MOSCOW, May 29 – RIA Novosti. The retired head of the Magadan region, Vladimir Pecheny, headed the region for almost five years, and the head of Yakutia, Egor Borisov, held his post for almost eight years. One of the possible reasons for the resignations is health and age (Borisov is 63 years old, Pechenyi is 68), writes the Vedomosti newspaper, citing a source close to the Kremlin.

At the same time, the source noted that Pecheny and Borisov coped with their duties and would have served until the end of the second term if not for their health.

"Were expected"

The resignations of Vladimir Pecheny and Yegor Borisov were expected, while the Kremlin demonstrates consistency in the logic of making personnel decisions, says Vladimir Slatinov, an expert at the Institute for Humanitarian and Political Research.

The resignations of Pecheny and Borisov became known on Monday.

“I can say that this was expected, both names were mentioned,” Slatinov told RIA Novosti.

According to him, the resignations are, among other things, related to the results of the presidential elections, which took place on March 18.

Resignation due to age

A member of the board of the Russian Association of Political Consultants, political scientist Andrei Kolyadin, in a conversation with RT, commented on the early resignation of the governor of the Magadan region.

“In Magadan there were no complaints against the governor, this is a resignation due to age. He is stable, did not try to push himself out and be at the top of the ratings, but did not fall to the bottom,” said Kolyadin.

The expert also shared his opinion about Sergei Nosov, who was appointed to the position of acting governor.

“He is a very interesting person, connected with big business, actively participated in government activities. He took part in elections to the Duma of the Sverdlovsk region, was vice-governor. At one time he competed for the post of head of the Sverdlovsk region... The Magadan region was lucky with him,” summed up He.

Magadan Region

Vladimir Pechenyi resigned of his own free will. Putin signed a decree appointing Nizhny Tagil Mayor Sergei Nosov as acting governor and has already held a working meeting with him.

As Baked told RIA Novosti, he plans to stay in the region and help the new leader.

“I submitted my resignation a little earlier. I understand that the president is now busy forming new teams, and I intend to continue working. I remain in the region and am ready to serve and help. Moreover, a lot has been done in recent years and there are still many unrealized plans.” , said Baked.

Yakutia

Yegor Borisov, who led Yakutia for eight years, published on Monday fast on Instagram, in which he announced his decision to resign of his own free will. He explained this by saying that the time has come for personnel rotation in the region.

Later, Putin accepted his resignation and appointed Aisen Nikolaev, who served as mayor of Yakutsk, as acting head of the republic.

Elections of heads of Yakutia and Magadan region

The new heads of Yakutia and the Magadan region will be elected on a single voting day, September 9, member of the Russian Central Election Commission Yevgeny Shevchenko told RIA Novosti.

“The elections for the heads of Yakutia and the Magadan region will take place on a single voting day,” Shevchenko told the agency.

He noted that in the Magadan region, the gubernatorial elections were initially scheduled for September 9, since the governor’s term of office was expiring.

Replacements in the governor's corps will continue

The resignation of the governor of the Magadan region will not be an isolated case; replacements in the governor's corps will continue, a source in the Russian Presidential Administration told RIA Novosti.

“This is not an isolated case; replacements in the governor’s corps will continue,” the agency’s interlocutor said.

Last week, the president, speaking at the SPIEF plenary session, said that it is necessary to continue the policy of qualitatively updating regional teams. According to him, at this level, a new management culture, modern approaches to solving economic and social problems are largely formulated, and open formats for interaction between the state and society are emerging.

Philip Preobrazhensky

Philip Preobrazhensky: “Was Vladimir Pecheny’s resignation from the post of governor an accident?”

Photo TASS

Vacation is not only a time for rest, relaxation and improvement of health. Vacations can be used, among other things, to immerse yourself in certain problematic topics that could not be dealt with in detail in the hustle and bustle of everyday work.

