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(thanks for the links to dolboeb) This all leaves a very nasty feeling. Not, of course, because they're “going after Luzhkov” — let them go after him. It's the latest demonstration of just how pathetic the authorities in our country are. Just look: In the largest city of the largest country in the world, there is a mayor. That mayor undeniably had real achievements in the period from 1991 to 1997, but after that he got worse year by year. Now this mayor is a thief, a crook, corrupt, and simply a bad city manager. Thanks to his greed and stupidity, Moscow is the world record-holder for traffic jams. Apparently, there is no getting rid of them in the foreseeable future. It takes me two hours to get from Maryino to Paveletskaya. Every square centimeter of the city center has been built over with idiotic office buildings or “elite housing” with no parking. Living in our city is insanely expensive and inconvenient. This mayor’s wife is an official billionaire who made her money from construction in Moscow. The mayor’s crimes, his abuse of office for personal enrichment, are known to everyone. The level of corruption in the city government is monstrous. Ninety-nine percent of the employees of the mayor’s office, prefectures, and district administrations involved in decision-making are corrupt. The deputy mayor, who has spent his entire life in public service, wears a wristwatch worth one million U.S. dollars. The prefects, deputy prefects, and district heads are, for the most part, practically caricatures of underground millionaires. I repeat: absolutely everyone knows this. Even the grandmothers sitting outside the apartment building know it. Putin and Medvedev know it. Chaika and Nurgaliyev know it. They regularly make policy statements about fighting corruption, while knowing full well that Moscow’s mayor is a crook and a thief. Knowing that the entire system of governing the city is built on fraud and theft. And then the X hour arrives. The president has a falling-out with the mayor. So what can the president of the largest country in the world do to this awful thieving man? Remove him? Jail him? Roll him into the asphalt? Shoot him? Hand him over to a fair trial? No. The president of the Russian Federation can arrange a few paid-for TV reports based on material from the kompromat.ru website. And only on NTV. Because as for Channel One and RTR, the president gives orders to them only after lengthy coordination. It almost makes you feel bad for the “bloody regime.” It turns out it’s just a “TV regime.” And the most, most unpleasant thing is that there are two possible outcomes: Vladimir Iosifovich and Elena Nikolaevna will strain themselves and deliver a figure with nine zeros to Roman Arkadyevich. After that, Roman Arkadyevich will make a phone call, and Vladimir Vladimirovich will calm Dmitry Anatolyevich down. The TV reports on the theme of “Luzhkov the thief” will stop, and everyone will behave as if nothing had happened.
This scenario was brilliantly laid out by lesha_sitnikov, who perfectly captured the essence of what’s happening in a single Twitter phrase: *- looks like it’s time for him to receive his First Class Order of Merit *Exactly. The worst-case scenario for Luzhkov in the Putin-Medvedev version of “fighting corruption” is that he gets decorated with an order, stages a ceremonial transfer of power to some Sobyanin, and then heads off to Austria safe and sound, where he and his wife have already bought everything in sight, right down to the glaciers and Alpine gnomes. Everyone will forget about the billions siphoned off from Muscovites, the stolen stakes in the Bank of Moscow, and so on. No hard feelings.
And under the second scenario, people will even start cheering: wow, what a great guy Medvedev is — he removed a corrupt official from office. Whereas in fact, a corrupt official is supposed to be put under investigation, not sent into an honorable retirement. So let’s say it together: the only acceptable, lawful, and just way to solve the “Luzhkov problem” is to move Luzhkov, his wife, and his closest associates onto the defendants’ bench. And finally, a special statement for the overzealous lawyers of the Luzhkov-Baturin family: Everything stated above represents the blog author’s value judgments. His official position is: *I, like the overwhelming majority of citizens of the Russian Federation, have every reason to suspect Moscow Mayor Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov, his wife Elena Nikolayevna Baturina, and a number of senior Moscow city government officials of committing serious crimes punishable under current law. The activities of these individuals must be investigated, and they themselves must stand trial. * Update. Four. RTR has joined in: </lj-embed>