In recent weeks, Kuznetsov has not even been able to properly register a change in the leadership of the regional branch.
Party “Just Russia – For the truth!” (SRZP) Sergei Mironov could finally lose one of his once stronghold regions – the Voronezh region. From the legacy of Dmitry Rogozin and the powerful party builder and editor Oleg Pakholkov, the SRZP came to the current head of the regional department, State Duma Deputy Dmitry Kuznetsov. Now it has become difficult to take seriously the Voronezh Socialist-Revolutionaries, who once thundered throughout the country.
Sergei Mironov In recent weeks, Kuznetsov has not even been able to properly register a change in the leadership of the regional branch. Meanwhile, his only official appearance as head of the Voronezh SRs seems to have turned into a farce. Against the backdrop of the party’s crumpled banner, he said a representative from Wagner PMC may run in the gubernatorial election. The organization’s founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, immediately denied this, in fact, calling Kuznetsov a petty falsifier. As a result, the SRZP will send a local businessman, Yevgeny Oryupin, who poses no threat to United Russia, to the elections.
Evgeny Oryupin Dmitry Kuznetsov drew Bloknot’s attention to his activities in Voronezh the other day when he held his first press conference as the official head of the SRHR department. In addition to general fiction, he suddenly told reporters that in the gubernatorial elections, which will be held on September 10, “a person from a private military company with a ‘B’ beginning and a ‘P’ ending with a “P” can be nominated by the SRZP, clearly alluding to Wagner PMC.
Dmitry Kuznetsov (on the left) Kuznetsov thus revived the rumors about the “absorption” of the SRHR by the structures of Evgueni Prigojine, who personally sued the party and its leader Sergei Mironov all spring.
Kuznetsov’s statement immediately began to confuse him. First, the environment in which it was made. The deputy and his entourage obviously didn’t really bother to impress the people of Voronezh: even the party banner hung behind him, to the unpleasant surprise of local party members, seemed to have been removed from someone’s fifth point. ‘A. And secondly, just two weeks earlier, the SRZP congress was held, during which no one from the PMCs appeared in the party leadership. And “cooperation” with her was limited to general Mironov talk about “support for fighters.”
The assumption that Kuznetsov was simply carrying a blizzard was quickly confirmed. Local journalists turned to Yevgeny Prigozhin himself for a comment on participation in Voronezh politics. And he replied that “neither he nor the PMC” Wagner “have any interest in the elections in the Voronezh region.”
“What they say in the media today is pure fiction or someone’s inane public relations,” Prigozhin said. Calling Kuznetsov in this way, in fact, a deceiver and a clumsy public relations man. However, even without Prigozhin in the region, only the most naive or specially charged people believed in such “faith” in the region about the appearance of “Wagners” in the elections.
“The front is one thing, they have strength and a skill enforcement point there. The election of the leader of the frontline, but rear, region is quite another matter. Why does Prigozhin need him and who should let him in here,” a senior regional government official asked in an interview with Bloknot.
Further research showed that Kuznetsov had a similar attitude towards other regional cases. For example, he managed to re-elect the head of the department only on the second attempt. Having received a “mandate” to be elected to Voronezh as the first person, Kuznetsov decided to keep as a deputy and, obviously, the real director of the regional department, a local political scientist Sergei Borisov. Until recently, it was he who officially led the Voronezh Socialist-Revolutionaries and was embroiled in a number of intra-party conflicts.
The candidacy of Sergei Borisov Borisov was not allowed by the central office in Kuznetsov, and the conference had to be convened again.
Things got to the point that, according to a party source, “we had to make extra efforts” to register Kuznetsov as the new head of the department at the Justice Ministry. And let Borisov “just a party member.”
Kuznetsov joined the SRZP in 2021 as a supporter of its co-chairman, writer Zakhar Prilepin, in the Socialist-Revolutionary-affiliated For Truth! party.
With the beginning of the SVO, the deputy almost stopped going out in camouflage clothes and in every possible way builds an image of a strong, uncompromising “patriot”. But even on this seemingly fertile topic, Kuznetsov failed to promote himself in Voronezh. The day after the scandalous press conference, Kuznetsov announced on his Telegram channel that he had “met men” ready to “defend their house”, that is, allegedly representatives of the Voronezh Terodefense. But none of the true territorial defense activists known to the Bloknot journalist had heard of Kuznetsov, let alone of the rally. And judging by the photo posted by Kuznetsov himself, the overwhelming majority of the participants of the small meeting (20 people) are girls who do not look like a therodefense at all.
