How Russia renounced its claims to the peninsula. About the UAZ that will be, and the cuts that are not there Evgeniy Baklanov, editor of the newspaper “Freedom Square”

When it comes to the economic well-being of the city, eyes always turn to the flagships of industry. The income of the city treasury, the economic base of thousands of families, and employment of the population, without which a prosperous social situation cannot exist, largely depend on the prosperity of large enterprises. In 2017, UAZ became one of the leaders in the region in terms of tax deductions, and this despite a variety of, sometimes incredible, rumors that things are not particularly good at the Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant: either popular rumors are scary about layoffs, or they say that the plant has been sold in parts . Nevertheless, every day more than ten thousand people go to their jobs through the entrance of the plant, and every year UAZ brings to the market both updated and fundamentally new models. How are things going at the local auto giant today? We decided to get this information first-hand and talked with the operating director of UAZ LLC, Ruslan Gorev.

— Ruslan Grigorievich, in the fall of 2017, UAZ launched a new truck, the UAZ Profi, onto the market. How does the new product perform in the market? How do you assess the results of last year’s work as a whole?

–For us, 2017 was a successful year in terms of the development of the model range. We released the UAZ Profi truck, which combines good load capacity and the comfort of a passenger car. In addition to the basic configuration, the Profi with a wide platform, with LPG, and add-ons for cargo transportation and delivery of goods went on sale. We didn’t plan to stop there, so we developed an ambulance and a school bus based on the UAZ Profi, so far only experimental models.

In addition, specially for the 45th anniversary of the legendary UAZ-469, we released a special anniversary version of the Hunter. Today on the assembly line you can see two special versions of our flagship “UAZ Patriot” at once: the football version - released specially in honor of the World Cup in Russia, and the expedition version - on which the UAZ racing team this year took the “silver” of the European Championship at the prestigious “Ladoga Trophy” competition "

Finally, another latest UAZ development is a hybrid car, the trial operation of which we plan to begin in 2019. Our customers are primarily interested in fuel efficiency, and the hybrid power plant will reduce fuel consumption to a minimum. I am convinced that the future lies with hybrid cars, and the plant intends to seriously develop in this direction.

– If we talk about development, UAZ releases either updates to its model range or new models every year. Are you planning to release new products in the near future?

– For any automaker, the development path is based on customer requirements. These requirements are growing every year, and we are growing along with them - improving the quality and consumer properties of cars. Of course, we have plans to launch new models, but on this issue I will keep the intrigue for now. I am confident that brand lovers and new customers will appreciate everything we offer to the market.

– Just about the merits. Before the meeting, we studied in sufficient detail the reviews on popular Internet resources about UAZ cars. We came to the conclusion that consumers of the Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant products are divided into two groups: loyal brand advocates and irreconcilable critics who talk about quality problems. What is UAZ doing to improve the quality of its SUVs?

– We annually develop and approve a quality program. Since 2016, the plant has had quality improvement teams, so-called VRT teams, that monitor vehicle quality indicators in seven areas: chassis, electrical equipment, power unit, complex engineering defects, paintwork, interior and exterior.

Of course, our cars are becoming more complex, and many electronic systems are appearing that need tuning. To this end, UAZ has launched a new test track and a modern test line, where dynamic tests, adjustment of headlights and the vehicle’s chassis are carried out automatically.

In general, we have achieved good results: warranty defects in SUVs have decreased by more than 30%. In 2018, we have serious work to do in two areas: reducing the number of defects, technical and technological re-equipment. More than 250 million rubles will be invested in improving quality - this is a serious investment in equipment and processes, the results of which can already be seen in production today. The plant is changing, and changing for the better, in line with the most advanced trends in global automotive production.

– Speaking of global trends. Over the past year, the Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant has repeatedly appeared in the news as an enterprise that is increasing exports. How is our car assessed abroad? Will UAZ continue to conquer foreign markets?

– Of course, the UAZ brand has been well known abroad for more than half a century; it has a good reputation in traditional markets. Last year, the export of UAZ SUVs increased by 47%: we supplied more than 5 thousand vehicles to foreign markets. Today, our portfolio of export orders includes more than 40 countries: these are the countries of the CIS and neighboring countries, West Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. New directions are also emerging: for example, last year we entered the markets of Costa Rica and Ecuador. In 2018, we expect to export at least 10% of UAZ vehicles from the brand’s total sales. Of these, more than 3.5 thousand cars will be sent to neighboring countries, and more than 1.5 thousand – to non-CIS countries.

– Over the past year, often against the backdrop of election processes, UAZ has more than once been at the forefront of public criticism in connection with conditions and wages, and personnel policy. How are things going with personnel at the enterprise today? What is the situation with wages and benefits for employees?

– Over the past years, the situation with personnel at UAZ has been quite stable. However, there is a shortage of highly skilled workers and engineers - exactly the same as in most other Russian enterprises. Developing a new product requires large engineering resources. Now we are ready to accept technologists, designers, painters, welders, straighteners and representatives of other working professions into our team.

At the same time, the plant has its own corporate training center and employee retraining programs. That is, each employee, if desired, can improve their qualifications and obtain a higher-paid specialty. The average salary of our employees is about 30 thousand rubles, and the company has a flexible system that allows you to increase your income in accordance with experience and qualifications.

Together with Ulyanovsk State Technical University, we launched a basic department for training specialists in the field of design and production technology of automobiles. The first intake will take place in September this year. What will students of our department receive? Good conditions - a scholarship, paid internship and a guaranteed job with a decent social package.

Regarding working with new employees, we have a good package of programs related to professional and personal development. There are social programs for youth, labor dynasties and young families. I often hear feedback from young employees that the social package and collective agreement of the enterprise are an excellent incentive for development at the plant, and young specialists feel the care of the enterprise and support at the right moments, such as significant family events, for example, the birth of a child , marriage. The company actively supports motherhood and childhood, as well as preferential programs for improving the health of children and preparing them for school. No matter what popular rumor says, which, as you know, most often draws inspiration from negativity and speculation, UAZ’s personnel base is stable and no personnel reductions are planned in the foreseeable future, as well as any mythical disruptions in work, which I also heard about hear from people who have nothing to do with the enterprise. Since the situation in the automobile market is markedly seasonal, we, like all automobile enterprises in Russia, go on corporate holidays, and they do not mean stopping the plant, because at this time major projects to modernize the enterprise are being implemented, at this time the plant is carrying out serious and large-scale work. Over the past year alone, the car plant invested almost 500 million rubles in new equipment and improving working conditions, and the planned volumes for 2018 exceed last year’s figures by almost one and a half times. Employees' salaries are not left without growth. Thus, we are gradually increasing the salaries of engineers in departments, and by the end of the year the wages of foundry workers will be gradually increased. UAZ is still ready to accept qualified workers, engineers and specialists into its team. UAZ continues its development, looking confidently into the future.

From the editor:
In February, in Moscow, with the assistance of the National Endowment for Democracy, a book by the head of the information service of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, Ruslan Gorevoy, “Case No. 13: Murders of Journalists in Togliatti,” edited by A.K., was published. Simonova (M.: Medea, 2005. – Series “Media Affairs”. – 128 p.).

“Journalists are being killed. In Moscow and Kurgan, in Kaluga and Kyzyl, in Kasimov and Yoshkar-Ola, in Tula and Smolensk. But most often - in Tolyatti,– Alexei Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, rightly notes in the afterword to the book. – Since 1995, 5 editors-in-chief and one general director of a local television and radio company have died in Tolyatti. None of the Togliatti murders were investigated. None of the killers have been found or punished. Why? The book you hold in your hands is an attempt to answer this question.”

Last October, we chronicled the unsolved murders of Tolyatti journalists (see). But investigative journalism is a completely different genre, a completely different job, requiring both talent and courage. Not being able to publish the book in its entirety, we decided to give some fragments concerning only part of the crimes committed in Tolyatti - the deaths of Andrei Ulanov, Nikolai Lapin, Sergei Ivanov and Sergei Loginov.

Instead of a preface

"...They can't kill us all..."
Alexey Sidorov,
editor-in-chief of the Togliatti Review newspaper, in an interview
New York Times, May 2002.

It is believed that the city of Togliatti has a history of almost three hundred years. But it depends on how you count.

In 1738, a year after the tsar’s decree was issued on the separation of baptized Kalmyks and pagans with the subsequent resettlement of converts to the mouths of the Sok and Cheremshan rivers, the city of Stavropol-on-Volga arose. The place for the compact settlement of baptized Kalmyks and the construction of the city was chosen by the head of the Orenburg expedition, Vasily Tatishchev. On the left bank of the Kunya Volozhka (a branch of the Volga), opposite the Molodetsky Kurgan, it was decided to build a fortress and a city - the capital of the baptized Kalmyks. They called it Stavropol, which translated from Greek means “city of the cross.” The founder of the city V.N. Tatishchev was against such a name; he proposed calling the city Epiphania, which means “enlightenment,” but Queen Anna did not agree.

