United Russia updates its structure

In Moscow a two-day forum of the United Russia party has ended, which was the first stage of the pre-election congress of the party. During the forum, among other things, a rotation took place of the Supreme Council, the governing body of the party.

A number of ex-governors and federal ministers were removed from the structure. The powers of the head of the Supreme Council of the Russian Ministry of Finance, Anton Siluanov, the Minister of Education and Science, Dmitry Livanov, and the Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Khloponin have finished. The former head of Komi, Vyacheslav Gaiser, and the ex-governor of the Bryansk region, Nikolai Deneen, against whom criminal cases were opened, were removed from the Supreme Council, as well as the former governor of the Tula region, Vladimir Gruzdev, the former head of Kabardino-Balkaria, Arsen Kanokov, and the former head of North Ossetia, Teimuraz Mamsurov. Also no longer members of the Supreme Council are the former head of the Department of Culture of Moscow, Sergei Kapkov, senators Nikolay Bulaev and Vadim Tulip, as well as the former Minister for Development of the Far East, Viktor Ishayev.

Instead of them, the party's governing body includes 24 new members, whose candidacy was supported in a vote. They are TV presenters, entrepreneurs and representatives of business associations, some municipal officials and heads of educational institutions. Professional politicians were not included on the list.

Part of the High Council are representatives of the media – TV presenters Timur Kizyakov and Peter Tolstoy, and the chief editor of the Kultura newspaper Elena Yampolsky. From the business community the general director of the Aeroflot company Vitaly Saveliev, a businessman Dmitry Nikolaev (founder of the brand ‘Anzhersky Honey’), Artyom Androsov (founder of Sitishin), Artem Artemyev (founder of Ural Weights), and the founder of the project ‘Mom-Entrepreneurs’ Yevgeny Lazarev were included in the structure. Representatives of public organizations also joined the Council: the Supreme Council included the head of the youth branch of the Crimean ‘Support for Russia’, Yuri Hayrapetyan, the vice president of Support for Russia, Andrei Korkunov, and the president of the ‘National Association of Builders’ Nikolai Kutin. In addition, the President of the Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation, Irina Viner, the rector of the Moscow State Institute of Culture, Ivan Lobanov, and the State Duma deputy Oleg Valenchuk became members of the Council .

The forum also decided to change the composition of the General Council of United Russia, removing a number of State Duma deputies from it. "It is proposed to terminate the powers of the members of the General Council of the party according to the list presented," TASS quotes the head of the United Russia faction in the State Duma, Vladimir Vasiliev. Thus, on the General Council there are no longer listed the head of the State Duma Security Committee and Anti-Corruption, Irina Yarovaya, the deputy chairman of the Committee, Alexander Hinstein, the head of the Committee on Civil, Criminal, Arbitration and Procedural Legislation, Pavel Krasheninnikov, a member of the Defense Committee, Viktor Zavarzin, the head of the State Duma commission for monitoring the reliability of information about deputies' income, Nikolai Kovalev, a member of the Committee on Financial Markets, Igor Rudenskiy, the deputy chairman of the Committee on Transport, Sergei Ten and others. The head of the Federal Agency for Nationalities, Igor Barinov, senators Vyacheslav Timchenko, Rostislav Goldstein and Andrei Klimov were also excluded from the General Council 

Voting took place in an open format.

As a result, at the moment the General Council is composed of 52 people, including cosmonaut Maxim Shur, People's Artist of Russia Alexei Guskov, the director general of the State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia Irina Velikanova, the head of the United Russia faction in the State Council of Crimea, Konstantin Baharev, and other heads of regional and primary party offices.

According to the words of the members of the United Russia, the rotation is a sign that the party is going to listen first and foremost to the public, not officials. "The composition of the Supreme and General Councils includes more public figures, and some officials, representatives of the executive power, left the party. In my opinion, this indicates that in the first place the party is now increasingly ready to listen to society," the vice speaker of the State Duma, Andrey Isaev, said.

According to him, today Russian society should influence the policy pursued by the Party. "As employees of the executive power, they will still implement the will of the party chairman and the will of the parliamentary majority," the vice speaker said.