalny, or perhaps someone is masquerading as the CIA and British intelligence. Perhaps this is some kind of revenge for the fact that Medvedev did not approve state support for some business projects. The last version seems to me the most plausible - practice shows that most of these types of conflicts are related to business.
- How will the publication of the investigation affect Dmitry Medvedev’s career?
I think that Medvedev, or rather not even him, but one of the government departments, will be forced to provide a clear and precise explanation for all the assets that are mentioned in the investigation. But this most likely will not affect Medvedev’s political career.
- And if we talk about the influence on Navalny’s positions?
There is no legal way to interfere with Navalny’s publication; he cannot be prosecuted for libel. But he may become a personal enemy of Dmitry Medvedev... I do not expect any plus or minus for Navalny in terms of participation in the elections. But he attracted more attention to himself than he had before - in terms of positioning himself as the leader of the radical opposition against the authorities. I think that Kasyanov and Yavlinsky are jealous of Navalny.
Ilya SCHUMANOV, Deputy General Director of Transparency International-Russia, gave us a legal assessment of the FBK investigation:
In my opinion, there is potentially a situation of unresolved conflict of interest that is an offence. It concerns the relationship between the deputy chairman of the board of Gazprombank Ilya Eliseev and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev - both in the context of the existence of personal and friendly relations between them, and in the formal possibility of Mr. Medvedev’s influence on the organizations on the board of which Mr. Eliseev is.
It is extremely difficult to diagnose formal corruption violations in other stories. This raises more questions from the ethical side than from the legal side.
- Is it realistic to conduct an investigation due to a potential conflict of interest?
In Russian practice this is real. But Dmitry Medvedev is a political figure, he is the leader of the party, he is the prime minister. And Navalny is his opponent on the political agenda...
Strange parallels
The FBK investigation was published on March 2. Meanwhile, on February 15, “Interlocutor” published an article on its website under the heading “Medvedev’s GIFT. How are the prime minister and the financial-industrial group connected” - its structure is largely repeated in Navalny and Co. We talked about this strange coincidence, which made us talk about a centralized “leak,” with the author of the article in Sobesednik, deputy editor-in-chief Oleg Roldugin, and an employee of the FBK investigation department Georgy Alburov.
Oleg ROLDUGIN:
It's hard to believe, but we really worked in parallel, independently of each other. I don’t think that Navalny stole anything from me, although we wrote about many of the facts he mentioned in the film several years ago. He doesn't refer to them, but that's the format. There is another weak point in Navalny’s investigation, in my opinion - it mainly relies on photos from Instagram, geographical maps and extracts from official registers. However, there are not enough conversations with real people. In my next investigation on one of the topics raised by Navalny, there will be, for example, such a conversation, and I took up this topic even before Navalny.
- Still, what do you think, does Navalny collect information himself or do they bring him ready-made investigations?
He has all the information from open sources, why leak it - you just need to find it correctly.
Why did you take on Medvedev and right now, a year before the presidential elections? His supporters claim that all this is a deliberate “drain” of the prime minister...
A familiar topic. So there's nothing more to say. But in this case, I didn’t understand what the presidential elections had to do with it. Have we announced that Medvedev wants to compete with the president?
Question to Georgy Alburov:
How do you explain the coincidences with the publication in Sobesednik? A coincidence seems unlikely to many.
Our investigation lasted six months: on several flights (of quadcopters over real estate - “MK”) everything was beautiful and green, very different from what is now visible on the street.
They started writing about the DAR fund (mentioned by FBK - “MK”) back in 2011, they write about it regularly, but the same thing, without indicating a new invoice. We learned about the Sobesednik investigation from the announcement of their article, and we were very nervous: someone had written to us before! But they only had one new part.
If you have been studying a topic for six months, then those at the top could not help but find out about it! It’s even easy to record the flights of quadcopters, not to mention wiretapping and so on.
Naturally, in our office everything is completely wiretapped. You just need to talk less and communicate more via secure means of communication. When we filmed with quadcopters, we were never caught. Perhaps they simply didn’t notice because the drone was flying high. Or one time we might have been noticed, but loud snow removal equipment was working nearby.