Stavropol-on-Volga stood for 216 years. In the fifties, construction began on the Volga hydroelectric power station, and in 1953 the city was flooded by the artificial Zhiguli Sea. Residents were relocated to a new location, approximately two dozen kilometers from the flood zone. They also began building a new city there, which in the summer of 1964 was named after the leader of the Italian communists, Palmiro Togliatti. And two years later, on July 20, 1966, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Soviet government decided to build the largest automobile plant in the USSR in Togliatti.

In fact, the car plant, which was supposed to assemble Italian FIAT 124 models under license, was going to be built in Belgorod, but construction would have cost 20 million rubles more. A certain international factor also played a role: Italians came to set up production, among whom there were quite a few members of the Italian Communist Party. It turned out to be a good propaganda combination: Italian and Soviet communists are building the largest auto giant in the city with a symbolic Italian name! International construction!

Workers from all over the Union came to build Autocity. In a matter of years, the city turned into a real Soviet Babylon: Russians, Ukrainians; Belarusians, Tatars, Bashkirs, Kalmyks and even Italians who refused to return to their homeland. The Volga Automobile Plant became the sole god of this Babylon.

In the early nineties, the Tolyatti Automobile Plant remained one of the few successful manufacturers of industrial products in Russia. Moreover, the products are in demand and even in short supply. Queues for brand new Ladas lined up until the mid-nineties. The rushed demand for cars and long-term corruption at the car plant became an excellent breeding ground for the emergence of organized crime in the city.

This crime was multinational, like the entire population of the city. And this crime was not restrained by any boundaries: neither the notorious thieves, nor the belonging of potential rivals to the same ethnic group. Only momentary gain, only profit at any cost. And absolute unscrupulousness, coupled with wolfish cruelty.

According to Moscow News columnist, Doctor of Law, retired police major general Vladimir Ovchinsky, over the past twelve years Togliatti has experienced four criminal wars. Four radical redistributions of property.

– The modern criminal world of Togliatti has developed according to the usual patterns of development of organized crime in Russia in modern times,– says V. Ovchinsky. – It all started in the late 80s, when the crime boss Alexander Maslov united around himself athletes, people with a criminal record, who started with games of thimble, then took up racketeering. Even then, Maslov’s community included 8 groups, where the leading position was occupied by the groups of Ruzlyaev, nicknamed Dima Bolshoy, and Vdovina, nicknamed Partner. Strict rules of obedience and discipline, distribution of roles, and punishment of disobedient people were introduced. The first business structures that appeared in the city immediately came under the control of the criminal community. By 1992, Tolyatti was generally divided between criminal structures. Under their influence were markets, commercial stalls, private firms, and charity lotteries and other gambling games that filled the city at that time. Extortion from citizens and enterprises purchasing cars then began to bring in considerable income. The first attempts were made to penetrate the main VAZ conveyor belt.

The huge profits made by crime bosses have led to fierce competition. In the fall of 1992, the so-called First Criminal War began in Togliatti. The victims of this war were the then leaders of local organized crime, and in particular Alexander Maslov himself. Six months later, in March 1993, a real battle of criminal gangs took place not far from the Zhiguli Hotel. According to various sources, from 70 to 100 people took part in it.

Another well-known authority, director of the Mirage glass tinting cooperative, Vladimir Bilichenko, died in the First Criminal. He was shot on September 16, 1992. Bilichenko was the first among the Tolyatti bandits to practice the so-called shipment. The shipment was carried out like this: from the VAZ conveyor to the utility yard, to certain sites, cars were driven out to order. Cars were taken from these sites by dealers who paid Bilichenko one hundred dollars for each car shipped above the cost. Nowadays, probably, few people remember that twelve years ago people spent months in queues, waiting for a car of the required configuration and color. Two seventeen-year-old village boys who did not even have basic weapons skills were equipped to kill Bilichenko.

The first criminal war in Tolyatti ended with a change of authorities. Instead of Maslov and Bilichenko, Partner became the leader of urban organized crime. Vdovin-Partner managed to further strengthen the influence of criminal structures on business, industry and the economy of Togliatti. Moreover, Partner took the Togliatti common fund into his own hands. The huge money concentrated in the hands of the Partner and his accomplices has significantly strengthened their roles in the criminal community. But Vdovin’s strengthening did not suit those bandits who lost access to AVTOVAZ’s trough.

And the Second Criminal War broke out. In 1994-1995, 66 people were killed in gangland shootings alone.

Vladimir Ovchinsky says:

– As a result of the Second Criminal War, a new balance of power arose in Tolyatti. The city and VAZ were divided into zones of influence, controlled by several powerful influential clans. This is the community of Partner and the Tatar brigades friendly to him under the leadership of Shamil. The counterbalance to them was the gangs of Ruzlyaev and Sirota. In addition, the Chechen and Zhiguli communities had serious positions in the city, the backbone of which were Chechen and Georgian thieves in law, respectively.

At the end of 1996, the Third Criminal War began. The reason for the new bloodshed was the assassination attempt on Ruzlyaev’s bodyguard named Petrov. Soon after the assassination attempt on Petrov, two leaders of the criminal group Partner were killed. And the authority’s answer was not long in coming. Since March 1997, there has been another surge in contract killings in Togliatti.

- It was during this period that– says Vladimir Ovchinsky, – former Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Anatoly Kulikov decides to conduct an operation in Togliatti under the name “Cyclone”. The operation was less like a police operation and more like a military one. And there were reasons for this: AVTOVAZ was literally in the hands of bandits. It had to be liberated by large SOBR forces, workshop by workshop, warehouse by warehouse. But at the same time the criminal war continued. As a result, in April 1998, Ruzlyaev - Dima Bolshoi - was killed.

Kulikov’s baton was taken over by Sergei Stepashin, who conducted two more stages of Operation Cyclone. AVTOVAZ was cleaned up, but the criminal world continued to settle scores with each other. The division of the structures that formed the economic basis of Dima Bolshoi’s criminal community further served as the impetus for a series of murders committed in Tolyatti during 1999–2000. In March 1999, the former chairman of the Fund for Social Support of Veterans of Special Forces of Law Enforcement Agencies, Durasov, was killed, the main leaders of commercial structures associated with the fund, as well as the managers and founders of the fund, including the new chairman, Minak, were killed. And in total, during the Fourth Criminal War, 16 people were killed by order, 2 attempts were made.

Thanks to the efforts of law enforcement agencies, it was possible, if not to stop gang wars, then at least to give them the appearance of local showdowns. And today, representatives of Tolyatti organized crime continue to extract excess profits from Avtograd. The annual profit taken by Togliatti crime from AVTOVAZ exceeds 500 million rubles. The city is still divided into spheres of influence by five criminal communities, which include at least 400 people. Tolyatti still remains one of the epicenters of the Russian criminal world.

Mafia structures mimicked and merged with the political establishment and legal business. And the further it goes, the calmer and more impunity the already practically legalized Togliatti crime feels.

And today, twelve years after the start of the First Criminal War, practically nothing has changed in Tolyatti: all the high-profile contract killings are associated exclusively with the car plant. But despite the mortal risk, participation in the VAZ deal is still the dream of many Tolyatti businessmen and bandits. There is fierce competition for access to the feeder.

A distinctive feature of the Tolyatti showdowns of that time was the participation of law enforcement officers in them. The Social Support Fund for Veterans of Special Purpose Units of Law Enforcement Agencies and Intelligence Services was especially distinguished: three co-founders and managers of the fund, as well as several businessmen friendly to the fund, were killed. Most of them are former employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB. Law enforcement officers investigating Tolyatti crimes also suffer losses. The head of the department for solving murders, Yuri Onishchuk, the head of the department for combating banditry of the Internal Affairs Directorate, Dmitry Ogorodnikov, were killed, and the justice adviser of the regional prosecutor's office, Irina Boyakhchyan, who supervised the investigation, inquiry and operational search activities in the Avtozavodsky district, was beaten half to death with metal rods.

Neither the large-scale operations of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, nor the visits of operational groups of the Main Directorate of Criminal Investigation, nor the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Kolesnikov, who often visits Togliatti, can stop this criminal conveyor.

Alas, journalists also die in the meat grinder of endless criminal squabbles.

The chain of murders of Tolyatti journalists has been going on since 1995. On October 15, on the threshold of his own apartment, the editor of the Togliatti Segodnya newspaper was fatally wounded by three shots from a pistol. Andrey Ulanov. Having barely had time to recover after the operation, Ulanov gave evidence to the investigation, on the basis of which a sketch of one of the attackers was compiled. Ulanov underwent several more operations, but they could not save him: the editor died on the twentieth day after the attack.

Tolyatti journalist Sergei Melnik wrote about this murder in the New Russian Word in December 1995:

“The mayor, who called Ulanov his friend, supplied the doctors with expensive, scarce medicines and placed armed guards at the intensive care unit, personally saw him off on his last journey: for Andrei there were meters in the old cemetery, which was officially closed and opened only in exceptional cases (for the lads - almost always). The death of the journalist and editor, coupled with a series of heinous murders that shocked the already murdered townspeople, forced the mayor to make a sharp statement on local television: all security forces should leave their offices and work on the streets - that is where law enforcement agencies belong.

