Izvestia: “Forestry agency head fired”
President Dmitry Medvedev has lifted the state of emergency declaration in Mordovia and the Moscow and Nizhni Novgorod Regions, while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has summed up the regional administrations' efforts in responding to the wildfires. The head of the Federal Agency for Forestry Alexei Savinov has been fired.
Savinov generally avoided the public while the wildfires raged; he called news conferences several times to update the situation, but cancelled them at the last minute. He either feared journalists' questions, or knew that the government was considering his dismissal.
Putin announced a personnel shuffle at the forestry agency on Friday. He said the agency's deputy head, Viktor Maslyakov, would replace Savinov and that the agency's status would be changed.
The forestry agency is currently subordinate to the Agriculture Ministry.
The prime minister said "we are considering making the agency directly accountable to the government."
This approach was used on the industrial safety regulator under the Natural Resources Ministry, Rostekhnadzor, which was made subordinate to the government after the tragedy at the Raspadskaya coal mine. The agency's inspector's authority was expanded.
New functions will be approved for the forestry agency, said a source in the government, who added that the dismissal of Savinov was part of a large-scale reform at the agency.
"Overall, the former head of the agency has not been criticised too sharply, not even by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin," the source said. "He [Alexei Savinov] had to be responsible within the range of his authorities as the head of the agency when it was subordinate to the Agriculture Ministry."
Mikhail Kreindlin, manager of protected lands supervision at Greenpeace Russia, said: "Savinov's largest drawback is that he was not a forestry specialist and has dismissed many professionals from the agency's central directorate and territorial departments. He also continued to undermine the country's forestry industry, which was in a bad enough state as it was."
"Our legislation does not define illegal logging, and the former system of state forest security has not been restored," the Greenpeace spokesman said. "This is why the blame for last summer's forest fires has been placed at Savinov's door. However, the forestry system, for which he was responsible, was not ready to deal with these situations."
The Forestry Agency declined to comment.
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Note from Izvestia:
Viktor Maslyakov was born in Karelia on February 9, 1960. He graduated from Petrozavodsk State University with a diploma in agronomy and later defended a candidate's thesis.
He worked as a foreman at the Zaitsev State Farm and later became its director.
1993-1998: Director of the Slavmo dairy farm.1998-2001: First Deputy Prime Minister of Karelia.
2001: General Director of the timber company Karellesprom.
May 6, 2002: Appointed the mayor of Petrozavodsk.
2009 (for five months), he was an aide to First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, and then he was appointed head of the Federal Forestry Agency.
By Alexei Aronov and Yelena Shishkunova