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A liberal Westerner who speaks English, a lover of fashionable jackets, expensive ties and shirts with a “Westernized” collar, a freedom-loving statesman who, like Juan Carlos after Franco, would lead the country onto the path of democracy and freedom... But his entire political career motivated by Putin, adapted to Putin, located in Putin’s force field. And the title of successor is a payment for loyalty, for a “feeling of comradeship.”
Well, as a last resort, Medvedev will leave a good memory for himself among Internet users, who will certainly elect him as president of their virtual Albany.
Hereditary intellectual from the working outskirts
Dmitry Medvedev is a native St. Petersburger. Born in 1965 into a family of intellectuals - his father, Anatoly Afanasyevich, taught at the Lensoveta Technological Institute, his mother, Yulia Veniaminovna, is a philologist by training, worked at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute. The future Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government grew up on the working-class outskirts of Kupchino. The typical landscape here is panel houses with 5-9 floors, the so-called “Brezhnevka” and late “Khrushchev” buildings. Former neighbors claim that in his adolescence Dima did not fight, did not swear, and was always neatly dressed.
Dmitry Medvedev studied at school No. 305, he studied with only “B’s” and “A’s”. His mathematics teacher Irina Grigorovskaya recalls: “He undoubtedly had an aptitude for the exact sciences.” Until recently, Dima maintained relations only with his first teacher, Vera Smirnova. “He tried very hard, devoted all his time to his studies,” says Vera Borisovna. - You could rarely find him on the street with the guys. He looked like a little old man..."
About five years ago, Medvedev organized a meeting of graduates of school 305, and they say that from time to time he provides financial assistance to the educational institution.
“Same as everyone else. Just very diligent"
After school, Dmitry managed to work at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute as a laboratory assistant and entered the Law Faculty of Leningrad State University, the main forge of management personnel in Russia today. He was lucky to have a mentor. Medvedev spent his first potato-picking trip to the Pskov region under the leadership of Anatoly Sobchak, then a law faculty teacher. The then dean of the faculty, Nikolai Kropachev, says that at first he simply did not consider Dima: “A good, strong student. He went in for sports, weightlifting. I even won something for the faculty. But according to the main course, he was the same as everyone else. Just very diligent." Dmitry Medvedev had a better look at his scientific supervisor Valery Musin - by a curious coincidence, he was also Vladimir Putin’s scientific supervisor. According to Musin, despite his calm character, Medvedev has always stood out for his leadership qualities and diligence.
At the beginning of March 2007, Dmitry Medvedev answered questions from Internet users on-line. “Are you planning to introduce an Albanian language course into the school curriculum?” (the language of the Internet community. - The New Times), “Lord Bear” asked him. The First Deputy Prime Minister responded that “the needs of learning the Albanian language cannot be ignored.”
The mission of the “personnel forge” ultimately backfired on the law faculty. One of Medvedev’s former students told The New Times that after Putin came to power, the faculty, and especially the department of civil law, simply began to fall apart. Following the president, many of Dmitry Medvedev’s colleagues left for Moscow. One of his closest friends was and remains Anton Ivanov, the current chairman of the Supreme Arbitration Court, his classmate. Sergei Mavrin and Sergei Kazantsev became judges of the Constitutional Court. The head of the apparatus of the Supreme Arbitration Court, Igor Drozdov, comes from the same faculty. Drozdov arrived in the capital as an assistant to the head of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, German Gref, and then he was replaced in this position by another St. Petersburg law student, Yuri Lyubimov.
Personal Secretary
After graduating from the law department of Leningrad State University and graduate school, Medvedev remained to work as a teacher at his alma mater. Then perestroika broke out, and his teacher Anatoly Sobchak, who had previously headed the department of private and civil law, unexpectedly became the mayor of the Northern capital. A job was found in the St. Petersburg mayor's office for Medvedev. In 1991, he became Sobchak’s adviser and at the same time an expert of the mayor’s committee on external relations, that is, a direct subordinate of the former KGB officer Putin. It was then, in the early 90s, that the fates of the current president and one of his possible successors crossed.
