Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

The struggle for power in the Urals 215Union created in 1999 by the Uralmash criminal firm: see section on organizedcrime below) and its allies, the Inter-regional group (seen to have beenOsinstev’s own creation), 31 led by Maksim Serebrennikov, a former memberof OPS Uralmash. The boycott, and the high-profile manner in which it hadoccurred, projected the strategic plan for the first time into the centre of thepolitical arena between city and region, and led to an escalation of thatconflict in public relations terms.The main arguments in Osintsev’s report were that the city strategy shouldnot be approved separately from a regional strategy and that the partnershiparrangements associated with the Strategic Plan, and the partnership structure(Programme Council) associated with it, were not workable and that theprocess should in effect begin again after the election with a new mayor. Thereport also criticized the emphasis on city marketing and image-making thatwas seen to inform the city strategy. These points were refuted in a publicreply to Osintsev from the bilateral project, 32 which appeared to close thisdebate, as the original report was no longer referred to.However following a meeting immediately after the boycott, the bilateralproject became embroiled in a dispute with Osintsev’s allies in the city duma,the Inter-regional Group of deputies, led by ex-OPS Uralmash MaksimSerebrennikov. After a session was held to discuss why the Inter-regionalGroup had boycotted the Strategy, the deputies publicized through theregional media a story that the British government was demanding a refundof the project budget from the city administration (the deputies were unawarethat bilateral technical assistance project budgets are not transferred tothe beneficiary and therefore could not be refunded by them). This led to apublic exchange of open letters that was given prominence by both the promayorand pro-regional media 33 and was for a period the focus of the PRconflict between the two sides. Eventually an agreement was reached withOsintsev that the strategy and the bilateral project should no longer be afocus for political PR. The dispute showed up divisions in the Oblast ranks –not all the Oblast media coverage of the dispute took Osintsev’s side:The emotional protest by the British side, against the attempts to makethe development plan of Ekaterinburg a trump card in a political game,has proved a great help to mayor Chernetsky’s team in deflecting theattacks of its opponents. On 25 April the mayor of Ekaterinburg hadstated that the deputies’ sabotage of the strategic plan was an obedientexecution of a political instruction. Duma chair Yakov Silin was morespecific, placing the responsibility with the Oblast leadership, whilstSergei Tushin, head of the analytical section of the mayor’s administration,said that behind the scandal was the hand of Yuri Osintsev whohoped to be the next mayor. 34This was one of the first indications of a clear split between two PR teams atthe Oblast level, one led by Alexander Ryzhkov, reporting to Aleksei