After Yakovlev and Kostya the Grave

KREMLIN FACES NEW SITUATION IN PETERSBURG. In a period of months, the political landscape in Petersburg has totally changed. When Governor Vladimir Yakovlev lost control of the city legislature and his chances of running for a third term as governor slipped away, Presidential Envoy Viktor Cherkesov had completed his main job. He was recalled to Moscow and Valentina Matvienko took his place (see Russian Regional Report, 15 April 2003).

Then many observers pointed out that the stage was being set for Matvienko to run for governor. President Vladimir Putin clearly did not want a repeat of the gubernatorial elections of 2000, when Matvienko had to withdraw from the race after it became obvious that Yakovlev would win. Putin wants a St. Petersburg governor who will be completely loyal to him and who will be acceptable to the other Petersburgers in Moscow.
At the same time, Matvienko is no longer capable of working at the federal level - Petersburg for her is an honorable exile and the job of envoy is simply a transitional position. If the plans to merge St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast ever go through, Matvienko could serve as the leader of the new enlarged region.
Some time in the beginning of April, Putin and Yakovlev made a deal that, in exchange for a federal post, Yakovlev would "give up" Petersburg after the 300th anniversary celebrations. And, on 17 June, Putin appointed Yakovlev as the sixth deputy prime minister handling housing reform and infrastructure development. Until the pre-term elections set for 21 September, First Deputy Governor Aleksandr Beglov will serve as acting governor. With Envoy Matvienko's support, Beglov was elected the head of the regional Yedinaya Rossiya organization on 9 June.
Yakovlev's departure led to major changes within the city's journalistic community. On 23 June, the governor's last media bastion fell when Irina Terkina was forced to leave the position of general director of the Petersburg-5th Channel Television and Radio Company just one year after being appointed to the post. Professionally, Terkina had been a major success. She took over a station with 5.5 million rubles of debt and this year had already achieved 1.6 million rubles in profit. The station's ratings were going up, as were its advertising sales. On 11 July, the shareholders will appoint deputy head of the Rossiya-Petersburg channel as the new director. The change in leadership amounts to a hostile takeover of Petersburg-5th Channel since Rossiya-Petersburg has waged an unrelenting campaign against Yakovlev since 2000. Now the station will work for Matvienko and it will have no trouble extending its license during the next competition. The threat that the station would lose its license in the July 2003 competition was one of the main levers used against it.
St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Speaker Vadim Tyulpanov's position is now shaky. With the departure of Yakovlev, the pro-governor deputies have thrown their support in with Matvienko and Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov (who set up a faction of his Party of Life on the base of Sergei Tarasov's faction, which had supported Yakovlev in the past). The new team in the envoy's office does not consider it necessary to stick the former agreement that Cherkesov had with Tyulpanov.
During June, Acting Governor Beglov replaced the pro-Yakovlev chairman of the City Electoral Commission Aleksandr Garusov with Aleksandr Gnetov, the former deputy head of the North-West Customs Service. This move will help smooth an electoral bumps Matvienko may face in the future.
On 25 May, just before Yakovlev resigned, Konstantin Yakovlev, better known by his nick-name Kostya the Grave and one of the uncrowned kings of the Petersburg crime world, was gunned down in Moscow. The nature of his killing is curious in two respects. First, though Kostya the Grave was always extremely careful about his security, on the day of his death he was traveling in an ordinary car. It is well known that in both Moscow and Petersburg, he had an armored Mercedes and his own security firm. He often claimed that "I am a professional. My business is war. As long as I fight, I will live." Kostya worked as an observer in St. Petersburg for Moscow crime interests and often helped settle complicated disputes among criminal groups, but in recent years had not been the target of any groups (at least as far as is known publicly).
Second, the work of the assassins in this case was extremely professional. They had access to shooting ranges for training and were able to hit their target from a moving motorcycle using a modified AK-47, which has a powerful recoil. Moreover, they knew exactly how the surveillance cameras at the nearby UN building functioned.
The first possible explanation of the crime suggested by the media was that the St. Petersburg-based Tambov organized crime group, and Vladimir Kumarin-Barsukov had organized the hit. This scenario seems unlikely. After Kumarin lost his arm in a 1994 attack, he has essentially stopped using such methods, especially in regard to figures as powerful as Kostya the Grave.
A second possibility is that the killing is the result of conflicts within Kostya the Grave's own empire. Kostya's informal deputy was Denis Volchek, the leader of the Russian Sport faction in the city legislature and it is possible that he wanted to take over the top job. However, observers point out that Volchek mostly handles financial issues and probably would not have been able to organize such a professional shooting.
A third possibility is that Russia's special services have started a purge. The highly professional nature of the assassination and Cherkesov's assignment to clean up the city provide evidence for this theory. Now that Governor Yakovlev is leaving, his Kremlin-backed successor wants to have a free hand in the city and not have to make agreements with legalized criminals as equals (rather they should come on bended knee). Undoubtedly, the Moscow-based Petersburgers are psychologically prepared to use force against the city's criminal groups. Each of them remembers the humiliation and fear of the beginning of the 1990s when criminal groups attempted to influence all important decisions and projects.
Matvienko announced that she would seek election as St. Petersburg's governor on 24 June. Before then she had not put together a real campaign team that knew the city and wielded real influence. Of course, Muscovite PR specialists had boosted Matvienko's name recognition to 30 percent, bringing it up to Yakovlev's level. Three days later Putin announced that he supported Matvienko's candidacy, signaling others that it was time to back her.
So far the only viable candidate opposing Matvienko is Deputy Governor Ann Markova. However, it remains unclear how serious Markova's intentions are. She has long known Matvienko and it is possible that they made a deal that she would enter the race in order to increase popular interest in the competition and thereby ensure a higher turnout. State Duma member Oksana Dmitrieva decided not to enter the race, preferring to concentrate on winning reelection to the national legislature in December.
If no serious competitors against Matvienko appear in the near future and her campaign team does not make any serious mistakes, then she will likely win the race, perhaps even in the first round. – Daniil Tsygankov in Moscow and St. Petersburg