Why Sevastopol does not fit into Russian politics
Local politicians in Sevastopol in Ukrainian times were accustomed to acting independently. After all, the city of Russian glory was so different from the rest of the country that mainland recipes simply did not work here. For three years in Russia, Sevastopol politicians have not learned to show up to the leadership of their new party bosses.
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The leader of the Sevastopol branch of the Rodina party, Sergei Smolyaninov (a former member of the Ukrainian Party of Regions), resigned. The reason “was Rodina’s ugly nomination of Vadim Kolesnichenko as a candidate for governor of Sevastopol, which ended in nothing, or rather, a scandal.”
“I have been arguing for a long time that it is the Sevastopol resident who should be nominated by the Rodina party. Finally, party leader Alexey Zhuravlev said that he agreed with our proposal. But after the Sevastopol party conference nominated Kolesnichenko, the agreement was withdrawn. And this became an unexpected unpleasant fact for all of us in Sevastopol,” said Smolyaninov.
The scandal in Sevastopol will spoil the great unification launched by Rodina under its auspices of all patriotic forces of Russia. So far, the “Born in the USSR” party and the Russian Socialist Party have responded to the call, but many more are expected. As Moscow experts say, a new patriotic party project should replace A Just Russia, which has not lived up to the Kremlin’s hopes.
It is clear that all these processes take place under the supervision of the Center. Apparently, within the framework of constructive cooperation, the candidate for governor of Sevastopol, who was capable of, if not competing with, then spoiling the nerves of the government’s candidate, acting governor Dmitry Ovsyannikov, was recalled.
By the way, “A Just Russia” would not be prepared to be written off as scrap if all its party members were as proactive as Sevastopol resident Evgeniy Dubovik (former member of the Party of Progressive Socialists of Ukraine), who started collecting signatures for the self-dissolution of the city legislative assembly. The initiative caused a stir in Sevastopol; Dubovik claims to have collected 27 thousand signatures.
The situation was spoiled by the name of the action “Fed up” and the logo, made in the style of the anti-Putin action of the liberal “Open Russia”. Dubovik did not respond to warnings, and the scandal reached the federal level.
The leader of A Just Russia, Sergei Mironov, hastened to disown his Sevastopol ally. “To be honest, I was unpleasantly surprised by the latest events in Sevastopol, where our regional branch launched a campaign against the city’s legislative assembly. The initiative of the regional branch to hold an action for the dissolution of the legislative assembly of Sevastopol was not coordinated with the federal center,” Mironov said in a statement on the party’s official website.
The shout from Moscow did not bother Dubovik at all, although he was a former military man accustomed to subordination.
“I don’t regret one bit that we initiated such an event. The Legislative Assembly is incompetent,” the Socialist-Revolutionary said to the New Sevastopol publication. And by the way, he presented an argument that, in theory, should have convinced Mironov: at the last meeting, Sevastopol deputies, under a far-fetched pretext, refused to introduce a member of A Just Russia to the city election commission.
Amazingly, in Sevastopol even members of United Russia allow themselves liberties. Thus, Senator Olga Timofeeva, who was elected to the city legislative assembly from the party in power in 2014, is seriously discussing the possibility of nominating a candidate from “Chaly’s team.” The senator does not specify how such a candidate can be nominated, bypassing the party primaries, which no one except the interim can win.
“Residents approached me with a similar question at the beginning of the year. I then said that it was up to me to make a decision (about his nomination, - ed.) without the approval of the presidential administration, I will not. Therefore, there is no candidate from “Chaly’s team” as such. Let’s assume that someone goes on their own, the people support them, and then what? How to work and with whom?” – Timofeeva reasoned on the air of the Forpost website.
The strange residents of Sevastopol, of course, cannot help but irritate their Moscow comrades. A number of experts are quick to blame everything on the difficult Ukrainian heritage. But is it really heavy? Under Ukraine, Sevastopol showed solidarity in voting for the Party of Regions and Yanukovych, not because it liked them, but because there was a clear understanding of who to vote against - politicians with nationalist pro-Western views.
A similar motivation ensured record turnout for the 2014 referendum. Already in the Russian elections to the State Duma, citizens voted for United Russia and its majoritarian candidate (with many comments against him), because they associated them with Putin.
In the city of Russian glory, mainland politicians will have to explain their position in order to achieve popularity.
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