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Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov challenged President Dmitry Medvedev to fire him, saying he would not resign despite mounting pressure from the Kremlin.
“I will not go voluntarily,” he said at a press conference on Monday, his first day back on the job after a week on holiday in Austria.
Officials close to both Mr Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin have been briefing journalists that Mr Luzhkov should resign, but neither man has said as much publicly.
Tensions between Mr Luzhkov and the Kremlin have been gathering for some time, but the public mudslinging campaign began after Mr Luzhkov criticised the president in print on September 6 for putting a key highway development on hold. On September 10, Mr Medvedev said “give my regards to the mayor of Moscow” in a televised interview a few hours before the first in a barrage of anti-Luzhkov spots aired on a state-run channel.
Legally Mr Medvedev can fire Mr Luzhkov at any time, but that risks alienating the latter’s significant power base and destabilising Russia’s capital a year before parliamentary elections in 2011. “Of course the president could do this, but it would create tension and schisms in the establishment, and there are real risks. That is why they would prefer if he re-signed,” said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technology.
The matter is especially delicate due to the historic competition between Moscow and St Petersburg, two Russian cities that have jockeyed with each other for pre-eminence ever since the latter was built 300 years ago by Peter the Great. Both Mr Medvedev and Mr Putin are from St Petersburg.
“It would be a big blow to the Moscow elites if the St Petersburgers were seen to be putting their own man in Moscow,” said Alexander Frolov, a commentator for Sovietskaya Rossia, the daily opposition newspaper.
At stake is possibly the most powerful job in Russia outside the Kremlin – Moscow’s budget is $32bn a year, and the mayor controls 100,000 police in the capital city.
Mr Luzhkov’s wife is reportedly Russia’s richest woman, with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $2.9bn. Much of her wealth comes from Moscow real estate. But this has become a liability for Mr Luzhkov as he has had to fend off accusations that she benefited from favouritism, which both deny.
The portly and garrulous Mr Luzhkov is one of Russia’s great political survivors. He has stayed at the helm since 1992, through three presidents, and celebrated his 74th birthday last week.
Russia’s press reported over the weekend that the mayor’s resignation would take place in a matter of days and speculated on possible successors.
But by holding on this long, said Mr Makarkin, the mayor has bought himself some breathing room. “Its time for a period of negotiations to start, and a compromise, because the quick resignation didn’t happen. The negotiations may take some time,” he said.
But it is clear that he has been damaged by the media assault – 54 per cent of those polled last week by the Levada Centre, a public opinion research agency, said they distrusted the mayor, up from 32 per cent.
“Even if he stayed, it would be more like a long goodbye,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, head of the Foundation for Effective Politics, a think-tank that works with the Kremlin.
“I will not go voluntarily,” he said at a press conference on Monday, his first day back on the job after a week on holiday in Austria.
For more than two weeks Mr Luzhkov, one of Russia’s few remaining powerful independent political figures, has been the target of public attacks by state channels, which have accused him of corruption and mismanagement.
Officials close to both Mr Medvedev and prime minister Vladimir Putin have been briefing journalists that Mr Luzhkov should resign, but neither man has said as much publicly.
Tensions between Mr Luzhkov and the Kremlin have been gathering for some time, but the public mudslinging campaign began after Mr Luzhkov criticised the president in print on September 6 for putting a key highway development on hold. On September 10, Mr Medvedev said “give my regards to the mayor of Moscow” in a televised interview a few hours before the first in a barrage of anti-Luzhkov spots aired on a state-run channel.
Legally Mr Medvedev can fire Mr Luzhkov at any time, but that risks alienating the latter’s significant power base and destabilising Russia’s capital a year before parliamentary elections in 2011. “Of course the president could do this, but it would create tension and schisms in the establishment, and there are real risks. That is why they would prefer if he re-signed,” said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technology.
The matter is especially delicate due to the historic competition between Moscow and St Petersburg, two Russian cities that have jockeyed with each other for pre-eminence ever since the latter was built 300 years ago by Peter the Great. Both Mr Medvedev and Mr Putin are from St Petersburg.
“It would be a big blow to the Moscow elites if the St Petersburgers were seen to be putting their own man in Moscow,” said Alexander Frolov, a commentator for Sovietskaya Rossia, the daily opposition newspaper.
At stake is possibly the most powerful job in Russia outside the Kremlin – Moscow’s budget is $32bn a year, and the mayor controls 100,000 police in the capital city.
Mr Luzhkov’s wife is reportedly Russia’s richest woman, with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $2.9bn. Much of her wealth comes from Moscow real estate. But this has become a liability for Mr Luzhkov as he has had to fend off accusations that she benefited from favouritism, which both deny.
The portly and garrulous Mr Luzhkov is one of Russia’s great political survivors. He has stayed at the helm since 1992, through three presidents, and celebrated his 74th birthday last week.
Russia’s press reported over the weekend that the mayor’s resignation would take place in a matter of days and speculated on possible successors.
But by holding on this long, said Mr Makarkin, the mayor has bought himself some breathing room. “Its time for a period of negotiations to start, and a compromise, because the quick resignation didn’t happen. The negotiations may take some time,” he said.
But it is clear that he has been damaged by the media assault – 54 per cent of those polled last week by the Levada Centre, a public opinion research agency, said they distrusted the mayor, up from 32 per cent.
“Even if he stayed, it would be more like a long goodbye,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, head of the Foundation for Effective Politics, a think-tank that works with the Kremlin.