And in the offices at that time, numerous versions of the murder were being worked out. (...) Journalists also have their own versions: the reason for the murder could have been the desire to “persuad” the not always accommodating editor in this way. Those who know the situation believe that literally the day before the shot, Ulanov received from AVTOVAZ - more precisely, from the local branch of the Chernomyrdin movement “Our Home is Russia” headed by Kadannikov - a firm promise to transfer funds to cover all the newspaper’s debts. It is possible that the reason for the murder could have been the controlling stake in the newspaper owned by Ulanov.

In short, there is something to dig here. But the investigation, which at first convinced the townspeople of its determination, today is no longer very actively resisting journalists’ guesses that it has reached a dead end. And few people in Tolyatti doubt that this will happen. This is not the first case in the history of local contract killings.”

Law enforcement agencies found neither the killers nor those who ordered the crime. Five years later, in November 2000, on the pages of the Togliatti newspaper Present Center, people who knew Andrei Ulanov remembered him and speculated about the reasons for his murder.

Yuri BEZDETNY, head of the press center of the City Duma:

– Can you name me at least one contract murder that was solved? In my opinion, there is no doubt that the murder of Andrei Ulanov was ordered, and there are financial interests behind this case. In such cases, customers and performers are very rarely found.

Evgeny Baklanov, editor of the newspaper “Freedom Square”:

– Why hasn’t the murder been solved? Contract killings are not solved at all - such an unkind Russian tradition has developed. But we must remember that time, that business and our general inability to somehow get by in that business. A newspaper is also a business, albeit a small one usually. Somewhere Andrei probably made a mistake... Now the newspaper people have learned to navigate what is happening. Everything was new then...

Konstantin PRYSYAZHNYUK, ex-editor of the Present Center newspaper:

– I remember Ulanov well. And I couldn’t imagine that someone might make an attempt on Andrei’s life, because Andrei had never associated with any bandits. As for controversial publications, Tolyatti Today did not engage in this at all. Andrei was not the kind of person whose main job is to rinse someone out in order to ruin or embarrass them. I'm talking about this because in our environment there are simply dirty tricks. So Andrey was a very attentive and friendly journalist who could talk to anyone. He would have interviewed Hitler in such a way that it would have worked. Ulanov was truly a high-class professional.

The order is generally difficult to open. But if we talk about the attempt on Andrei’s life, there have been rumors for several years that the perpetrators are known, but then everything is cut off. Moreover, all significant versions agree that the murder is not related to professional activities. At least with creative activities. And I am convinced that we do not have a global attack on freedom of speech, as some are trying to show. This, of course, looks good for the capital’s news agencies that almost every year journalists are beaten or killed in Togliatti. It looks exciting and sensational. But in fact, more often than not it’s not because of journalism. This is usually associated with matters that are not part of our core business. Often personal motives... But someone has the intelligence to combine them into a chain, to build logical arguments - their own, home-grown ones. Stupid... From someone else's misfortune they extract only their own ten lines, well paid for - what a sensation! But there is no mutual assistance or corporate solidarity. In Togliatti, unfortunately, among journalists, competitive relations prevail over human relations. And if something happens somewhere, God forbid, they will only trample on your misfortune; at best, your friends will provide real help, but not the journalistic community.

However, in recent years it has begun to dawn on many that this situation is unnatural. And the guys who are healthier, who are not zombified by competition, still try to show their solidarity. Our city is very dangerous to live in. No one can feel protected here. Anyone, even an oligarch, who can hire security, knows: if they want to kill, they will kill. And the simple person can only hope that no one will be interested in him. Naturally, the danger for a journalist is greater. And it must be said that a certain part of Tolyatti journalists did everything to make the press hated. Therefore, here, in addition to criminal disputes, the newspaperman also faces such a danger as unbalanced individuals, of whom there are many in the city. And they are even more unpredictable than bandits...

Alexey ORLIN, editor of Radio Tolyatti:

– When you walk through life side by side with a person for many years and love him, how can you not remember? Andrey is missing, and very much. Because, in my opinion, the city’s journalistic environment very rarely recruits such talented people in all respects into our ranks. Five years ago, we lost not just a brilliant journalist, not just a person who could express his thoughts in a completely tangible way on the pages of a newspaper, magazine, or on air, but also an amazing person in terms of human qualities. Of course it hurts. And this pain never went away...

I don’t particularly believe that Ulanov’s case will ever be solved. But, probably, this is not what we need to talk about now, although, of course, there should be punishment. It is important to understand something else: there are irreplaceable people, but Andrei’s place remains completely empty. No one has occupied it in Tolyatti and, I think, no one will ever occupy it. Why weren't they revealed? I wouldn’t just talk about the fact that someone somewhere didn’t complete something or didn’t do something, I don’t know, because the information was extremely meager: “We are working, we are busy, but due to reasons...” Police - it is an extension of what we have in society. And the saddest thing, if we talk about the detection rate or the crime itself, is that all these 5 years I personally have no understanding of why all this happened.

Vladimir ISAKOV, head of the press center of AVTOVAZ JSC:

– Why is the crime not solved? We must consider this issue not in relation to an individual person, but as a whole. Probably because we fell apart as a society. And we do not take this tragedy as ours personally. If we do not want such crimes to continue, we need to unite, understanding that these crimes are not against the individual - they are against our society. And we need to fight every criminal manifestation, then they will not exist. In many countries people have understood this. And there, in the event of an emergency, they literally organize raids. Criminals have nowhere to go. And we have somewhere to go. And as long as there are shelters for criminals, no one can feel safe. The naive opinion is that you hire a couple of security guards and you will feel protected. Or he installed three iron doors for himself - and he was protected. Do not interfere in gangster affairs - and you are protected. None of us living in this city, in this country, can feel absolutely protected. We need to realize this situation. And when we understand the interconnectedness of our problems, then we can hope that society will provide a guarantee of protection to any of its members.

(...) A year and a half after the death of Ulanov, Tolyatti was shocked by another murder of a journalist. Editor of the newspaper “Everything about Everything” Nikolai Lapin mortally wounded on Russian Press Day, January 13, 1997, in front of his own son. In the parking lot near house No. 29 on Zheleznodorozhnaya Street, an unknown person approached Lapin and, firing a pistol at point-blank range, ran to the car that was waiting for him, in which he disappeared. Lapin was taken to the hospital with a serious wound to the face. The journalist was operated on, but it did not save him. On the night of January 15-16, he died from his wound.

In addition to his publishing activities, Lapin, like many Togliatti journalists, was actively involved in politics: he headed the city branch of the LDPR and acted as a confidant of Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Needless to say, in this case neither the killers nor those who ordered the crime were identified. In November 1997, the prosecutor's office of the Samara region suspended the preliminary investigation into the murder of Nikolai Lapin. In a letter addressed to the Glasnost Defense Foundation and signed by the head of the First Department of the Investigation Department, Counselor of Justice V.A. Karpenko, it was reported that “the prosecutor’s office of the Komsomolsky district of the city of Tolyatti suspended the preliminary investigation into the case under paragraph 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR, due to the failure to identify the persons who committed this crime.”

Over the course of a year and a half, in a small Russian city, two chief editors of popular publications die from the bullets of hired killers. Even for the extremely criminalized Russia of the mid-nineties, this is a real emergency. The impunity of the killers could easily provoke new crimes against journalists, and the heads of law enforcement agencies could not help but understand this. All the more strange was their obvious inaction: neither the customers nor the perpetrators of the crimes were identified.

Thus, the subsequent murders of journalists in Togliatti were provoked by law enforcement officers themselves, creating the illusion of impunity. Over the next seven years, four more heads of local media will die in the city, and investigators will throw up their hands as usual: no customers, no killers...

Part 1

Murders of Sergei Ivanov and Sergei Loginov
(TV company "Lada-TV")

“Methods of pressure on independent media, which are in difficult
economic situation remained faithful to the reader and provide
him objective and complete information about events in the country and
locally, have become incredibly sophisticated - from tax pressures and other
methods of economic influence before gross intervention
law enforcement agencies, searches in editorial offices, falsified
court cases and revocation of licenses. Journalists are dying in this fight -
having exhausted all possibilities to force independent
professionals write on prompt, corrupt government
goes for contract killings. Such is the tragic price
which current Russian society pays for freedom of speech
and press."

Valery Ivanov,
editor-in-chief of the Togliatti Review newspaper

In the fall of 2000, two key executives of Lada-TV, the only city television company broadcasting on the meter wavelength, were killed in Tolyatti. Since both victims were engaged exclusively in television and were not distracted by extraneous commercial projects, it was obvious that the cause of their deaths should be sought in the sphere of professional interests.