One of the problematic issues that, I believe, still continues to concern many residents of the Magadan region is the question of the reasons for the resignation of Vladimir Pecheny in May 2018. I have no doubt that someone has a clear idea and has reliable information, as they say, first hand. But “their circle is terribly narrow,” and I cannot attribute myself to this group of Magadan residents. Therefore, I continue to collect information on this issue. The search for an answer to the above question about resignation (and quite unexpected for the majority of Kolyma residents) led me to one organization - the Center for Economic and Political Reforms (hereinafter - CEPR, Center website: http://cepr.su).

I’ll say right away that there are plenty of organizations similar to CEPR in Russia. They are engaged in economic and political research, compile ratings, conduct monitoring of the socio-political situation, etc. Last spring, CEPR presented the results of a study entitled: “Rating of the effectiveness of regional governance: do the results of socio-economic policy influence the appointment of heads of constituent entities of the Russian Federation? "

Getting acquainted with this document, which is quite impressive in volume (more than 100 pages), made it possible to partially lift the “veil” that shrouds the resignation of Kolyma Governor Vladimir Pecheny. Therefore, I hasten to invite you to get acquainted with individual fragments of the study conducted by CEPR experts.

The final report of CEPR begins with the following introductory note: “Over the past few years, there has been a significant renewal of the governor’s corps. CEPR set itself the task of identifying whether the change of regional heads was related to the results of their socio-economic policies, as well as to give a general assessment of the dynamics of development of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in comparison with each other. "This laconic introduction contains, perhaps, the most important and for Magadan residents the question is: was Pecheny’s resignation related to the results of the socio-economic policy of the governor and his team?

To answer this question, CEPR experts did the following: “We chose indicators that allow us to dynamically assess the results of the management activities of regional leadership. Of course, when it comes to complex processes associated with socio-economic development, a whole range of different factors play a role (including the significant influence of international and federal trends, the activities of vertically integrated companies, etc.).

However, when deciding on the quality of work of the team leading the region, one cannot ignore how objective statistical indicators change. We have identified the following groups of indicators:

1) indicators of economic development (dynamics of GRP, indices of industrial production and agricultural production, dynamics of the volume of investments in fixed capital);

2) financial (budget) indicators (dynamics of regional budget revenues, the ratio of the upper limit of public internal debt to regional budget revenues, and a number of others);

3) economic and social indicators (unemployment dynamics, consumer price index, average wage dynamics);

4) demographic indicators (dynamics: population, birth and death rates);

5) indicators in the field of healthcare and education. The reporting period in the study was the time of the second wave of the “great crisis” - i.e. from 2014 to the present (March 2019).”

The authors of the study divided 85 Russian regions (republics, territories, oblasts, etc., also called constituent entities of the Russian Federation) into three groups: - those in which the head began to lead the subject (in the status of an acting official (ACTI) or in the position of head) before January 1, 2014, - “old-time governors”; - those in which the head began to lead the subject (in the status of acting governor or in the position of head) during 2014-2016. – “experienced governors”; - those in which the head began to lead the subject (in the status of acting governor or in the position of head) during 2017-2019. - “newbie governors”.

Since the change of governor in the Magadan region occurred in 2018, Kolyma was included in the group of regions called “newbie governors.” There are 20 such regions in total.

Regarding the 20 regions in which a change of power occurred in 2017-2018, the authors of the study indicate: “We examined the dynamics of socio-economic indicators in these regions for the period from 2013 to 2017 (that is, preceding the change of heads in all these subjects) and compared them with the dynamics of the same indicators in other regions.

Let us emphasize: we did not assess the socio-economic dynamics in these regions after the new heads came to power, that is, we did not even conduct an indirect assessment of the work of the new heads. A different goal was set - to identify the connection between the change of heads in the regions in 2017-2018. and the dynamics of the main indicators of socio-economic development in these regions in the previous period.”