According to many testimonies, at that time Medvedev was often mistaken for Putin’s personal secretary and was not taken seriously. According to the President of the Institute of National Strategy Stanislav Belkovsky, “Dmitry Anatolyevich - pliable, soft, psychologically dependent - has always been absolutely psychologically comfortable for Vladimir Vladimirovich, and for him this aspect is extremely important.” For example, Belkovsky believes there was no reason for Kasyanov’s removal from the post of prime minister, except for one thing: Putin was uncomfortable with Mikhail Mikhailovich, and this irritated him terribly.
According to other evidence, Medvedev was involved in serious financial flows controlled by the Committee on External Relations. A source who wished to remain anonymous told The New Times that it was Medvedev who carried out Vladimir Putin’s instructions to transfer funds to various construction projects. The money went through the mediation of the then famous 20th construction trust, headed by the current deputy of the St. Petersburg legislative assembly Sergei Nikeshin. In those days, he, allegedly, could easily call the future president and inform him of the need to transfer an amount of several million dollars to restore an Orthodox church in Greece. Medvedev controlled this transfer. Nothing is known about the further fate of this money. The money went through the famous Rossiya Bank of the Kovalchuk brothers. The bank's office was located on the ground floor of Smolny, and, as sources tell The New Times, investors who approached Vladimir Putin could get the go-ahead for their project only on one condition: everything had to be carried out through “Russia”...
Forest paths
In June 1996, Sobchak lost the gubernatorial elections, and his team was left out of work. Putin left for Moscow, and Medvedev went into business. Back in 1993, he became one of the founders of the Finzell company, which soon established Ilim Pulp Enterprise CJSC (IPE). Today it is one of the giants of the Russian (and global) timber industry business. Medvedev worked in the legal department of Ilim Pulp. After joining the presidential administration in 1999, Medvedev left the timber company, but, according to political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky, until very recently he controlled a significant stake in Ilim. (The company’s press service, when asked by The New Times whether Dmitry Medvedev is a shareholder of IPE, did not answer either yes or no, reporting the standard: “No comment.”) According to Belkovsky, Medvedev actually saved the company from collapse when it was under control an unprecedented raider attack was launched by the business structures of Oleg Deripaska ( Ilim Pulp then lost its main Siberian assets - the Bratsk (BLPK) and Ust-Ilimsk (UILPK) timber industrial plants, as well as the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill (BPPM), something similar happened in the Arkhangelsk region.) However, the former deputy general director of BLPK (Dmitry Medvedev was the chairman of the board of directors of this enterprise in 1998.) Public Relations Officer Sergei Bespalov told The New Times that, according to his information, Medvedev does not have any shares in Ilim Pulp. But the same Bespalov confirmed that Ilim Pulp really counted on Medvedev’s help. The company was almost absorbed by Rusal: according to Bespalov, the Russian Federal Property Fund, the Federal Commission for the Securities Market, and the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation took Deripaska’s side in this conflict. Only after both Oleg Deripaska and the owner of Ilim Pulp Zakhar Smushkin were invited to the Kremlin and they were asked to “bury the hatchet” did a compromise take place. The company's Western shareholders played their role, declaring at one of their meetings with Putin that they would not invest a cent in the Russian timber processing industry as long as the takeover of the company continued. But the Baikal Pulp and Paper Mill was still lost. And Medvedev’s reputation as an official capable of protecting the business close to him was undermined, which people with money remembered, and Medvedev the successor lost a lot of points, including in the administrative market.
According to Belkovsky, Medvedev is closely associated with the St. Petersburg law firm Egorov, Puginsky and Partners, which specializes in representing the interests of foreign (including a number of American) companies in Russia and Russian ones abroad. The firm's clients include large oil companies, and it has, as stated on its corporate website, “representation of Russia's largest arms exporter in international commercial arbitration.” (The Egorov, Puginsky and Partners company itself refused to both confirm to The New Times and deny the participation of Putin’s possible successor in its business.)
