Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Russia Squanders Its Chance at Democracy

The National Interest

In late August, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev appointed Georgy Poltavchenko governor of St. Petersburg. Poltavchenko has served as presidential envoy to Russia’s central-administrative district since 2000. More importantly, he is a loyalist to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and a KGB veteran. He replaces Valentina Matviyenko, another Putin confidante, who has moved on to chair the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Parliament. Sergey Mironov, the former speaker of the Federation Council, is out. All this game of musical chairs has little to do with either President Medvedev or significant democratic developments. Rather, it demonstrates how Putin is rearranging his insiders.

Planned in secret as early as July, Poltavchenko’s appointment highlights the deep gap between democratic rhetoric and practice in today’s Russia. Analyzing the move, Nikolay Petrov, the Moscow Carnegie Endowment regional-politics expert, sounded baffled:

If United Russia were suffering from low ratings in St. Petersburg and the unpopular Matviyenko was dragging the party even further down, why replace her with a gray, low-profile presidential envoy who has about as much charisma as State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov? For all of her shortcomings—and there were many of them—Matviyenko at least was a colorful and charismatic politician.