The television advertising market in Togliatti is quite scarce: as is known, large advertisers are not interested in conducting large-scale campaigns in the regions. Nevertheless, things were generally going well for Lada-TV. The television company even applied to expand broadcasting: Lada’s capacity allowed it to cover an entire area with a meter signal. The transition to a regional broadcast network would automatically make the television company extremely attractive to both businessmen and politicians. After all, elections at various levels in the region take place almost non-stop, and you can make good money from election campaigns, not to mention the fact that, if you wish, you can play politics: provide support to candidates running for power, lobby for certain financial and political interests . And Lada-TV began to be seen as a serious factor of political influence in the region. For some it is clearly undesirable and even dangerous. But for some, on the contrary, it is coveted.

On the evening of October 3, at 22.30, the director of Lada-TV, Sergei Ivanov, was killed with five shots from a pistol, a few steps from his apartment. The control shot fired by the killer into the journalist's head and the weapon thrown at the crime scene left no doubt that the act was a professional. Therefore, the murder was contracted.

Ivanov has led the TV channel since 1996, and, according to people who knew him, no one has ever threatened him. According to information available to law enforcement agencies, the local gang did not attack Ivanov. Sergei had no financial debts.

It was not possible to identify either the perpetrators or those who ordered the crime without delay. Detectives from Samara joined the investigation into the murder: the Tolyatti police, with their unhurried actions, clearly alerted their colleagues from the region. Faced with “local specifics,” Samara investigators expressed a cautious assumption that the perpetrators, apparently, would not be punished: the interest of some authorities in the successfully developing television resource was too obvious.

Exactly a month later, on November 3, Lada-TV editor-in-chief Sergei Loginov died in the intensive care unit of the Togliatti medical town. Relatives of the deceased reported that on the evening of October 28, the journalist parked his car near his dacha in Kirillovka and went out to open the garage door. At that moment, a car standing nearby suddenly moved away and, accelerating, crashed into the garage door, knocking down Loginov and crushing him under the heavy door. The unknown driver fled the scene of the accident, and Sergei Loginov was found a few minutes later by passers-by. In a comatose state, the journalist was taken to the intensive care unit of the hospital. Banykina. With an interval of one day, he was operated on twice, but the injuries turned out to be severe, and it was not possible to save Sergei: he died without regaining consciousness.

Despite the fact that Loginov’s relatives were convinced of the domestic nature of the incident, there are quite a lot of strange inconsistencies. Thus, the Stavropol police department, which is investigating this incident, was very surprised when a correspondent for the Reporter newspaper asked how far the search for the car that caused the accident had progressed. Answering this question, the head of the public security police of the Stavropol district of Tolyatti, Viktor Alekseev, said that the car that allegedly caused the accident does not appear in the case at all. According to Alekseev, most likely, Sergei Loginov fell into the inspection hole of the garage himself.

And this time, representatives of law enforcement agencies were not inclined to connect the incident with the professional activities of the victim. Accident. And this means that no criminal case will be initiated.

But the doctors who examined the victim, in turn, suggested that such injuries could not have been received from a fall or even from being run over by a car, but only from numerous blows with a metal rod. The doctors' guesses made their way into the local press, and a week after Loginov's death, Tolyatti police officers decided to open a criminal case. But, as one of the investigators admitted, an order was received from Samara: “Consider Loginov’s case an accident and do not carry out a criminal investigation.” The police officer did not clarify who exactly gave this order and why. By that time, Loginov had already been buried, and it was not possible to carry out a detailed examination. But for some reason exhumation was considered inappropriate.

(...) The criminal case initiated into the death of the head of Lada-TV Sergei Ivanov has turned into another hanging. Until now, not only have the identities of the killers and those who ordered the crime not been established, law enforcement officers have not even bothered to identify those who benefited from Ivanov’s murder in the slightest degree. A year ago it was announced that Ivanov’s alleged killers had been detained. However, law enforcement officers were unable to establish the real involvement of the accused in the murder of the owner of Lada-TV.

Nevertheless, there are a number of versions that can shed light on the Togliatti murders. One of them - the official one - is this: the Lada-TV television company actively supported one of the candidates in the elections of deputies to the Togliatti City Duma, which took place shortly before Ivanov’s murder. Meanwhile, just during the election campaign and immediately after it, Loginov and Ivanov made a number of large purchases. Perhaps they, like the heads of the television company, having received the money, promised the candidate some guarantees, but were unable to fulfill their promises. The version is controversial: in the end, the financial issue could have been resolved differently. After all, the heads of the television company probably had money: it was not without reason that another expansion of the broadcast network was planned for 2001, a very, very expensive undertaking.

Since law enforcement officials were unable to prove the viability of the debt theory, they put forward another that seemed to investigators to be more plausible. Ivanov tried to sell VAZ spare parts and somewhere crossed the path of a Tatar group, one of the most influential organized crime groups in the region. However, the police were unable to motivate this version either: not a single document confirming the involvement of the deceased Ivanov in an automobile or any other business could be found.

Another version was put forward, not approved by official bodies, but quite plausible. The fact is that Lada-TV, as already noted, broadcast in the meter range. This means that almost all Togliatti residents could watch its programs, whereas, say, city television, rebroadcast in the UHF range, is available only to owners of fairly new TV models. PR people are well aware that active voters, as a rule, are not rich people. Their TVs are old, and they watch only “meter” programs. In relation to Togliatti - central TV channels and Lada-TV. Therefore, it is most profitable to place political advertising on meter-long TV channels.

Local officials have repeatedly voiced their desire to participate in the acquisition of shares in Lada, or even better, in the purchase of the company entirely. Sergei Ivanov repeatedly refused such offers. He was killed, and a week after Ivanov’s death, editor-in-chief Sergei Loginov also received an offer to sell Lada shares. Loginov had few shares, but he could influence Ivanov’s heirs and persuade them to sell shares. However, Loginov refused to cooperate with potential buyers. A month later, he was gone too.

The version suggests itself: was the intractability of Ivanov and Loginov the reason for their death?

The police sluggishness and slowness brought to mind that law enforcement agencies are unlikely to ever reliably establish the names of those who ordered the murders of Ivanov and Loginov. The versions of the investigation did not stand up to criticism. Therefore, when conducting my own journalistic investigation of the Togliatti murders, I did not particularly trust the materials received from law enforcement officers and, building my own version, I asked myself only one question: “Who benefited from the disappearance of the Lada leaders?”

While answering this question to myself, I discovered some interesting things. For example, I was able to establish that in the last months of his life, Sergei Ivanov owned no more than 40 percent of the shares of Lada-TV. Approximately the same amount was concentrated in the hands of Samara Mayor Georgy Limansky. A certain Shakirov, a distant relative of Limansky, who headed the local branch of Svyazinform and provided retransmission of Lada-TV programs, could also be a co-owner of the shares.

There were witnesses who confirmed that Limansky at least twice offered Ivanov to sell him the shares of the television company, or at least part of them.

But it was not only Limansky who was interested in the television company. At the beginning of 2001, a new television company, owned by the editor-in-chief and actual owner of the Tolyattinskoye Obozrenie newspaper, Valery Ivanov, began broadcasting on the Lada frequency. According to Lada employees, Valery Ivanov at one time repeatedly offered to sell the television company to his late namesake at a profit, but Sergei refused.

After the deaths of Ivanov and Loginov, the Lada creative team intended to continue producing television programs, but in January 2001, the television company’s retransmission contract expired, and the Togliatti RTPC was in no hurry to conclude a new contract. Twice the management of the broadcasting center postponed making a decision, and as a result, Valery Ivanov received temporary permission to broadcast. The heirs to the shares of the television company had to make a choice: part with the shares and receive money from Ivanov, or keep the television company, which had lost the opportunity to go on air and be left with nothing.

As a result, Valery Ivanov became the holder of a controlling stake in the television company and airtime in the meter range. And he renamed Lada-TV.

In 2002, I described in detail the “double murder on television” in Novaya Gazeta. I conducted my investigation within the framework of the “Clean Feathers” program, which assumed that someone from the leadership of the Samara Regional Prosecutor’s Office would respond to the versions presented in the publication. In accordance with the requirements of the Clean Feathers program, the full text of my investigation was sent to the prosecutor of the Samara region A.F. Efremov.

In the afterword to my article, the master of investigative journalism Leonid Nikitinsky, in particular, wrote: “We thank A.F. Efremov for the promptness with which he responded, however, not everything in his answer convincingly refutes the conclusions of R. Gorevoy. Thus, the prosecutor reports that during the investigation into the case of the Volgov group, the investigation of which was successfully completed, 17 episodes of murders and attempted murders were revealed, including the murder of S.A. Ivanov. It was established that his motive was related to Ivanov’s collaboration with an opposing criminal group, and not to the activities of the Lada-TV television company.” However, how else could Ivanov cooperate with any group if not by giving it an advantage in using the capabilities of the television company?