Voloshin's replacement
Medvedev's new life began in November 1999, when he became deputy chief of staff of the government, which was then headed by Putin. Immediately after Boris Yeltsin’s historic address to the people and his “abdication of the throne,” Medvedev becomes deputy head of the presidential administration - with an eye to subsequently replacing Alexander Voloshin. Voloshin and Roman Abramovich, according to Stanislav Belkovsky, proposed Medvedev’s candidacy, and when three years later Voloshin resigned as head of the Kremlin administration (largely as a sign of protest against the YUKOS affair), he set a condition: he should be replaced by Dmitry Medvedev ( who also spoke about “not fully thought-out actions” by the authorities regarding YUKOS).
Putin himself admitted that he was going to make Medvedev the head of the Federal Securities Commission (the head of the administration, according to some evidence, he wanted to see Dmitry Kozak). If this had happened, Dmitry Anatolyevich could have gotten his hands on a “real” case, the same as his friend and partner Anton Ivanov got. It is not for nothing that he looks like a young top manager or financial director, who are now usually called CEO and CFO even in Russian-language texts. And today there would be no official Medvedev, but Medvedeff, the head of a division of some large Western investment bank. And his paths with Putin would have completely diverged, except for Christmas cards - from Moscow to London and from London to Moscow...
But Putin needed a reliable person in the Kremlin, and besides, Medvedev did not irritate representatives of the elite of the Yeltsin era. This is how the idea arose to make him the successor to the president: Medvedev was elected to this role as a compromise and almost ideal figure who suited everyone. According to many accounts, the idea finally took shape in the fall of 2005. In November 2005, Medvedev was appointed first deputy prime minister, and in the spring of 2006, according to the Kremlin plan, he was supposed to become chairman of the government. However, every action, as we know, gives rise to reaction.
Runway or minefield?
It was “under Medvedev” as a successor, many believe, that Putin’s new large-scale initiative was launched - national projects. He was appointed responsible for their implementation, and the topic of national projects received the first most important place in the Russian media space. This was a clear signal to both the federal and regional elites. However, it will soon be two years since the launch of national projects, and the situation with their implementation is, to put it mildly, ambiguous. PR is PR, and the population’s attitude towards national projects is either calm or openly skeptical. Many regional media write that “the implementation of national projects turned out to be a corruption scheme.” The head of the Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund, Andrei Taranov, and his deputy, Dmitry Usenko, have already been arrested; the FSB structures have seized documents from the compulsory health insurance funds of the Voronezh and Tomsk regions.
Meanwhile, Medvedev’s team had all possible resources at its disposal - financial, informational (in the form of state television channels, primarily; Kommersant and Izvestia came under his banner, although without much effect; Dmitry Anatolyevich met with various groups of intellectuals), several think tanks (the Gleb Pavlovsky Foundation for Effective Politics, the RIO Center of Leonid Reiman and Igor Yurgens) and even such characters as the leader of the Social Justice Party Alexey Podberezkin. But as a result, Medvedev’s chances of becoming “Putin’s replacement” rather dropped.
Medvedev's appointment as prime minister has not yet taken place. “Working against him is Sechin, who is clearly outplaying Medvedev as a hardware player,” says Stanislav Belkovsky. Another sign of the weakening of Medvedev’s position is the appointment of Sergei Naryshkin as Deputy Prime Minister and the transfer to him of a number of Medvedev’s powers: high technology, interaction with the CIS countries, in particular “Ukrainian affairs.” Naryshkin is not a “solid Sechinite”, but also not Medvedev’s man. Some of Dmitry Anatolyevich’s former functions have now been entrusted to his competitor, the new “first vice” Sergei Ivanov.
Who are you coming?
They say that not long ago Medvedev and the famous (and “close to the body”) legal expert Oleg Kutafin ( He once headed the initiative group to nominate Putin for president.), president of the Russian Lawyers' Association, sat for several hours in Putin's reception room with a draft decree on the appointment of Dmitry Anatolyevich as prime minister. But they never got a reception. These are perhaps tales of the “Madrid court”. But the story looks plausible. Should Medvedev not know the corporate style of Vladimir Vladimirovich - to give the opportunity to “subjects of economic” and other activities to understand each other, compete, fight for power. And then, after a long theatrical pause, make a decision. However, more and more observers are inclined to think that “Medvedev has somehow turned sour lately” and his star has set.
