Russia plans to replace arrested governor despite unrest in far east
The Kremlin is poised to replace a governor from Russia’s far east charged with multiple murders, potentially kindling a fresh round of public anger that has already ignited the largest protests in the region’s history.
As many as 50,000 people took to the streets on Saturday in Khabarovsk, a city 6,100 miles east of Moscow, to demand the return of Sergei Furgal, a former scrap metals trader charged with the murder of two business rivals and the attempted killing of a third in 2004-05.
So far, police have largely avoided cracking down on the unsanctioned rallies, which have attracted hundreds of supporters on weekdays and swelled to tens of thousands at weekends. The Kremlin appears to hope that the wave of protests will eventually subside, particularly as new details emerge about the murder charges.
Vladimir Putin may name a new acting governor to the region as soon as Monday, said Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a nationalist firebrand politician who heads the rightwing Liberal Democratic party, a token opposition party. Zhirinovsky claimed in a radio appearance he had been promised the replacement would also be a member of his party, apparently as a concession.
The Kremlin has also signalled it is planning to move soon. On Friday, a spokesman said Putin had not chosen a new head but added that “the region cannot be left without an acting head for a long time.” Earlier, the Kremlin had said Putin could formally fire Furgal based on the information uncovered by investigators.
Any replacement is unlikely to satisfy critics in Russia’s far east, where there have been eight straight days of unprecedented demonstrations against Furgal’s arrest. The protests have aired bitter feelings of resentment toward Moscow in remote, independent-minded Khabarovsk Krai, which in a recent referendum delivered one of the country’s lowest turnouts and least support for allowing Putin to run for president twice more.
Furgal, who made his fortune in the dangerous scrap metal business in the 2000s, is an unlikely folk hero. Investigators say they have witnesses and other evidence tying Furgal to the 15-year-old murders. Supporters say Furgal is innocent and that his crime was to anger the Kremlin by refusing to drop out of a 2018 gubernatorial race in favour of Moscow’s preferred candidate from the ruling United Russia party.
Observers say that it is unlikely that any protest movement could secure Furgal’s release, given the severity of the accusations against him.