Upon the death of journalist S.V. Loginova, the prosecutor's office concluded that it was the result of an accident: the deceased opened the garage door in front of a car walking along the driveway and was knocked over by the blow of the gate, hit his head on a metal part in the garage and received a fatal injury.

The credibility of the latest version can also be debated.

I ended my material with these words: “Apparently, the Togliatti battle for the right to broadcast in the meter range will continue. Because law enforcement agencies are conducting the investigation into Lada-TV carelessly - this has been proven by the stalled investigations into the deaths of S. Ivanov and S. Loginov, and the television company remains the object of close attention of local politicians, businessmen and mafiosi.

The price of pre-election PR is too high, the TV company remains too tasty a morsel, allowing this PR to be carried out effectively and for next to nothing.”

Time has shown that I was not mistaken.

A month after the publication of the material, Valery Ivanov appeared at the office of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, where I have the honor of working. He started with threats. They say that you will have to answer for the publication of libel. Okay, I agreed with Ivanov, I’m ready. File a lawsuit. Ivanov turned sour: “Maybe we can come to an amicable agreement? How much do you get?..” We didn’t agree. But we talked. About many things. We exchanged business cards. “You have no idea how difficult it is to work here. Between the bandits and law enforcement officers, we are like between a rock and a hard place,” Valery told me as he said goodbye.

On the same day, Ivanov left for Togliatti. Less than a year later he was gone - killed by the bullets of an assassin...
_________________________
© Gorevoy Ruslan

Exactly 20 years ago, Crimea’s first attempt to reunite with Russia suffered a complete fiasco. On October 23, 1996, deputies of the State Duma adopted the bill “On ending the division of the Black Sea Fleet,” thereby recognizing their renunciation of claims to the peninsula. And then Kyiv successively dealt with its participants and organizers: they killed some, sent others to prison, and others into exile.

Shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Crimean region of Ukraine was transformed into the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - following the results of the first referendum in the history of the USSR. It was understood that the first plebiscite would be followed by a second, which would finally consolidate the status of Crimea as the 16th union republic. But the large country fell apart, and the process was never completed. The peninsula remained part of Ukraine. On May 5, 1992, the Supreme Council of Crimea adopted an act declaring state independence. The first “Russian spring” began. It is generally accepted that it was bloodless - indeed, things did not come to an “anti-terrorist operation” then, and Kyiv limited itself to introducing various military and special-purpose police units to the peninsula, coupled with a considerable amount of armored vehicles. At first, however, it remained in army hangars - until the Crimeans elected their first president. And, alas, it did not happen without blood.

Athletes became the first “militia” of Crimea

The chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic, Nikolai Bagrov, became a troublemaker in Crimea. It was he who initiated the first “Russian spring”, clearly hoping to become the first president and, if not to take Crimea to Russia, then, in any case, to finally “unhook” it from Ukraine. Kyiv, naturally, categorically opposed it, and was supported by the Crimean Tatars on the peninsula. In October 1992, the leadership of the now banned in Russia Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars* gathered several thousand of their supporters near the building of the Supreme Council - the Mejlis will do the same in February 2014. Crimean Tatar radicals broke through the police cordon and broke into the parliament building, causing a real pogrom inside. According to official data, there were no casualties. And unofficially, the bodies of 10 policemen with stab wounds were sent to the morgue from an inconspicuous police hospital on Franko Boulevard in Simferopol. They were going to be buried in a mass grave, but the leadership of the republic considered this unacceptable, so as not to aggravate the situation. In that massacre, the future head of the Crimean police headquarters, Boris Babyuk, almost lost his life.

As a result, it became clear that the police were unable to contain the pressure of the Crimean Tatar militants. And then, in order to avoid new bloodshed, the Republican Movement of Crimea (RDC) decided to create their own law enforcement units - a prototype of the Crimean “self-defense” of 2014 and, in some ways, even the Donbass militia. The structure of the Impex-55-Crimea association, which, like the financial part of the RDK, was headed by entrepreneur Valery Averkin, included several sports clubs - boxers, wrestlers, martial artists... “To maintain order in the city, prevent robberies and violence, Meshkovites organized groups to protect public order,” recalled Crimean historian Dmitry Sinitsa. “They should have been created at work and at the place of residence, and the coordination of actions should have been carried out by the RDC council, working in close contact with the sensible part of the internal affairs bodies.” From these volunteers, the first Crimean “militia” was created, which was tasked with maintaining law and order during the actions of the RDK, in particular during the hunger strike of deputies of the Supreme Council in a tent camp near the building of the Crimean Parliament that caused a lot of noise. They went on hunger strike “in support of the Constitution.” Several times the tent camp was attacked by imported Ukrainian nationalists and Crimean Tatar militants. During one of these attacks, the assistant to the head of the Russian Society of Crimea, Anatoly Los, was severely beaten with rubber batons; he later died from the consequences of these beatings.

The leaders of the Crimean Tatars were killed on orders from Kyiv

In addition to Bagrov, two more serious politicians applied for the post of President of Crimea - representative of the RDK Yuri Meshkov, who was financed by Impex (or rather, millionaire Averkin - from his own pocket) and the leader of the National Movement of Crimean Tatars - NDKT (not to be confused with OKND of the odious Mustafa Dzhemilev) Yuri Osmanov. The latter’s chances were exceptionally high: not only did he enjoy unquestioned authority among the Crimean Tatars (where are the Majlis and its leader Dzhemilev, banned in the Russian Federation!), but there were also many of his supporters among the Slavic population. By the way, it was Osmanov who at the initial stage single-handedly led the process of repatriation of the Crimean Tatars to their historical homeland. And he did this extremely carefully, avoiding outbursts of Russophobia, which the leaders of the future Majlis, led by Mustafa Dzhemilev, tried in every possible way to control. On October 13, 1993, the Supreme Council of Crimea established the position of president of the republic, and on November 6, Osmanov was severely beaten by unknown assailants and soon died. Both Osmanov’s supporters from the NDKT and representatives of the RDK agreed: this was a political murder, ordered from Kyiv, with the aim of provoking the Crimean Tatars.

Following Osmanov, Bagrov’s closest associate Eskender Memetov was killed - his car was shot by bandits from the Crimean Tatar organized crime group “Imdat” controlled by Dzhemilev. At the time of the execution, Memetov’s two children were in Memetov’s car; the politician covered them with his body. Until now, the political murders of Osmanov and Memetov are considered unsolved, although experts (including the former head of the Crimean headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Nikolai Gamiev and his successor Boris Babyuk) agreed that they were committed on orders from Kyiv - in order to undermine the political situation on the peninsula. Thus, the Crimean Tatars had no recognized leaders left - besides the hater of Russia Dzhemilev, in whom, it must be admitted, most of the settlers did not have any trust.

Some were killed, others were ruined, others were compromised

Kaperang Sergei Lazebnikov, who headed the press center of the Black Sea Fleet, was one of the intermediaries between the “wallet” of the RDK Averkin, the leadership of the Black Sea Fleet and the Russian authorities. Perhaps the most important intermediary. Averkin introduced Lazebnikov to his Moscow partners (among whom were not only eminent politicians and bankers, but also the famous thief in law

Otari Kvantrishvili) none other than the future Minister of Defense of Crimea. On the morning of December 1993, a caperang went out into the yard with a dog - and he was shot.

Lazebnikov was one of several recognizable faces of the opposition to Kyiv. The same face of the “Crimean putsch” was Viktor Mezhak, vice-speaker of the Crimean parliament and one of President Meshkov’s closest associates. When in the spring of 1996 Ukraine finally “collapsed” the frail Crimean statehood, Mezhak turned out to be almost the only local politician who called on the people to resist Kyiv.

And Mezhak was gone overnight - he died suddenly. Today it is no longer a secret that the politician was poisoned by the Ukrainian special services - just as Meshkov was poisoned a year earlier (the then president miraculously survived, but, having gone to Moscow for treatment, he immediately lost his post). “Dmitry Stepanyuk, the then Kiev governor in Crimea, personally appeared at the cemetery, as if he wanted to make sure that the dangerous “separatist” Mezhak would finally be buried,” recalled Meshkov’s press secretary Igor Azarov.

Kyiv did not limit itself to the murders of iconic characters of the first “Russian spring” - a campaign to discredit pro-Russian politicians began. The infamous “Impex restaurant accounts” surfaced: it turned out that while Meshkov and his associates were on a hunger strike near the parliament building, someone on their behalf “ate” in the Bagram restaurant (where RDK had a “stake”) for several one thousand dollars! The restaurant had a special payment system: they didn’t pay for meals in money, but only put their signature on the bill - after all, their own. And the Ukrainian press immediately trumpeted that the Meshkovites were not actually starving, but were gorging themselves on black caviar and other delicacies at Bagram!

