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09.09.10
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An Ally Lost?
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By Roland Oliphant
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Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov made a surprise endorsement of the route of the Moscow – St. Petersburg highway through the Khimki forest this week, abandoning an apparent stance of passive opposition. While environmentalists are disappointed at the loss of a potential ally, Kremlin insiders have reportedly hit out at the mayor for trying to drive a wedge between President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Luzhkov’s move came as a corruption investigation was launched into one of his close aides. Is the Moscow mayor finally doomed?
In an article published in the state-owned daily Rossiskaya Gazeta Tuesday, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov made clear that he backs the controversial route through the Khimki forest – even though City Hall had previously appeared to oppose the plans. “The current planned route is justified. It’s cheaper. It’s technically prepared,” wrote Luzhkov. “The result – to stick to the already planned and approved route. We had to make some sacrifices, and, of course, that is regrettable. But the price we pay is still sounder than the other options.”
Although Luzhkov himself had never explicitly backed the forest defenders protesting the road, he was widely said to be locked in a quarrel with Moscow Region Governor Boris Gromov about the route, and his close allies have in the past practically denounced it. Last week Oleg Mitvol, Luzhkov’s right-hand man and governor of Moscow’s Northern District, which borders Khimki, said the mayor backed an alternative route through Mozhaninovo. But in his article Tuesday the Moscow mayor said that route, though possible, would be too expensive, destroy marshland on the edge of the forest, and displace local residents. “Three to four thousand families would be left for a long time, maybe forever, without improvement in their living conditions. When you think about it not in meters, but in human life, the cost is obvious,” Luzhkov wrote.
The decision is a disappointment for the environmental campaigners who have taken up the defense of Khimki forest, hoping to find a “potential ally” in Luzhkov.
The reason for the about-face could be the result of a business deal – Luzhkov’s business interests may have been cut in on the deal to benefit from the development of Khimki forest as a compromise – or could be the result of a “direct political order,” said Nikolai Petrov, and expert on regional affairs at the Moscow Carnegie Center.
But if the Khimki forest defenders are disappointed, the Kremlin is apparently outraged. Interfax yesterday quoted an anonymous “source in the presidential administration” who accused the Moscow authorities of “fruitless attempts to drive a wedge between the president of the country and the prime minister.” The anonymous sources’ reasoning seems to be that backing the road after Medvedev called a halt to construction to “reconsider options” in the face of public protest was a direct challenge to the president’s authority. But there are plenty of other loud supporters of the road – the Khimki city authorities, for instance, have made no secret of their stance on the issue. Medvedev only called a “suspension” of the road building, not a complete halt, and both he and United Russia made a point of not ruling out the original route. Since there’s meant to be a public debate about the issue, why shouldn’t the mayor of Moscow, whose constituency has a massive interest in the project, make his views heard – even if he’s changed them? Apparently because the Rossiskaya Gazeta article was by far the most innocuous of what Interfax’s source called “publications that have appeared in the past several days including in the Moscow media.”
Last Friday a source in the city administration told Gazeta.ru that Luzhkov did not want to “go against Putin,” who backed the decision to build the road through the forest and signed the necessary law that changed the status of the land from a nature reserve to an area open to development.
But the source seems to be referring above all to an article by Yuri Kovelitsyn published in Moskovsky Komsomolets on September 1, called “Competition around Moscow.” The opinion piece, which begins with a vigorous defense of Luzhkov and his wife Elena Baturina against the allegations of corruption often leveled at them, goes on to argue that the supposed tension between City Hall and the Kremlin “is a manifestation of a deep tectonic process, a collision of two political platforms – even plates – originating in St. Petersburg.”
The colliding political plates, Kovelitsyn explains, are respectively Putin’s and Medvedev’s. As the capital of the country, Moscow just happens to be on the fault line.
According to Kovelitsyn, Medvedev has two nuclear options in the situation: to fire the Moscow mayor, “who is loyal to the prime minister and works with him to stabilize the situation not only in Moscow, but all of Russia,” and release jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “Even if Putin now has many levers of control in the country, many of those instruments would be broken by either of these strikes,” the paper explained.
The implication appears to be that any urge to remove Luzhkov on Medvedev’s part is actually motivated by disloyalty to Putin – and warns that any such move would result in a colored revolution. Assuming – as Petrov does – that the article was “inspired” by Luzhkov, or his wife, or his press secretary, the obvious inference is that Luzhkov understands that Putin is the more important of Russia’s two rulers, and he’s eager to change his loyalties in order to survive.
But Petrov doesn’t think much of that. “You can’t drive a wedge between a tandem that isn’t a tandem,” he said. “It’s clear that it’s more of a partnership in which Medvedev is the junior partner. “Fine, so Luzhkov recognizes that Putin is an important guy. Well, that’s always been the case and Luzhkov is not a boy, so there were no doubts that Putin was making the decisions,” he said.
Sergei Markov, a political analyst and State Duma Deputy for the United Russia Party, also dismissed the idea of an attempt to “divide” the two. “I’m sure Putin and Medvedev have different opinions over Khimki and other issues – because these are very difficult issues. But the point is that this discussion never came out of their circle,” he said. “And those different approaches did not become political, but were managerial,” he said.
Nonetheless, it’s well known that there is little love lost between Luzhkov and the federal powers (earlier this summer the posturing between them verged on the comic, when he publically told state Duma deputies and Kremlin officials that they would have to pay to park their cars).
But the Moscow rumor mill was fed more grist this week in the form of an interview that Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin gave to Rossiskaya Gazeta. Published the same day as Luzhkov’s Khimki road endorsement, the country’s top detective took the opportunity to accuse Luzhkov’s deputy, Alexander Ryabin, of fleeing the country while under investigation for corruption. When Medvedev didn’t show up to congratulate Luzhkov on Moscow’s City Day at the weekend, pundits seemed to think that the mayor might as well start clearing his desk immediately.
It may well be true that Medvedev is keener to get rid of Luzhkov than Putin, but both Petrov and Markov – analysts from very different parts of the political spectrum – believe the differences are practical rather than ideological. “I think Putin personally hates Luzhkov,” said Petrov, “but the mayor plays by the rules of the game; he’s not as powerful as he used to be; and he gets the vote out for United Russia.”
And that’s key. “Moscow is an influential capital – it’s the equivalent of Washington, New York and Los Angeles rolled into one,” said Markov. Polls show that in direct elections, Luzhkov would “obviously” win, said Markov. “And when the mayor controls the situation like that, who are you supposed to replace him with?” |
| The source |
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