Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (L) and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov attend city day celebrations in Moscow on September 7, 2008. Russia recognized Georgia's separatist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent nations after the five-day war and has ringed the regions with checkpoints the West says violate the terms of a cease-fire brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy is heading to Russia on Monday to meet with Medvedev and clarify parts of the EU peace deal, especially the terms for withdrawing troops. (UPI Photo/Anatoli Zhdanov) |
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MOSCOW, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- The mayor of Moscow might have to leave his post next week after having been caught in a dangerous power struggle between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Yuri Luzhkov, a barrel-chested man who has ruled Moscow for nearly two decades, this week fled to Austria. The official version is that he and his wife, Russia's richest woman, are celebrating Luzhkov's 74th birthday there but it's clear that the real reason for the trip is to escape the unprecedented media campaign that has raged against him in the past two weeks.
Luzhkov and his billionaire wife, a real estate developer, have always been criticized by the opposition, and many say rightly so. Luzhkov, popular and rich, easily brushed off those jabs but this time it's different, as the attacks are coming from the very top.
Some media outlets with ties to the Kremlin have accused the mayor of corruption, of mishandling Moscow's traffic system notorious for its jams and of poor crisis management this summer when forest fires sent poisonous ash clouds to the capital forcing Muscovites to remain indoors for days.
The avalanche of criticism was sparked by comments Luzhkov made in a Russian newspaper. In an interview, Luzhkov suggested Medvedev, the president, was performing poorly and should make room for Putin in the next elections.
"He intended to try to push a wedge between Medvedev and Putin," Gleb Pavlovsky, a political consultant who advises the Kremlin, told The New York Times. "This is already an intolerable situation for the federal center, so I think Luzhkov will have to leave."
Luzhkov, still very popular for his role in transforming Moscow from its Cold War dark days into the limelight of turbo-capitalism, denounced the media criticism as a smear campaign.
Whether he will have to give up his post or not, the affair seems to bring to the surface a power struggle between two camps: that of Medvedev, the young, foreign-educated president, and that of Putin, the Russian strongman who was already an up-and-coming state official when the Berlin Wall was still standing.
Yet Luzhkov's interview may simply have handed Medvedev a welcome opportunity to push the mayor out of his seat.
Luzhkov, famous for his trademark peaked cap, has governed Moscow almost like a czar during the past years and the Kremlin is generally uneasy when non-Kremlin actors amass vast political and economic control.
Medvedev has replaced several regional officials in the past months and it's an open secret that he dislikes Luzhkov. He has the power to remove him from his post and observers in the Russian media have hinted that this will happen by Monday -- if Putin doesn't come to Luzhkov's aid.
That's where it becomes interesting. Because if Putin helps Luzhkov remain in his post, the president's authority will take a hit, observers say.
"For the Kremlin, someone needs to kill Luzhkov politically," broadcaster Sergei Dorenko told the BBC: "President Medvedev has to do something to show he is the chief. He must. If not, Medvedev will be isolated by the bureaucracy. He will be 'zero' for the bureaucracy."