Already after Meshkov was elected president of Crimea, Kyiv tried to denigrate him, making him out to be the father of an illegitimate child, an alcoholic (Meshkov - this was known to everyone who knew him more or less closely - did not drink alcohol at all, only once making an exception - he drank a glass of cognac for company with the famous Crimean partisan Georgy Seversky, co-author of “His Excellency’s Adjutant”). At the same time, Kyiv investigators seized all bank accounts of Impex and the Crimean-Russian Trade Association controlled by Averkin - so the dollar millionaire turned bankrupt overnight. Kyiv used incriminating evidence, bribery, and outright intimidation. General Vladimir Lepikhov, the head of the Crimean counterintelligence appointed by Meshkov, was “persuaded” to leave on good terms, resorting to outright blackmail. They organized persecution in the press against the Minister of Internal Affairs of Crimea, Valery Kuznetsov, accusing him of assisting bandits. According to a similar scheme, the head of the LPR, Valery Bolotov, was recently eliminated - literally one to one.

Vladimir VERKOSHANSKY, Crimean politician, one of six candidates for president of the Republic of Crimea in 1994:

– The parallels of today’s republics of Donbass and Crimea in the early 90s suggest themselves. Very similar. The first attempts at statehood, as a rule, are like the first pancakes - they come out lumpy. The leaders are inexperienced and make a bunch of mistakes that affect the attitude of both the people and their colleagues from Moscow and Kyiv towards them. 20 years ago, Tsekov and Meshkov “measured their powers” ​​in Crimea, and just yesterday Zakharchenko and Purgin were doing the same thing in Donetsk.

Moscow did not help Crimea with a single penny

After Meshkov won the presidential elections in February 1994, and not Bagrov, with whom Kyiv had already reached an agreement by that time, Ukrainian armored vehicles appeared on the roads of Crimea. Checkpoints were set up at exits from populated areas - why not Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014? Kyiv security forces were given the opportunity to shoot at their discretion any suspicious car (in the summer of 1994, at the exit to Alushta from Pereval, machine gun fire destroyed the Mercedes belonging to Averkin's Meshchanskaya Gazeta - the journalists in the car miraculously survived). At the same time, Kyiv increased pressure on Impex employees. “Grown men broke down when their wives were brought in during interrogations and kept in the corridors for several hours,” Averkin recalled.

Well, what about Moscow? Did the Russian leadership really look at Crimea without feeling any involvement, let alone responsibility? Why: Russia sent an entire government headed by the famous economist Yevgeny Saburov to help Meshkov. That, however, is where it all ended. The draft agreement on trade and economic cooperation between Russia and Crimea, signed by Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government Sergei Shakhrai (by the way, a Simferopol resident), Boris Yeltsin “put under the carpet”, and any requests for help - with money, specialists or something else – reacted as if he had a toothache. It’s no joke - the Crimean “separatists” are trying to quarrel between him and his friend and partner Leonid Kuchma, with whom he drank so much at his dacha in Mukhalatka near Foros!

In April 1994, Otari Kvantrishvili was shot in Moscow, from whom Russian organizations in Crimea could always intercept money for unforeseen expenses. After Kyiv completely ruined Averkin, the “Russian Spring” had no sponsors left. The Russian government promised loans to Meshkov, but the promises never materialized - Moscow ultimately did not help Crimea with a single penny.

Yuri MESHKOV, President of the Republic of Crimea (1994–1995):

– I would really not like the people’s republics of Donbass to end up like Crimea in the mid-90s. Of course, the key condition is Moscow’s attitude. If Moscow deems it necessary, the DPR and LPR will survive. If they withdraw themselves, like Yeltsin did in his time, there will be no people’s republics. It is difficult today to say how it will all end - either by the dismantling of their statehood, or by maintaining the current status quo, or by something else.

They measured their powers, lost their statehood

Meanwhile, Yeltsin’s entourage was frantically looking for an excuse to finally write off Crimea as an expense – but under a plausible pretext. In February 1995, two SBU officers, having entered Meshkov’s presidential office in the building of the Supreme Council of Crimea, treated telephone handsets with poison (six months later, Moscow banker and publisher of “Vek” Ivan Kivelidi, who often lent money to Averkin, would be killed in the same way). Meshkov almost died, he was sent to Moscow for treatment, but he could not return - in March 1995, the post of president of the republic was abolished (not without the efforts of the then chairman of the Supreme Council Sergei Tsekov - now he is a senator from Crimea). In fact, Tsekov played into Kyiv’s hands by starting a competition with Meshkov “who is cooler and more influential” in the summer of 1994. Nothing changes, and today the Ukrainian authorities in the same way use the bad qualities of the heads of the people’s republics of Donbass to discredit them in the eyes of the population of the DPR and LPR. Not so long ago, a similar, not idle question - who is cooler? - the head of the republic Alexander Zakharchenko and the chairman of the parliament - the people's council of the republic - Andrei Purgin found out in Donetsk. Like a carbon copy, one to one.

By the fall of 1995, the sovereignty of the Republic of Crimea was virtually eliminated. In July, at the behest of Kyiv, Sergei Tsekov lost his post - he was replaced by the puppet Yevgeny Suprunyuk, who would later be accused of complicity in murder and forced to flee to Russia. By that time, most of the recognizable faces of the first “Russian spring” either ended up at the Simferopol Abdal cemetery or in Moscow. Popular TV journalists Alexander Belanov and Sergei Nadezhdin were forced to emigrate (criminal cases were falsified against them), and the head of the Meshkov government, Yevgeny Saburov, and his team went back to Moscow. The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Crimea, General Kuznetsov, was also forced to flee to the Russian capital.

Moscow only had to put an end to the “Russian spring” - for Kyiv and personally for President Leonid Kuchma, this condition was fundamentally important. Like, it wasn’t us who liquidated the Crimean statehood, it was all Yeltsin. We, they say, approved the new Constitution of Crimea (though there is not a word left in it about the state sovereignty of the republic), and even the pro-Russian parliament was not dispersed (also the honest truth - most of the deputies from the “Russia Bloc” were simply bought up and stolen for other parliamentary factions). And the final point was reached on October 23, 1996: deputies of the State Duma adopted the bill “On ending the division of the Black Sea Fleet,” thereby finally recognizing their renunciation of claims to the peninsula. However, as history has shown, this refusal was not final.

* The public association “Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People” (decision of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Crimea dated April 26, 2016 and the appeal ruling of the Judicial Collegium for Administrative Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated September 29, 2016) is recognized as an extremist organization

© "Our Version", 05/28/2007

PR asset

Why leading Russian parties are changing political strategists before the battle for the State Duma

Ruslan Gorevoy

For the next six months, the best profession you can imagine is political strategist. For these people, the beginning of the federal election campaign is a golden time. Developing a plan marked “top secret”, daily staff meetings under a map studded with flags, searching for spies in one’s ranks and sending scouts into the enemy’s camp, and most importantly, mastering huge budgets. “Our Version” decided to introduce its readers to the main commanders of the favorite parties in the upcoming December battles.

Vladislav Surkov seized unconditional power in EdRe

Experts predict the main victory in the 2007 State Duma elections confidently and without much risk of mistakes for United Russia. The administrative, material and information resources available to the party in power are so significant that resistance seems practically useless. Theoretically, United Russia may not conduct an election campaign at all - its superiority is already obvious.

However, the election headquarters in United Russia has already been created, and United Russia takes the campaign very seriously. Firstly, because it’s easy to squander pre-election advantages. And secondly, work at the headquarters is an important element of the political game and the distribution of positions after victory.

The 2007 State Duma election headquarters was headed by the secretary of the presidium of the party’s General Council, Vyacheslav Volodin, who will have to not only control the course of the election campaign, but also ensure that the party in power remains under the control of Vladislav Surkov. Another lookout from the powerful deputy head of administration at the United Russia headquarters is Volodin's first deputy, Leonid Ivlev, who also works as deputy head of the internal policy department of the presidential administration.

If you go down one floor, to the level of Volodin’s deputies, you will notice that all any significant political groupings that are part of United Russia are represented at the headquarters. The interests of Sergei Shoigu’s supporters are reflected by State Duma deputy, one of the founders of the Russian Sea fishing corporation Andrei Vorobyov. His father is a member of the Federation Council and previously worked as the first deputy head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Valery Ryazansky can rightfully be considered a representative of the Moscow group. The head of the department for public relations and interaction with the media of the State Duma apparatus, Yuri Shuvalov, is Boris Gryzlov’s man. Yuri Oleinikov, who previously worked as head of the external relations department of RAO Norilsk Nickel, deputy governor of the Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous Okrug, and then of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, and head of the election headquarters of Alexander Khloponin, is in charge of the regions.

Maintaining a balance of power within the headquarters is not easy, and it is even more difficult to ensure that it is operational. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that closer to the elections the structure will be reformatted in order to increase efficiency.

The headquarters of A Just Russia is headed by a childhood friend of the party leader

Experts give the rank of the second party in power to A Just Russia, created by merging the Party of Life, Rodina and the Party of Pensioners. It can already be said that the intense struggle of the political strategists of these three structures for the right to lead the preparations for the December battle was unconditionally won by the “Zhiznists”.