All this can cease to be surprising if you find out that with his right hand, at least in Voronezh affairs, Kuznetsov chose a very colorful Nizhny Novgorod Dmitry Shurov. During the years of the governorship in Nizhny Novgorod of the most influential native of the Moscow City Hall, Valery Shantsev, Shurov made a fairly good career there as a civil servant of United Russia: he served as an adviser to the Deputy Regional Prime Minister , was responsible for housing and communal services in various capacities, and the crowning achievement of his career was the post of regional minister of internal policy, which Shurov held in 2010-2012. His profile is still on the site of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of United Russia, whose political council included the current faithful “Kuznetsovets”.
Shurov’s career came to a sudden halt in 2012, when he became an actor. head of the Kanavinsky district of Nizhny Novgorod – not a weak demotion from the ministerial post. In the end, there was nothing mysterious about such a zigzag of fate: it was just that, apparently, the security forces were already coming for Shurov. According to the Interior Ministry, in 2012 the Sambo Academy in the oil city of Kstovo suddenly lost its premises, which were sold in an obscure scheme with bills of 20.3 million rubles. It seems that Shantsev clearly did not want to get into police dealings with a fraudulent minister, and he went to work in quieter places. After Shantsev’s departure in 2017, police took Shurov seriously – lawsuits to remove him from his official position and outright accusations of corruption followed. However, the police failed to get Shurov to “land” – the matter bogged down in court, including the restoration of Shurov as head of the Kanavinsky district. In general, the good reasons have accumulated for the transition of the former official to the “patriotic opposition”.
But Kuznetsov, even without Shurov, one gets the impression, quite coped with the role of a useless windmill. He likes to submit deliberately failed but “ideologically correct” bills to the State Duma and propose strange initiatives. For example, he demanded that the musicians of the B-2 group be banned from entering Russia, one of whom (recognized as Lev’s foreign agent) criticized the SVO.
Dmitry Kuznetsov MP forgot that regardless of their political preferences, citizens of the Russian Federation cannot be denied entry to their country. As well as to spare them survey questions, if there really were any. Kuznetsov does not like to delve into the intricacies of legislation. In addition, he proposed “compulsory licensing of hostile cultural property”.
But at the same time he ‘pressed the wrong button’ and abstained on a really important vote – on the introduction of electronic subpoenas.
Party comrades interviewed by Bloknot also doubt Kuznetsov’s “financial cleanliness”. As a “fairy tale in which there is a clue”, they told the story of the Vladlen Tatarsky Prize announced by Kuznetsov, together with Zakhar Prilepin and a number of other creative figures supporting the SVO (military commander Maxim Fomin , died April 2).
According to Kuznetsov, writers like when the prize is “a lot of money”. Tatarsky, according to our interlocutors, “Kuznetsov’s main attraction for donations.” Some time ago, as they say, Kuznetsov practically had to take the blogger for himself as an assistant to a deputy of the State Duma. By order.
“As a result, they once went with Vladlen to the area of the Lugansk front, and perhaps met 3-4 times in Moscow … now Kuznetsov establishes the Vladlen Prize. A similar fund has already been created ” , he said.
The question of where the donations go often torments curious party locals.
“After all, from the money collected, he could distribute 150-200 thousand rubles to each participant of an average meeting with front-line soldiers and solve all their private material problems. But for some reason that’s not happening,” one mocks.
Slip-on activity in Voronezh is already being felt. Of the political homeland status of one of the ancestors of the party, the ex-head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, no trace remained. The party of “zero” and the first “tenths” competed with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for the place of the main opposition force in the region. The regional branch of the SRZP fell into decline after an urgent change of leadership in 2015 (State Duma deputy Oleg Pakholkov) in favor of loyalists of then governor Alexei Gordeev (now deputy chairman of the State Duma), which has always tried to exercise total control. of everyone and everything. But, as they say, the party fund of the socialist party was replenished with 300 million rubles from the capitalist banker Abubakar Arsamakov. It seems that after such a credit history, serious people are not looking to invest in Voronezh SRZP. From now on, the regional branch, under the direction of the most pointed Dmitry Kuznetsov, is inexpensive.
This time, the election of the current governor of Voronezh, Alexander Gusev, will be accompanied by the deputy of the regional parliament Yevgeny Oryupin, a senior local official of construction and investment companies. Apparently, they are agreed to be sparring partners in all corridors of power and claim no significant percentage of support.
Lyricist: Nikolai Troinin
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