The Kremlin is discussing the resignation of the Governor of the Tomsk region Sergey Zhvachkin. The probability of his departure is the highest, sources told RBC
Sergey Zhvachkin
The governor of the Tomsk region, Sergei Zhvachkin, may resign, four sources close to the presidential administration told RBC. “The probability (of leaving) is the highest,” one of them clarified. Another interlocutor also said that the probability of Zhvachkin’s resignation is extremely high.
The governor of the Tomsk region may leave his post before the end of this year, sources said, but the final decision will be made by the president.
RBC sent a request to the press service of the Governor of the Tomsk region.
64-year-old Sergey Zhvachkin is finalizing his second gubernatorial term—his powers expire in the fall of 2022.
He headed the Tomsk region in 2012, before the return of direct elections of heads of regions. In 2017, Zhvachkin ran for a second term, winning in the first round with 60.6% of the vote.
Zhvachkin’s pre-gubernatorial career was connected with the oil and gas sector: he worked in various positions in the companies “Tomskneftestroy”, “Tomskneft”, was the CEO of “Tomskgaz”, “Kubangazprom”, then “Gazprom Transgaz-Kuban”.
Experts of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications (APEC) in their recent report on governors with the greatest risks of resignation described Zhvachkin’s vulnerability factors as follows: he belongs to the category of so-called age leaders; the region has protest potential. In particular, in the Duma elections, “United Russia” received 32.7% of the votes in the Tomsk Region, which is slightly lower than in the neighboring Novosibirsk Region and the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
“The high level of protest voting in the Tomsk Duma elections in September 2020 is indicative: the result of the United Russia list was 24.46% of votes, and politicians associated with non-systemic opposition also entered the city parliament,” the authors of the report note.
According to the results of a single voting day in September 2020, candidates supported by the “Smart Vote” of Alexei Navalny won the elections to the Tomsk City Duma in 19 out of 27 districts. In particular, the coordinator of Navalny’s headquarters (recognized as an extremist organization, their activities are prohibited in Russia), Ksenia Fadeeva, passed to the Duma.
In the Kremlin, such election results caused serious discontent, sources later told RBC.
“Zhvachkin is absent from the region more often than is permissible,” he spends a lot of time in Moscow and in the Krasnodar Territory,” says one of the interlocutors close to the Kremlin of RBC.
There are two main factors working against the governor of the Tomsk region, says Vitaly Ivanov, an expert on regional policy. “Firstly, he is of age, and only by age does not fit into the new image of the governor. Secondly, last year the regional authorities held elections to the Tomsk City Duma extremely badly, and as a result, they passedNavalny’s supporters. No one has forgotten this [at the federal level],” the expert states.
According to Ivanov, the elections to the State Duma and the legislative Assembly of the Tomsk region “went well, but this is not thanks to [Zhvachkin], but in spite of”. During the campaign, specialists from Moscow worked in the region, the expert said.
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