Even at the recent March regional elections, the “Rodintsy” competed almost on equal terms with them, who won the right to conduct an independent election campaign in a number of subjects, for example, in the Moscow region. But the federal leadership of A Just Russia considered the results of their work unsuccessful. Party leader Sergei Mironov, at a meeting of the central council, organized an apparatus attack on about 10 of his branches and ordered that the campaign in all regions be placed under strict centralized control of the central election headquarters.

Formally, it was headed by Mironov himself, and the first deputy was the leader of the faction in the State Duma, ex-chairman of Rodina, Alexander Babakov. The former leader of the Pensioners Party, and now the secretary of the central council, Igor Zotov, did not find a place in the headquarters. But virtually all the reins of the future Right Russia campaign belong to the first deputy chairman of the party, Nikolai Levichev. He is responsible for strategy, tactics and information support. The main resource of the former head of the Komsomol Central Committee's sector for work with creative youth, and then the general director of the Klyuch-S book publishing house, comes from childhood. The future ideologist of the Party of Life, secretary of the Politburo of A Just Russia, lived in the same entrance to the city of Pushkin, Leningrad Region, as his peer Seryozha Mironov.

All key positions in the election headquarters also belong to the “Zhiznets”. In 2003, the election headquarters of this party distinguished itself by entrusting creativity to the Italian political strategist Gianni Pilo, who brought the Forward Italy party to power. Silvio Berlusconi. However, on Russian soil, Western ideas suffered a crushing failure. Therefore, now it has been decided to do it on our own. The head of the election campaign department, retired colonel of the airborne troops Vyacheslav Milyaev, who led the election headquarters in the Lipetsk region in the Party of Life, will be responsible for election technologies and headquarters in the regions.

The regional party builder of the "Spravorossov" used to work for "Yabloko"

Natalya Borodina, head of the party's electoral technologies department, has been appointed responsible for regional party building and local cells at the headquarters of A Just Russia. Her political biography was tortuous.

A graduate of the Institute of Soviet Trade and the Higher Party School, she worked for the Yabloko party in the 90s. As the head of the Moscow City Foundation for Electoral Technologies, LLC Political Consulting Agency, etc., Borodina joined the city political council of the party, and then, not being a lawyer, was delegated to the Moscow City Election Commission as a member of the commission with a casting vote. Twice, in 1997 and 2001, she unsuccessfully ran for the Moscow City Duma from Yabloko, and the first time she lobbied for the nomination of her husband Alexander Bekhov, who also worked at the election headquarters, in another constituency.

In 1999, she was already actually in charge of the Moscow regional branch of the party. Evil tongues accused her of the fact that salaries were not paid in full either to agitators and foremen, or even to the heads of headquarters.

During the 2004 presidential elections, Borodina offered her services to Irina Khakamada, opening her campaign headquarters right on the premises of the Moscow city Yabloko. Subsequently, she joined the federal political council of Khakamada’s Our Choice party. According to some Internet sites, the headquarters refused to pay its “collectors” for a fair share of signature sheets. The scandal erupted when several dozen people were returned the signature sheets already certified by the Central Election Commission and told that they were not needed. Soon the Moscow News newspaper reported on a scandal in Orel, where on the promised day of payment of rewards, activists came across a locked door and wrote on the doors the inscriptions “SPS are goats” and “You can’t treat people like that. Think about your future.” And in Veliky Novgorod, indignant activists posted the mobile phone numbers of the leaders of the federal campaign on the doors of the headquarters. In some cities, glass was broken in the windows...

She began collaborating with Borodin’s Party of Life in the 2005 Moscow City Duma elections.

According to her, “our competitor in these elections is United Russia, and left-wing parties ultimately tired the voter with their rhetoric.”

There are persistent rumors that the famous gallery owner Marat Gelman will also have a hand in the A Just Russia campaign. Actually, one of the parts of Mironov’s party is not alien to him - in 2003 he took an active part in the formation of the Rodina bloc. However, for now Gelman denies his connection with A Just Russia.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation moves from internationalism to the “Russian question”

Over the past four years, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation has changed not only the team of political strategists, but actually the direction of their activities. In 2003, the main sponsor of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation was the Yukos company, which supported the communist election campaign with several tens of millions of dollars. Naturally, in the elections, the 28-year-old head of the YUKOS information technology directorate, Ilya Ponomarev, who headed the Information Technology Center (ITC) of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, became the de facto chief political strategist of the party. But then the party leadership accused Ponomarev of taking the wrong course.

Now the election headquarters of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is headed by the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, responsible for information, analytical and electoral activities, Oleg Kulikov. A former senior researcher at the Faculty of Geography of Moscow State University and a member of the City Duma of the Russian National Cathedral, he is considered one of the main ideologues and intellectuals of the party. According to him, “three areas of activity have been identified - the fight for fair elections, for freedom of speech and for carrying out social reforms in the interests of the majority of society.”

However, behind these very general formulations lies a rather sharp reversal of the exchange rate. Last year, at the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, a “new foreign and domestic policy” was announced, which, contrary to the left-wing traditions of internationalism, places emphasis on the “Russian question”. According to Zyuganov, the party’s activists in the elections “weakly master the Russian theme,” and the country can only be “brought out of the hole” by the forces of “the core people that form the state, their culture, spirit, will, traditions and history.” Of course, the new postulate has little correspondence with the current program of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which states as an axiom that it is a “party of internationalism, friendship of peoples” and intends to achieve “the implementation of a national policy based on the recognition of the equality of nations, the historical responsibility of each people for the state integrity of Russia, the eradication interethnic conflicts, all forms of separatism, nationalism and chauvinism."

The chief political strategist of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a Karaite by nationality

In accordance with the new course of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Ponomarev’s successor as chief political strategist was the 31-year-old graduate of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, Pyotr Miloserdov, who holds the position of head of the electoral technologies sector of the Information Center of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. According to the director of the Panorama information and research group, Vladimir Pribylovsky, his real name is Bakshi. He is a Karaite by nationality, the son of Kim Bakshi, a specialist on the North Caucasus, but changed his surname to his mother’s and became one of the main ideologists of the “sovereign-patriotic” leaning in the left movement.

It is also curious that in 2002-2003, Miloserdoye (Bakshi) worked with the famous political strategist Marat Gelman - first for the SDPU(o) party in Kyiv, and then simultaneously for the Union of Right Forces and Rodina. But two years have passed, and Peter is already running for the Moscow City Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. It was he, according to Pribylovsky, who authored the scandalous leaflet for this party with the slogan “Moscow for Muscovites.” And last year Miloserdov was one of the participants in the nationalist “Right March”. After this, the Plenum of the district committee of the Communist Youth Union (SCM) of the Russian Federation voted for his expulsion from the SCM and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

But Zyuganov himself publicly stood up for Miloserdov, and it was not him who was purged from the SCM leadership, but, on the contrary, some left-wing activists, replacing them with national patriots.

According to Komsomol member Vasily Koltashov, “this is part of the big plan of the leadership of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. In SCM, leftist sentiments have intensified in recent years, while in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation the course to the right, towards sovereign Russian nationalism, has become irreversible. Miloserdov has the right ideas for today’s Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and its leadership is placing a big bet on it." According to the famous left-wing political scientist Boris Kagarlitsky, Miloserdoe successfully solves the problem of developing a common ideological position of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with the nationalist “Movement against Illegal Immigration” (DPNI), since he also acts as an ideologist in both organizations.

The SPS campaign is launched by the former leader of the May movement

For the Union of Right Forces, the previous elections to the State Duma ended very poorly.

The party did not overcome the entry barrier, after which a special party commission, having investigated the situation, accused the SPS election headquarters, headed by the former head of the State Property Committee of Russia Alfred Koch and the creative director of the party Marina Litvinovich, of “ineffective spending” of funds. According to experts, this fate befell 2/3 of the SPS election budget. According to official data from the Central Election Commission, the party spent 215 million rubles on the campaign, but, according to independent data, its real cost was 20-40 million dollars. This means that between 12 and 26 million could have been “ineffectively spent”.

Dollars Well, but agitators from the Vladimir region were taken for a two-week internship in the USA! Almost all of its federal leadership in the party was replaced, and Sverdlovsk State Duma deputy Anton Bakov, who took the post of SPS secretary for electoral work, became the chief political strategist of the Union of Right Forces, on the recommendation of the new leader Nikita Belykh. In 2003, he served as general director of the Serov Metallurgical Plant and was one of the leaders of the “May” movement, collaborated with the center-left bloc of two speakers - “Party of Life - Party of the Revival of Russia.”

Under Bakov, the SPS propaganda campaign began to be built on the defense of the principles of social justice and support for low-income segments of the population. And the strong point of the ATP program was completely left-wing ideas: “Increase pensions by 2.5 times, wages by 4 times!”, “door to door” work, and the main slogan - “Completing capitalism.” Partly, the tactics chosen by the SPS justified themselves: in the regional elections of 2007, the party performed better than before. At the same time, the SPS was able to overcome the entry barrier only in four regions, suffering defeat in such areas as the Moscow region, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region.