But I ask you to pay special attention to the next paragraph from the CEPR report: “As a hypothesis, the idea was put forward that in the ranking of all 85 regions of the Russian Federation for the period 2013-2017. the dynamics of indicators where the head was changed in 2017-2018 was comparatively less favorable. Such results would show that the change of heads in these regions was a consequence, among other things, of worsening socio-economic indicators.

However, after ranking the regions of the Russian Federation according to indicators for the period 2013-2017. THE ABSENCE OF SUCH A REGULARITY was revealed.” I note that the phrase “the absence of such a pattern” was not highlighted by me by chance. Numerous rating tables compiled by the authors of the study based on an analysis of two dozen indicators demonstrate that by the beginning of 2018, the socio-economic situation in the Magadan region was not so critical in comparison with other Russian regions.

Here are some examples. In the ranking “Average dynamics of gross regional product for 2013-2017.” The Magadan region took 4th (!) place out of 85 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In the ranking “Average index of agricultural production” - 5th place. In the ranking “Average index of industrial production” - 29th place. In another economic rating - “Average dynamics of investment in fixed assets” - Kolyma ranks 24th. And in the “Average Consumer Price Index” rating, the region took 16th place. As you can see, economic development indicators are at a quite decent level, and according to certain indicators, the Magadan region even entered the TOP-10.

The region's fiscal performance indicators were slightly worse. But at the same time, the region did not trail at the tail of the list, but occupied positions in the first half of it: in the ranking “Average dynamics of regional budget revenues” the Magadan region is in 34th place; in the ranking “Average ratio of the upper limit of public internal debt to regional budget revenues” in 38th place out of 85 regions. According to indicators such as “Average dynamics of the birth rate” and “Average dynamics of the mortality rate”, Kolyma took 37th and 39th places, respectively.

The Magadan region still had “failures”. Thus, in the “Average population dynamics” ranking, the region took 55th place. There were “failures” in the development of the education sector: in the ranking “Average dynamics of the population per one general education institution” Kolyma is in 53rd place, and in the ranking “Average dynamics of the share (%) of children enrolled in preschool education” - 83rd place! Having analyzed about two dozen indicators, CEPR experts state: “In the ratings for indicators of all groups, there is no correlation between the change of the head of the region in 2017-2018. and the position of the region in the ranking for the previous period.

For example, in the ranking for the GRP dynamics indicator for the period 2013-2017. the subjects where the head was changed in 2017-2018 were fairly evenly distributed in the rating and were among both the leaders and the outsiders.”

The examples I have given, taken from the CEPR report, indicate that the Magadan region, based on the results of socio-economic development in the period from 2013 to 2017, had very high indicators and, in this regard, took the top places in the rankings. But there were also slides to lower positions.

In the section of the report “New Governors,” CEPR experts summarize: “...If we consider the situation with the change of heads as a whole, then it is obvious that there is no dependence between the fact of a change of head and the comparative achievements of the region in terms of the main indicators of socio-economic development. This applies to indicators of all groups: economic, financial, demographic, social.

In some cases, we can talk about a slight dependence: for example, in the ranking based on the average dynamics of unemployment, regions where a change of head occurred in 2017-2018 are predominantly grouped at the bottom of the ranking, and in the ranking based on the average dynamics of the share of children enrolled in preschool education , not a single such region made it into the TOP-8.

But even for such cases, this dependence is very ephemeral: a significant part of the regions where the head was changed in 2017-2018 were in the top part of the ranking, so in general this looks more like an accident than a pattern.”

On Monday, two regional leaders resigned - the head of Yakutia Yegor Borisov and the governor of the Magadan region Vladimir Pecheny. Borisov's resignation was expected; Pecheny was replaced due to his age, experts are sure

Egor Borisov and Vladimir Pecheny (Photo: Alexander Vilf / RIA Novosti)

Source of instability and age

On Monday, President Vladimir Putin accepted the resignation of two regional heads - and. Both resigned voluntarily.

