By Vera Sitnina
The grandiose preparatory work for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi now has a manager. Yesterday saw another sharp turn in the career of Dmitry Kozak, the Minister of Regional Development and one of the people closest to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He has been appointed Deputy Prime Minister "in charge of the Olympics". In the morning President Dmitry Medvedev conferred with Mr Putin shortly before the meeting of the State Council for Sports. They decided that a Government member should be put in charge of implementing the Olympic dream. "If you recall the 1980 Olympics, a Deputy Prime Minister was in charge of these issues," the President said.
On the one hand, this proves that the future Olympics is high on the list of priorities. On the other hand, it is an indirect sign that the current system of managing the preparation for the Olympics is cumbersome and inefficient.
It will be recalled that Mr Putin had staked his personal reputation on Sochi winning the contest to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. Unprecedented amounts were committed to this goal and the then President Mr Putin personally accompanied the International Olympic Committee Evaluation Commission during its trip to Sochi and then flew to Guatemala, where the selection took place and delivered such a fiery speech to the IOC members that they had no option but to award the Olympics to Sochi.
A year has passed since that day, yet construction has not really hit its stride. In fact, even the large-scale purchase of land for construction sites has not begun. Meanwhile the city has to build not only sporting facilities but to tackle serious infrastructure problems connected with transport and energy supply, and to build hotels and medical facilities. Environmentalists are fiercely opposed to the construction of some facilities at Krasnaya Polyana, which is part of the Caucasus Biosphere Reserve. No technical solution has yet been found for building Olympic facilities in the waterlogged Imereti Valley.
To give a boost to the preparations, the President and the Prime Minister created the post of an eighth Deputy Prime Minister. The chosen candidate to fill it was Dmitry Kozak, the Minister of Regional Development. He is no novice to Sochi's problems. Before he became the Minister of Regional Development in September 2007 Mr Kozak had worked as the President's Envoy to the Southern Federal District and was well versed in the problems connected with the Olympics. It is another question that Alexander Zhukov, also a Deputy Prime Minister, was already in charge of the Sochi Olympics.
A RIA Novosti source close to the Ministry of Regional Development said that "Dmitry Kozak would be in charge of all the preparations for the Olympics, above all the construction work, while Alexander Zhukov will most probably be in charge of the sporting aspects, because as Deputy Prime Minister he is in charge of the development of sports in the country."
Actually, such a "bicameral" system is already in place. Construction is the responsibility of the state-owned corporation Olympstroi headed by the former Mayor of Sochi, Viktor Kolodyazhny, and the preparation for the actual Games is supervised by the Sochi-2014 Organising Committee under Dmitry Chernyshenko. So far it is unclear whether each of these entities will report to "its own" Deputy Prime Minister. Mr Kozak heads up the Olympstroi Supervisory Council, and Mr Zhukov holds a similar position at the Organising Committee. In the opinion of our source, "It would be logical for Mr Kozak to be in charge of the Organising Committee as well."
It will be recalled that this management scheme was devised last September. Before that the construction of Olympic facilities was supposed to be financed through the Federal Targeted Programme, but that scheme was pronounced to be too bureaucratic. Any changes in the Federal Targeted Programme could be introduced only by government decision. But while the Organising Committee quietly morphed from the Application Committee into an Organising Committee without even changing its head or the skeleton staff, Olympstroi has been involved in a scandal. Initially the former head of Transneft, Semyon Vainshtok, was appointed as its head, causing raised eyebrows. Six months later he was just as suddenly sent into retirement and replaced with the Mayor of Sochi, Viktor Kolodyazhny. It was rumoured that Mr Vainshtok had resigned of his own accord after confrontations with some regional officials and major subcontractors.
The person to replace Mr Kozak as Minister of Regional Development will be Viktor Basargin, who held a relatively obscure job of Deputy Presidential Envoy to the Urals Federal District. President Medvedev met with both men yesterday evening.
