According to The Moscow Post correspondent in Yugra, the workforce of the strategically important oil and gas enterprise Yuganskteplotransservice (YuTTS) has sent an appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, complaining about the incompetent management of the plant and the city and asking them to influence the policy pursued by the authorities. Apparently, the authorities themselves, including the regional ones represented by Natalya Komarova, do not pay any attention to the problems of the enterprise.
Earlier, on February 16, the ex-head of the city department of housing and communal services, Ivan Murzin, a man of the head of the city, Elvira Bugay, was appointed to the post of head of the UTTS. The latter, in turn, is considered a very loyal Komarova figure.
Murzin replaced Sergei Legchenko, whose work did not cause any complaints from the workforce of the plant. However, with the reshuffle among local officials, rumors appeared about a change in the management of the plant, and a few days ago they were confirmed.
Of course, people also applied directly to the governor of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Natalya Komarova. And not later than in mid-January, Elvira Bugay assured them that no change in leadership was foreseen. According to the authors of the letter, when this nevertheless happened and they went to the administration, all the appeals did not bring anything but threats that the situation of the plant workers would worsen even more if they did not stop opposing it, Pravda URFO writes.
Photo: Rusprofile
Meanwhile, this is indeed a strategically important enterprise. Therefore, without orders, it is not worth it. The structure acted as a supplier under government contracts in the amount of 2.5 billion rubles as a supplier. As a customer – almost 10 billion rubles. There is something to fight for.
Policy forward professionalism
The labor collective of UTTS also draws attention to the fact that now only two out of five members of the Board of Directors have the relevant knowledge, skills and experience to make decisions related to the competence of the management body. For example, the deputy head of Nefteyugansk, Maxim Uskov, was previously the deputy chief of police for operational work of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, and was appointed to a government position in December 2021. Vice Mayor Pavel Gusenkov, a former prosecutor, was appointed to a government position in December 2021. People fear that such personnel changes will lead to the collapse of the enterprise.
And the fears are by no means groundless – in 2013, Legchenko was already replaced by Roman Gribanov, the son of the late ex-head of Nefteyugansk Igor Gribanov. During the years of his management of the company, the enterprise became unprofitable, in 2015 Legchenko was returned to the position of the head of YUTTS, who long and hard restored the company’s resources.
The second time Legchenko was replaced in 2017 – Maxim Baturin was appointed in his place, who was fired a year later. The reshuffles were connected with the confrontation between different groups of influence that started in the municipality for the financial flows that oilmen and the budget of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug send to the city, Pravda URFO writes.
Photo: admhmao.ru
Officials refused to comment on the situation, and the then mayor of Nefteyugansk generally went on vacation for one day, when the decision to dismiss was made – this was reported by Pravda URFO. It is not excluded that during the checks at YUTTS then major financial violations were revealed, which led to Baturin’s resignation.
And in 2019, searches were carried out in the ex-mayor’s apartment – The Moscow Post wrote about this earlier. Their reason is not revealed. This may be due to a scandal over the sale of a large plot of land to a Moscow firm or a conflict with his former vice-mayor, who was fired shortly before this incident. But evil tongues connect the searches precisely with the situation at YUTTS. There is a version that supposedly the mayor himself could have had time to “profit” at the enterprise, and when it “smelled of fried food”, he “reeled up his fishing rods” and tried to get out of the water dry.
Despite the abundance of scandals around UTTS, as we can see, attempts to take the enterprise under the control of local officials did not stop. And his workers do not want a repeat of the scenario and, even worse, bringing the plant to bankruptcy, which pushes them to extreme measures while the local administration pretends not to hear people.
The current head of YUTTS, Ivan Murzin, came to the communal block of Nefteyugansk, by the way, also at the suggestion of Degtyarev – Ura.ru wrote about this. Prior to joining the city administration, Murzin served as first deputy director of Nefteyugansk-Service JSC, which is now on the verge of bankruptcy. But this did not bother the authorities in the least, who appointed Murzin the head of the strategically important YUTTS, whose financial affairs are currently not up to par.
Photo: https://www.rusprofile.ru/
Confusion and vacillation in the administration
In general, “confusion and vacillation” have recently reigned in the city administration – in 2020, the mayor’s office even underwent searches related to the bribery case by Deputy Mayor Elena Abramova.
According to security officials, she received more than 1 million rubles and jewelry worth about 230,000 rubles for patronage from a local businessman, whose name was not disclosed, the Mksun.fm news agency wrote. Rumor has it that the ex-deputy of the Tyumen Regional Duma Bogdan Bogoslavets could be the bribe giver – another name of the official in the corruption scandal. But so far there is no confirmation of this.
In this situation, another fact is interesting – Abramova personally signed the orders for the dismissal of the director of the housing and communal services department, Elena Kulikovskaya, and the deputy head of the city, Sergei Lagoida, while Degtyarev, as in the situation with the resignation of Baturin, was on vacation. Allegedly, it could have caused a conflict between officials, which ultimately led to the case against Abramova.
The aforementioned fact, the searches in Degtyarev’s apartment and his subsequent resignation, again, during the vacation, despite the loud statements that preceded this on his part that he would not leave the post (wrote “New Focus”), suggest that that the ex-mayor preferred to give “dirty work” to subordinates, but the initiative in all political reshuffles came from him. This is also indicated by the huge number of appointments and dismissals that occurred during his tenure as the head of the city – only as Degtyarev surrounded himself with “the right people.”
The governor “does not see”
Such a mayor worked under the authority of the governor of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug Komarova for 5 years. And although she often scolded Degtyarev for work (for example, for garbage not removed from city streets), this did not change the essence – in 2016 Degtyarev was appointed mayor with her approval and continued to work all these years, and Komarova allowed him to arrange almost any reshuffles in the mayor’s office, until it became completely obvious that his main goal is by no means taking care of the townspeople.
Natalya Komarova has been the governor of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug for more than 10 years, with a short break in 2015 as acting governor. Her candidacy, according to the official website of the administration, was proposed by the ex-president of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev himself.
It turns out that the Kremlin is satisfied with the work of Komarova, only for some reason she “keeps silent on the sidelines”, preferring not to interfere in the showdown around YUTTS. What is it – unwillingness to work in order to preserve a strategically important enterprise or personal interest in the redistribution of the plant?