Borisov's press secretary Stanislav Platonov told RBC a month ago that there was no reason to talk about the resignation of the head of the region. Borisov himself, commenting on information about his possible resignation to RBC last week, said that.

Borisov's powers expired in September 2019. Rumors about his resignation have been circulating for several years and have intensified in the last month. The Kremlin was unhappy with the state of affairs in the region. Lately, Yakutia has been called the main source of instability in the Far Eastern Federal District (FEFD), a source close to the DFO embassy told RBC. It was in Yakutia that Vladimir Putin had the lowest percentage of support in the March presidential elections (64.38%), he recalled. As a result, these factors, coupled with Borisov's poor relations with local elites, led to this result, he believes.

In addition, in February, Borisov and his assistant Evgeny Shigapov were at the center of a scandal due to an incident on board an Aeroflot plane. Shigapov tried to enter the cockpit of the plane, which was flying from Moscow to Yakutsk, the company said. As a result, the flight was delayed for an hour, and Shigapov had to pay an administrative fine. In addition, Borisov’s possible departure was associated with his poor health: the 63-year-old head of the republic had serious problems with his spine.​​

At the same time, RBC’s interlocutors close to the plenipotentiary mission of the Far Eastern Federal District and the leadership of the region expected that Borisov would resign later so that elections for a new head of the region would take place in 2019. This way it would be possible to avoid a double burden on his replacement: in September the republic will also hold elections to the regional parliament (Il Tumen).

In the Magadan region, the situation is different: the main reason for Pecheny’s resignation is his age (68 years), says Evgeniy Minchenko, president of the International Institute of Political Expertise. There were no special complaints against the governor, the expert believes.

Mayors to replace

A native of Magnitogorsk, the mayor of Nizhny Tagil, 57-year-old Sergei Nosov, has been appointed acting governor of the Magadan Region. The choice fell on Nosov, as he has experience in public politics and was a truly popular mayor among the population, Minchenko believes. He won 90.7% of the votes in last year's mayoral elections. The political scientist recalls that Nosov has long been on the lists of candidates for governors in various regions, in particular in the Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk and Kemerovo regions.

Sergey Nosov (Photo: Sergey Bobylev / TASS)

The president appointed the mayor of Yakutsk, 46-year-old Aisen Nikolaev, to act until the election of the head of Yakutia. Political scientist Konstantin Kalachev calls Nikolaev “a very systemic person.” “An experienced politician and an experienced manager. A good organizer, an active United Russia member, a consensus figure,” the expert believes. He believes that in the republic this decision of the Kremlin will be received with optimism. “For the republic, this is a familiar and proven person,” notes Kalachev, according to whom the request for change in Yakutia is ripe.

Yakutia is an economically extremely significant republic; the lion’s share of Russian diamonds is mined there, but it rarely appears on the federal agenda, Vinogradov emphasizes. “This is the largest region of Russia (18% of the entire territory), with the need to maintain interethnic balance. Therefore, they did not appoint a “Varangian” to Yakutia, but chose the most understandable and well-known figure from the local elite,” he is sure.

Aisen Nikolaev (Photo: Alexey Druzhinin / TASS)

Governors are in doubt

Thus, elections for 21 regional heads are already scheduled for a single voting day on September 9. Of these, only seven governors will be chosen as planned. We are talking about Moscow, the Moscow region, Chukotka, Khakassia, the Vladimir and Magadan regions, as well as the Khabarovsk Territory.

Five interlocutors close to the presidential administration told RBC that at least four heads of regions whose terms of office are expiring in 2018 have been approved to serve another term. These are the mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin, the governors of the Moscow and Vladimir regions - Andrei Vorobyov and Svetlana Orlova, as well as the head of the Khabarovsk Territory Vyacheslav Shport. In the run-up to the elections, they will be appointed as interim officials in order to take part in the election campaign in the fall.

