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Yuri Luzhkov has been mayor of Moscow for the past 18 years but now he’s out of a job after he was fired by President Dmitry Medvedev. “As president of the Russian Federation, I have lost confidence in the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov,” Dmitry Medvedev told journalists. Julia loffe is Foreign Policy Magazine’s Moscow Correspondent. Download MP3
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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Yuri Luzhkov has been the mayor of Moscow for the past 18 years, but today he’s out of a job. He was fired by President Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev said this while he was on a visit to China today.
SPEAKING RUSSIAN
DMITRY MEDVEDEV: There is not much to comment. The reason for this dismissal follows from the wording of the decree, which means that I as the president of the Russian Federation have lost confidence in Mr. Luzhkov as the mayor of Moscow. The law directly stipulates loss of confidence as grounds for dismissal. This is the first time it has happened, but I do not exclude more cases. It depends on the specific situation. I can hardly imagine a governor carrying out his duties if the leader of the state has no confidence in him.
MULLINS: Sounded like a warning to other local officials as well. Julia Ioffe is Foreign Policy Magazine correspondent in Moscow. We want to ask you about that lack of confidence and why it seemed to be so suddenly expressed, if indeed it was sudden, but first who is this mayor who has been fired, Yuri Luzhkov?
JULIA IOFFE: He has been the only mayor really that Russian’s have known in the post-Soviet period. He was appointed in June of 1992 by then president Boris Yeltsin just six months after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And after the reformist kind of academic egghead mayor stepped down because he just was not up to the job. Luzhkov got in because he had been on the Moscow city council. He was the Master of the House. This is the term he used to describe himself and [INDISCERNIBLE] others came to describe him.
MULLINS: So if he was the Master of the House and he wielded so much power, one of the most influential people probably in Russia, why did he get the boot?
IOFFE: He’s been in power for a very long time. He also has a very powerful constituency and by that I don’t just mean that he is in charge of a city that concentrates most of the country’s wealth and about 10% of its population, but a massive business interest that he controls and that are [INDISCERNIBLE] to him for giving them access to building projects and the like. So he has his own kind of independent center of power which is anathema to the current Kremlim. The Kremlin started to feel that he might be a liability in the coming parliamentary elections next fall because his approval rating among Muscovites has been plummeting due to insane levels of corruption in Moscow. It’s really hard to overstate how corrupt the city has become under his watch.
MULLINS: But he also had some choice words for President Medvedev.
IOFFE: Yes, in an article that came out earlier this month, he basically called for Putin to come back to the presidency because he felt the country was not being run well under Medvedev. Tonight there’s been a letter leaked to the Russian press from ex-mayor Luzhkov to the president in which he basically calls the president a hypocrite for calling for democracy and then ousting Luzhkov and he says he’s a popular mayor and the public will not support it, which is not true. The public is very happy that he’s out. And comparing himself, ironically, to Soviet dissidents who were persecuted by the state.
MULLINS: It sounds like Mayor Luzhkov, or at least former-Mayor Luzhkov, is not going down without a fight. Is this the kind of thing that eventually would get him into deeper hot water than he’s in now?
IOFFE: I think so. I think the fact that he’d been fired and fired so harshly is already a sign that he has really crossed [INDISCERNIBLE] line. If he keeps going down this route and antagonizing the Kremlin further, he could face criminal charges on corruption and racketeering and all those kinds of things that he’s been accused of.
MULLINS: And it sounds like the matter is not necessarily going to be in the hands of the people of Moscow? I mean do they have any say in the matter?
IOFFE: Absolutely not.
MULLINS: Will there be an election?
IOFFE: No. Since 2004, regional heads, including the mayor of Moscow, has been appointed by the president. So there will not be an election to replace him. Three candidates will be nominated by the ruling United Russia Party. That list will be submitted to the president and the president will pick who will replace Luzhkov.
MULLINS: Julia Ioffe is Foreign Policy Magazine’s Moscow correspondent talking to us about the ousting of the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. Thanks a lot, Julia.
IOFFE: Thank you.
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