A bureaucrat who attended classes at Yale is tipped as the next leader of the Sverdlovsk region after Governor Alexander Misharin resigned Monday following a fatal road accident last winter.
Misharin stepped down “at his own request” for health reasons, the Kremlin said in a statement, although analysts said he was likely pressured after his reputation was tarnished by the accident.
Misharin, 53, a former deputy railway minister who had headed the Urals industrial region since 2009, was in a Mercedes driven by driver Dmitry Cherkasov, when it struck a Volga in December, killing driver, Yury Druzhinin.
Misharin and Cherkasov sustained severe injuries, and Misharin was hospitalized in Germany, only returning to work after two months of treatment.
On Monday, regional investigators announced that traffic violation charges had been filed against Cherkasov.
The Kremlin said Yevgeny Kuivashev, a former presidential envoy to the Urals Federal District, would serve as acting governor.
Kuivashev, 41, will likely be appointed for a five-year term before direct gubernatorial elections are restored in June, local activist Yevgeny Roizman said by telephone.
The gubernatorial election law takes effect in June and would likely not cover Kuivashev, who would be voted in by the local assembly before that, experts said.
Roizman said Kuivashev’s relatively young age is an advantage and called him “not a bad choice” for governor.
Kuivashev’s candidacy is no surprise, first surfacing in local reports as Misharin was receiving treatment in Germany.
A paramedic by training, Kuivashev studied law at an institute run by the Federal Guard Service. He attended Yale University in 2002, but described his time there as brief. Kuivashev’s other career highlights include serving as the mayor of Tyumen and a court marshal in Moscow.