Three regions will hold elections as local governors have been appointed to positions in the new government. This is the head of the Amur region Alexander Kozlov - headed the Ministry for the Development of the Far East, the head of the Tyumen region Vladimir Yakushev - the Ministry of Construction and Housing and Public Utilities, the head of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Dmitry Kobylkin - the Ministry of Natural Resources.

According to two sources of the Vedomosti newspaper close to the presidential administration, another governor may resign in June - the head of the Altai Territory, Alexander Karlin. The reason for this, according to the publication’s interlocutors, may be the low rating and the second-from-last (after Yakutia) level of support for Putin in the presidential elections.

The governor of the Magadan region, Vladimir Pecheny, according to Kommersant’s information, will resign in the near future. He did not show up for the primaries of United Russia to determine the candidate for governor, whose elections will be held on September 9. In other regions where scheduled gubernatorial campaigns will take place, heads will participate in preliminary voting. It follows a closed model; the formal competitors of the governors are not the most famous local politicians.

According to Kommersant sources close to the leadership of the Magadan region, Vladimir Pecheny may resign as early as next week. He did not show up for the primaries of United Russia, as determined by the party's candidate for governor. The Magadan branch of United Russia told Kommersant that the list of candidates is still being formed. According to Kommersant's information, a Varangian will be appointed acting governor, who will participate in the primaries and go to the polls. The regional United Russia did not name the names of the candidates in the primaries, citing the fact that they were “being discussed.”

Vladimir Pecheny was appointed acting governor of Magadan in 2013, replacing Nikolai Dudov, who led the region for ten years, as head of the region. In the elections, Vladimir Pecheny won 73.11% with a turnout of 32.28%. Before that, he served as mayor of Magadan (elected to this position in 2004 and 2008). According to political scientist Alexander Kynev, to Vladimir Pecheny, “except for age (he is 68 years old.- “Kommersant”), there are no special complaints”: “When he ran for elections in 2013, it was understood that he would govern for one term.” Political scientist Evgeny Minchenko also talks about the age of the Magadan governor. “At this age, governors usually do not receive extensions of authority,” he explained. According to the political scientist, if a Varangian is appointed to the Magadan region, he “will have a difficult time in the elections.” “In the Novosibirsk region (the mayor of Vologda, Andrey Travnikov, was appointed acting governor.- “Kommersant”) we already see difficulties. The Magadan region is also a subject with a strong regional identity,” Mr. Minchenko told Kommersant. In the April rating of the socio-political sustainability of regions by the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation, the Magadan Region is classified as a region with “high sustainability.”

On a single voting day, September 9, 20 gubernatorial elections will be held, only 7 of them will take place as planned: in addition to the Magadan region - in Moscow, the Moscow region, Chukotka, Khakassia, the Vladimir region and the Khabarovsk Territory. Self-nomination of a candidate for the head of a region is possible only in the capital (see the material on this page); in other regions, applicants for the gubernatorial post can only be nominated by parties. United Russia nominees must go through the procedure of internal party primaries.

Governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov announced his participation in the elections at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, specifying that he would need to go through the primaries of the party in power. The final list of its competitors has not yet been determined. On May 30 in Podolsk United Russia will hold a meeting of the heads of local and primary branches of the party with candidates.

Press secretary of the Khakass branch of United Russia, Konstantin Anikin, told Kommersant that the head of the republic, Viktor Zimin, has already submitted an application to participate in the primaries. Besides him, three candidates showed up for the primaries, one of whom is a deputy of the Supreme Council. The regional branch of the party could not name the names of the candidates.

In other regions where governors have entered the primaries, the list of their competitors is already known and there are no influential local politicians among them.

