Although, following last week’s power blackout in Moscow last week, most public and official vilification was directed at UES chief Anatoly Chubais, it looks like Arkady Yevstafyev will be the man who takes the fall. He quit as head of Mosenergo over the weekend.
President Putin, meanwhile, has been taking the opportunity to publicly harrangue Chubais. In a recent meeting with Chubais and a number of senior government officials Putin first hinted at a tax audit of UES, then went on to say:
"Here’s one more thing. What conclusions did the top managers of RAO UES
and Mosenergo draw from it, at least in statements? I was surprised to hear
Mosenergo people talking about a need to raise electricity fees by a factor
of several times. It’s ostensibly needed to prevent energy crises in the
future."This looks like sheer blackmail in a pursuit of corporate interests at the
expense of customers, or the whole society, in fact."[This text is from an ITAR-TASS trranscript of Putin’s speech on Johnson’s Russia List email (#9169) and doesn’t appear on the web version, which is truncated. I’ll update the link if I find a complete text]
Chubais seems to be doing his best to hang in there for the minute, but I wonder if his days as UES chief are numbered.
The residents of Moscow itself seem to be about the only people who came out of the blackout with their reputations enhanced. One of those residents, Mike Tyukanov, reports:
The public behavior during the blackout was probably the most interesting issue of the day. From what I gather from numerous Russian-language blogs, newspapers and official data, Muscovites could get B+ or even A-.
- What next?
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