Heads are rolling under President Dmitry Medvedev.
In stark contrast to his predecessor, who preferred quiet reshuffles to public firings, Medvedev is quick to dismiss senior government officials, including members of the top military brass.
More extraordinary is Medvedev’s readiness to bypass the regular chain of command and fire officials who do not report directly to him but to him but to federal ministers.
It was in this manner that Medvedev fired Vladimir Pronin, Moscow’s police chief, after the deadly shooting spree by a police officer in April. Similarly, Medvedev fired a bunch of three-star generals in the Defense Ministry who were responsible for ammunition storage and handling after a series of deadly blasts at a Navy arms depot in Volgograd in November. Finally, a few weeks ago he fired 21 officials from the Interior Ministry amid the public outcry over the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in pretrial detention.
Medvedev has also showed more readiness to part with old-time regional bosses, replacing heavily entrenched governors in Oryol, Voronezh, Sverdlovsk, Pskov, Stavropol and other regions where former President Vladimir Putin never ventured a dismissal.
It may seem like Medvedev is merely trying to assert his authority by personnel reshuffles that bypass a chain of command that he does not fully control. This would seem to be the logic behind his decision to remove Pronin, whom neither Mayor Yury Luzhkov nor the Interior Minister were in a hurry to fire despite the public outrage. In this sense, it was a move to undercut the authority of Luzhkov and Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, who are still beyond Medvedev’s reach.
My sense, however, is that Medvedev is more interested in acting as an agent of public accountability. He enforces the will of the people over the heads of recalcitrant government officials who are unrestricted by any sense of personal responsibility for the bad things happening on their watch.
This is an innovative way to exercise presidential power in Russia. While people still cannot remove bad officials through elections, they can now rely on a president with an acute sense of public justice to avenge their grievances.
History knows a man who built a great franchise out of this practice. His name was Robin Hood.
Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government-relations and PR company.