Vladimir Alexandrov (St. Petersburg) and Ilya Barabanov took part in the preparation of the material
website– Blogger Alexei Navalny, convicted of fraud, published another investigation. This time his hero was the former Russian President and current Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. They allegedly found several houses across the country, an agricultural holding, and a couple of wineries. Residents of the prime minister’s “family nest,” as the land plots supposedly belonging to Medvedev are called, thank him for delivering gas and creating jobs. The argumentation of the new film by FBK and Navalny was immediately criticized, and primarily among its supporters. Unexpectedly, even the Deputy General Director of Transparency International in Russia said on the air of “Echo of Moscow” that he did not see clear facts in the work of FBK, reports Nakanune.RU.
“This point, which concerns the subtle connection between Mr. Eliseev and Medvedev, it remains on the conscience of the FBK investigators, because there is nothing evidence of their connection, except for a friendly and some kind of friendly one,” said Deputy General Director of Transparency International-Russia Ilya Shumanov.
Bloggers immediately discovered that the invoice itself on the “family nest”, “wineries” and the ways in which the property could be registered in Dmitry Medvedev’s name had already been published several times in the Sobesednik publication. For some reason, these materials did not produce any effect. Publicist and columnist for the Russia Today TV channel Maxim Kononenko remembered that the famous poet Dmitry Bykov works for this publication.
“If anyone is interested in whether the material was posted on the Sobesednik website retroactively, then I bought the PDF (you will owe 10 rubles). The material is in place. Next to the column of Dmitry Lvovich Bykov. Who, for some reason, didn’t tell us anything about it,” writes Maxim Kononenko in his Telegram and publishes a screenshot of the “Interlocutor” issue with the investigation being discussed there.
Political scientist Pavel Danilin On his page on social networks, he suggested that by leaking compromising material on Medvedev, certain forces are trying to “exclude him from the equation.” At the same time, Danilin separately notes that these forces are in no way connected with former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who had a conflict with Dmitry Medvedev in the past.
“If I were Alexei Leonidovich, I would try very hard to explain to the right people that this is not me at all. Because many people thought of him exactly. But the scale... the scale is different. And the goal is also not Medvedev’s resignation, but his exclusion from the plans,” writes Pavel Danilin.
Political scientist, director of the Center for Political Science Research, Financial University under the Government Pavel Salin believes that what Navalny published cannot be called compromising evidence.
“This looks strange, because it was believed that if Vladimir Putin does not go to the polls, then the most likely candidate would be a trusted person who would guarantee the maintenance of control. Dmitry Medvedev is such a trusted person. But the problem is that the probability of Putin’s participation in the elections in a year is maximum, so the importance of Medvedev’s candidacy as a replacement is reduced. There is no point in publishing compromising evidence on Medvedev, and secondly, it doesn’t look like such compromising evidence. After all, there is no direct violation of the law, because the authors themselves boldly say that this is all based on indirect things and is impossible to directly prove, and secondly, and most importantly, compromising information against officials is now considered to be the ownership of property abroad. And everything that is published is inside Russia. In essence, it is said that simply a wide circle of Medvedev’s acquaintances own a large set of assets within Russia. There is de jure no crime here, and de facto there is no crime either.”
In general, Nakanune.RU experts, like those who commented on the FBK film on social networks, still more often asked themselves questions about the reasons for the appearance of this compromising evidence than gave any answer.
At the same time, those around the Prime Minister reacted very harshly to Navalny’s accusations
Press Secretary of Prime Minister Medvedev Natalya Timakova stated that it would not comment on Navalny’s “propaganda attacks.”
“Navalny’s material is clearly pre-election in nature, as he himself says at the end of the video. It makes no sense to comment on the propaganda attacks of an opposition and convicted character who said that he is already waging some kind of election campaign and is fighting the authorities,” Timakova told Interfax.