The idea of ​​a “left turn” of the party was not liked by its “gray eminence” Anatoly Chubais. And the St. Petersburg branch of the Union of Right Forces became a public opponent of Bakism. Its informal leader, Grigory Tomchin, demanded that an emergency meeting of the SPS Political Council be convened to discuss the effectiveness of Bakov’s election technologies behind closed doors. And according to the leader of the Democratic Party, political strategist Andrei Bogdanov, in the March 11 elections, SPS PR specialists could have stolen over $7 million out of a total budget of $15 million.

P.S. It's only begining. Left out of the brackets is the LDPR, where the main and permanent political strategist, as is known, is Zhirinovsky himself. Yabloko, the People's Union and the Civil Force have not yet formed their headquarters. However, in the months remaining before the election, much can still change, and people who today plan to direct the election campaign of one party will find themselves in another. In the end, not only political strategists, but even parliamentary candidates and political leaders have no fundamental prohibitions on pre-election migration. So the election campaign promises to be interesting, despite all the obstacles from the bodies regulating the election process.

Ruslan Gorevoy

Work on mistakes

I have repeatedly heard from fellow journalists in Moscow that human rights structures working with the media are of no use to anyone. Like, it’s not clear why such organizations exist at all: newspaper people are smart guys, moneyed, they know how to stand up for themselves, and if the authorities are prohibited by law, then almost every editorial office has lawyers. Why any more human rights activists?

I contrast my personal experience with the naive bravado of my capital colleagues.

Four years ago, I received a criminal sentence for a “professional” journalistic article for libel: I published material about a major police figure who, in his spare time, amused himself with rape in a perverted form. The activist was tried but acquitted. True, after some time the loving colonel received his nine years of special regime in full: impunity, as is known, contributes to the commission of similar crimes. But this belated triumph of justice no longer saved me: the day before the court recognized that I was a slanderer and sentenced me to two years in prison. I had to flee from prison.

I forgot to say, and this is important: it happened in Ukraine. The investigation dragged on for six months, and the trial dragged on for another four months. All this time I tried to get in touch with local human rights activists. I would never have thought that I, until recently a quite prosperous editor of a department of a weekly newspaper with a circulation of 150 thousand, would need help, so to speak, from outside: I earned decent money, and there were already four lawyers working in the newspaper. I felt strong, smart and well protected.

Alas, I soon became convinced of my own arrogance. First the newspaper closed. Then my lawyer was shot, and there were no more people willing to defend me in court. A little later, in the prime of his life, the judge suddenly died, having announced the day before his intention to send the case for further investigation. By the way, in six months there were four investigators in the case. In general, I urgently needed help and support.

The head of the local branch of the Union of Journalists of Ukraine sympathized with me as a human being, but flatly refused to help. Several other organizations (which I can name, but I don’t want to), where I applied and where they could help, refused to support me on the obscure grounds that I worked for a Russian-language newspaper. Now, if I wrote in Ukrainian, then I would, they say, with a dear soul.

So no one helped me.

Anyway. I received my sentence with a suspended sentence and left out of harm’s way to Moscow. I worked in different newspapers and along the way tried to find someone who could help me or at least give me some advice: the verdict was not overturned, and they even put me on the republican wanted list.

In the editorial offices where work was found for me - in "Vek" and "Chimes" - they knew my story: I got a job there virtually without documents, thanks, so to speak, to the personal guarantee of the general director of the Russian PEN Center and my fellow countryman Alexander Tkachenko. I had to tell in detail what happened to me and why.

It’s interesting - my colleagues treated what happened to me as something unreal. Not from this life. After all, the passion that a few lines of truth in a newspaper can be paid with criminal prosecution and years of wandering remained somewhere far away, in stories about emigration from Soviet times. I remember how the editor-in-chief of the defunct Kuranty newspaper, Anatoly Pankov, when hiring me, said: “Yes, your story is atypical...”

But life on the run could not continue indefinitely, and I was forced to look for an organization that would help me gain some kind of complete civilian identity: return the documents selected by the prosecutor’s office investigator, stop the prosecution and restore justice. I searched slowly and for a long time, for three whole years, until I accidentally came across the Glasnost Defense Foundation.

And my life regained meaning. And instantly there were lawyers who filed a complaint with the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, and partners in Ukraine who provided a lawyer. And money to help my sick mother. In the eyes of the Foundation’s employees, I saw not only compassion, but also understanding. They not only heard me: they understood me and helped me.

And then it happened that I stayed to work at the Foundation.

It turned out that in the organization, which by definition deals with problems of the media and journalism in general, there is not a single professional journalist. In essence, there was no feedback from journalists in the regions: information from all over Russia flowed into the Fund, but it was not entirely clear what to do with it. It was included in the monitoring, foreign partners were informed about the most flagrant violations of rights, and they helped, as best they could, journalists in trouble, in particular, the “godsons of the Foundation” Andrei Babitsky and Grigory Pasko. But there was no talk of establishing a two-way communication channel with the Russian hinterland, or establishing information exchange between the Center and the regions. But there was a need.

And we began to publish an information digest, in which, in essence, we began to “introduce the regions to each other.” They talked about the problems of the independent press. Characteristic violations were selected and given a legal assessment. They spoke out in support of one or another publication persecuted by the authorities, and asked regional journalists to support their colleagues. And often we found understanding.

Establishing feedback with the regions was extremely important for us.

Firstly, publications working in the outback have the opportunity to be heard. It became more difficult for local authorities to put pressure on these media, because many people in Russia and abroad would certainly learn about each such fact. But pointing out a problem, identifying it means half solving it.

Secondly, the fund has the opportunity to help affected media to act more consciously and less chaotically. And even to some extent analyze changes in the information space in the regions.

That is why our next step was the primary processing of the information we received, so to speak, primal analysis. This is not yet analytics, but it is no longer statistics. And it is this kind of promptly processed information that is the most valuable today. On its basis, it is possible to predict the general situation in the media and identify the most disadvantaged regions.

Primary analytics, which we began to publish monthly, helped us identify the most dangerous trends of today: the creation of giant media holdings by presidential plenipotentiaries in the federal districts; the information security doctrine, which has no legal force, but is widely used in the practice of putting pressure on the media; intensification of prosecutorial pressure, etc.

The main task of the Foundation's information projects service is not to fight minor ailments of our press, but to prevent professional journalistic diseases.

At different times in the Foundation's activities, different programs were recognized as priorities. When it seemed that the democratic development of Russia was forever, then they began to develop an educational program: teach journalists the basics of legal literacy, conduct seminars, round tables, etc.

Today, independent analysts predict that by the end of 2001 the share of non-state media in Russia will be 12-17% of the total. And if the authorities’ priorities do not change (we are realists, and we understand that a bear can be taught to dance in the circus, but not in ballet), then in another year the state will control 93% of the media. This means that the time has come to realize the degree of danger of this process.

So, in my opinion, the priority for the near future is the development of a service for information and analytical projects.

Perhaps many colleagues will not agree with me. After all, it is so difficult to admit that the results of a decade of defending glasnost turn out to be not at all what we could have counted on. It is difficult to admit your own mistakes, but admitting them does not at all mean admitting your own powerlessness.

In Russia there are still non-state publications that allow themselves to oppose the officialdom. There is a relatively good law on the media. But there is no civil society, and therefore no confidence in the stability of the same legislation: the state can at any moment, by a strong-willed decision, put an end to both opponents and glasnost in general. There will be no one to object. The formation of civil society is one of the main tasks of the media in countries with developing democracies. Unfortunately, journalists in general have neglected to solve this problem and are now forced to confront government pressure alone. The people, who have never become a civil society, remain silent. And evidence of growing state pressure on the media is not long in coming. This includes the doctrine of information security, which is illegal in essence, but has already been adopted by government officials as a guide to action, and numerous attempts to change the law on media undertaken by the Ministry of Press, and the “hooks” created by legislators in bills, at first glance, absolutely not related to the media (let us remember at least one of them, which prohibits the propaganda of drugs, and at the same time any mention of them in the press - an attempt to establish hidden censorship).

It is necessary to resist the pressure of power, but you cannot get hung up on it. War is by no means a way to solve problems. We need to think about what to do next and look for constructive solutions. If possible, bloodless.

Glasnost, as we know, had a past, has a present, and certainly has a future. The present is, alas, a crisis. An attempt to return to the values ​​of the Late Paleolithic era. But the new generation is also “children of glasnost.” They are accustomed to breathing the air of freedom; the constricting rubber of a gas mask is alien to them by definition. But are they ready to fight for the right to breathe this air in their country?

And the future... So that it does not take us by surprise (as it happened in 1985), we need to collect bit by bit information not only about our victories and achievements, but also about mistakes and blunders, carefully comprehend everything that happened, and convey knowledge to those who will follow us. Perhaps our experience will to some extent protect them from inevitable mistakes.