This morning in Russia, President Dmitri Medvedev issued an executive order dismissing Yuri Luzhkov, the man who has served as Moscow’s mayor for the last 18 years. Until today, Luzhkov was recognized as one of Russia’s most powerful and influential public figures, eclipsed only perhaps by President Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. As of today, Luzhkov holds no political office, and speculation has already begun that he will soon face corruption charges in courts that, until a few weeks ago, have delivered him nothing but legal victories for nearly two decades. The Moscow mayor—a titan, a heavyweight, and a fighter—has been ousted by the Kremlin, and it wasn’t Putin’s signature on the order.
There was no one single reason Medvedev fired Luzhkov. Officially, the president cited a “loss of trust” in the mayor. Last week, Russian Newsweek published a list of various things that would disappear from Moscow once Luzhkov was gone. Among the things to go would be financial favoritism for Inteko, the multibillion-dollar business owned by his wife, Elena Baturina, who is Russia’s richest woman. The magazine also expected an end to the demolition of historical landmarks in Moscow’s downtown center, and even suggested that city authorities would now allow gay rights activists to hold public demonstrations—something the former mayor strictly refused to do, publicly denouncing homosexuals as “satanic.”
Image by A. Savin.