In the Vladimir region, the head of the region, Svetlana Orlova, will compete with deputies of the legislative assembly Sergei Borodin, who heads the Development Corporation of the Vladimir Region, and Svetlana Mangusheva, who is the chairman of the board of the branch of the organization “Educators of Russia”. In 2013, Ms. Orlova’s competitors in the primaries were the speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Vladimir Kiselev, and State Duma deputy Grigory Anikeev, who, according to his income statement for 2017, became the richest State Duma deputy (earned 4.3 billion rubles). Alexander Kynev noted that “the replacement of Viktor Zimin and Svetlana Orlova was discussed,” but their nomination in the primaries suggests that the governors will be able to retain their posts “at least for part of the term.”

The opponents of Khabarovsk Governor Vyacheslav Shport in the primaries were the director of Green-Agro LLC, member of the ONF Andrei Mikheev and deputy of the Legislative Duma Natalya Pudovkina. In the previous primaries, one of the candidates was the head of the board of directors of Dalenergomash, Pyotr Boychuk. Competing with the head of Chukotka Roman Kopin are the general director of the Chukotka Airports FKP Sergei Batychenko and the head of Anadyrmorport OJSC Viktor Tyukhtiy, who was Mr. Kopin’s sparring partner in the primaries and in 2013. According to Mr. Kynev, “competition in gubernatorial elections has shrunk and this is reflected in the primaries.” “Ritual primaries flow into the same ritual elections,” he concluded.

Governor of the Magadan Region Vladimir Pecheny announced his resignation. The only reason for this is the age of the current head of the region (68 years old). They started talking about such a possible step by the head after he did not show up for the United Russia party primaries to determine a candidate for the gubernatorial elections, which will be held in September.

The regional portal “Kolyma-inform” writes that, perhaps, a “Varangian” will be appointed to Pechyony’s place, and the Magadan governor himself said that he will not comment on his decision yet, since there has not yet been a “preliminary vote (primaries), the date of which determined by the regional and general political councils of the party.”

A native of the Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi, a philologist by training, Vladimir Pecheny since April 1990 worked as deputy chairman of the Magadan City Executive Committee, then deputy mayor, and in 2004 became the mayor of the city for the first time.

On February 3, 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Vladimir Pecheny as acting governor of the Magadan region, in connection with the resignation of Nikolai Dudov. In the elections, with a turnout of 32.28 percent, Pecheny won with a result of 73.11 percent, that is, only 15 percent of the population of the Magadan region voted for him.

kremlin.ru

Russian President Vladimir Putin with the Governor of the Magadan Region Vladimir Pecheny

But no serious breakthroughs in socio-economic development were achieved under Pecheny, except that at the end of 2016, the Magadan region was named the most drinking region of the country. It is no coincidence that in the same year, Vladimir Pecheny, along with a number of other governors, left the supreme council of United Russia. The key screening criterion was the poor results of United Russia's Duma elections in the territories it headed. Pechyony’s place was taken by Oksana Bondar, secretary of the Magadan regional branch of United Russia.

However, the federal center has no special complaints against Vladimir Pecheny, largely due to the fact that the region is considered very socially stable. And in the sobriety rating, the region, by the way, rose from last to 74th place. However, apparently, the Kremlin fears that if Pechyony is left on the farm, the voter turnout in the gubernatorial elections will be too low, as it was five years ago, which will reduce the legitimacy of the regional government.

TASS/Artem Korotaev

Governor of the Magadan Region Vladimir Pecheny (foreground)

Throughout his administrative career in the region, Pechyony always preferred to harshly suppress criticism of himself. Thus, in 2004, during the campaign for the mayoral elections in Magadan, the local TV channel “Karibu” was taken off the air for a video against the acting head of the city, Vladimir Pecheny. And in 2016, a criminal case was opened against a resident of Magadan who criticized the governor during a public inspection of the quality of built houses.

It is symptomatic that the Magadan media recently conducted a survey that showed that only 10 percent of the region’s residents know the deputy governor for the social block, Tatyana Savchenko, and the governor himself mainly spends his working time visiting city retail outlets in the company of close bloggers in order to determine germination potatoes and cabbage on farms and other similar populist actions.