Medvedev Fires Moscow Mayor in Wake of Escalating Feud

Medvedev Fires Moscow Mayor in Wake of Escalating Feud
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/world/europe/29moscow.html?_r=1&hp


MOSCOW — The mayor of Moscow, Yuri M. Luzhkov, a dominant figure in Russia in the two decades since the Soviet Union collapsed, was dismissed on Tuesday by President Dmitri A. Medvedev after questioning the president’s decisiveness and thus rattling the tightly controlled government here.

Officially, the Kremlin attributed Mr. Medvedev’s decision to his “loss of trust” in Mr. Luzhkov. But the two men had been feuding, and Mr. Luzhkov had seemed in recent weeks to be trying to create a rift between Mr. Medvedev and his mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who is widely considered the country’s pre-eminent leader.

The conflict turned into a highly unusual spectacle because such defiance of the country’s leadership by a senior official rarely occurs in public.

Mr. Luzhkov had been under pressure to resign, but on Monday, declared that he would not. It appeared that Mr. Medvedev then had to move to avoid undercutting his own standing.

Mr. Medvedev, who was elected in 2008 and has championed policies to modernize the country, has been clearing away a generation of a older regional leaders who have long clung to power in Russia. The dismissal of Mr. Luzhkov is the most pronounced step yet in this campaign.

On a state visit to China, Mr. Medvedev told reporters on Tuesday that he had no choice but to oust Mr. Luzhkov.

“It is difficult to imagine a situation under which a governor and a president of Russia, as the chief executive, can continue to work together when the president has lost confidence in the leader of a region,” Mr. Medvedev said. (Legally, the Moscow mayor’s position is equal in rank to a regional governor.)

A current deputy mayor of Moscow was named temporarily to head the city while Mr. Medvedev considers candidates to replace Mr. Luzhkov.

Mr. Luzhkov did not immediately issue a statement. But he did send a letter resigning from Mr. Putin’s ruling party, United Russia, according to Russian news outlets. In the letter, he said there had been a concerted attempt to force him out.

“Recently, being one of the party’s leaders, I have been fiercely attacked by state news media, and the attacks were related to attempts to push Moscow’s mayor from the political scene,” Mr. Luzhkov wrote. He said the party “did not provide support to one of its own members, did not want to sort things out and stop the flow of lies and slander.”

Leaders of United Russia, who had sat nervously on the sidelines while waiting for the dispute to be resolved, sprang to Mr. Medvedev’s defense and echoed the Kremlin’s remarks.

“We regret that one of the founders of the United Russia party, due to his own mistakes, has lost the trust of the head of the government,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, a party secretary.

Mr. Putin’s role in the quarrel between the president and the mayor has been the subject of intense speculation because he is seen as having better relations with Mr. Luzhkov. On Tuesday, Mr. Putin told reporters that he supported Mr. Medvedev’s decision, though he did praise the mayor.

"Yury Mikhailovich Luzhkov did a lot for the development of Moscow," Mr. Putin said. He later added: "But it is clear that relations between the mayor of Moscow and the president were not working out. The mayor is subordinate to the president and not the other way around.”

Frictions burst into the open this summer after Mr. Luzhkov published an official commentary in which he disparaged Mr. Medvedev for dithering over plans for a highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, and also seemed to call for Mr. Putin to return to the presidency.

At the same time, Mr. Luzhkov came under attack for remaining on vacation in August while Moscow was facing a heat wave and lingering smoke from nearby forest fires.

The state-controlled television channels, which rarely if ever voice criticism of party leaders, suddenly went after Mr. Luzhkov, signaling the Kremlin’s displeasure with him. They broadcast programs that questioned Mr. Luzhkov’s performance and suggested that he was responsible for corruption in Moscow.

Mr. Luzhkov, 74, a gruff, plain spoken politician with a fondness for keeping bees and wearing a Soviet worker’s cap, came to office in 1992 and has spearheaded a makeover of the city that has turned it into a glittering symbol of Russia’s resurgence.

Moscow has more than 10 million people, and its lively economy attracts job seekers from all over Russia and the former Soviet republics.

Even so, Mr. Luzhkov has endured sustained criticism for reigning like an autocrat, muzzling dissent and allowing blatant corruption to flourish. During his tenure, his wife, Yelena Baturina, has obtained much of the construction business in Moscow, becoming one of the world’s richest women.

Mr. Luzhkov is also disliked by preservationists for approving the destruction of historic buildings for new development. And he has sparred with gay rights groups after barring gay parades and referring to homosexuality as “satanic.”

On Tuesday, opposition parties, which have often clashed with Mr. Luzhkov, celebrated his removal.

“All that the mayor has succeeded in doing in his post has been canceled out by the lawlessness, destruction of architectural monuments, petty tyranny and blatant corruption,” a liberal party, the Right Cause, said in a statement.

Moscow’s mayoralty used to be an elected office, but when Mr. Putin was president he made it an appointed post — part of his drive to consolidate authority in the Kremlin.

The mayor, like regional leaders, is expected to be a loyalist who staunchly supports the Kremlin and the United Russia party.

But Mr. Luzhkov was not a standard regional boss. He once vied with Mr. Putin for the presidency, and he had his own power base in the capital. He seemed to chafe at having to take orders from Mr. Medvedev, a former law professor who is 45 and has styled himself as a technology-friendly politician with a video blog and a Twitter account.