Medvedev fires Moscow’s mayor after 18-year tenure
Yuri Luzhkov’s wife made billions developing city
MOSCOW – President Dmitry Medvedev fired Moscow’s boisterous mayor on Tuesday, ousting the man who gave the capital a modern facelift but destroyed some of its most precious historic landmarks amid a construction boom that turned his wife into Russia’s wealthiest woman.
Medvedev signed a decree relieving the 74-year-old Yuri Luzhkov of his duties due to a “loss of confidence” in him after Luzhkov openly defied the Kremlin and rejected a face-saving offer to resign after 18 years on the job.
Luzhkov’s dismissal ended an increasingly hostile battle of wills, squashing a regional leader’s mutiny unseen in a decade of tightening Kremlin controls. Medvedev and his predecessor and mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, appeared to be sending a powerful signal that no regional leader was indispensable and no one should openly criticize Medvedev like Luzhkov had done.
The firing also clears the way for a redistribution of the capital’s wealth, a sizable chunk of which has for years been controlled by Luzhkov’s billionaire wife, construction mogul Yelena Baturina.
Some of Putin’s top lieutenants were named by observers as possible successors to Luzhkov.
Luzhkov leaves a considerable legacy. The stocky former chemical engineering plant manager ran the city of 10 million with the aggressive vigor of a tough foreman. His efforts to exert absolute control went as far as announcing plans to seed snow clouds outside Moscow to stop them from dumping snow on the city.
Under Luzhkov’s long tenure, Moscow underwent an astonishing makeover from a shabby and demoralized city into a swaggering and stylish metropolis.
As the prices for Russia’s oil and gas soared and foreign investment poured into the vastly underdeveloped country, Russia’s capital sprouted gigantic construction projects – malls, offices and soaring apartment towers.
Much of that work was done by Inteko, the construction company headed by Luzhkov’s wife, who is believed to be Russia’s only female dollar billionaire with an estimated fortune of $2.9 billion, according to Forbes magazine.