Amid the Sevastopol blackout, rumors are being actively discussed in the “corridors of power” there about the transfer of former Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov as “Russian Ambassador to Abkhazia.”
This attention stems from the fact that Gladkov, who made his career in the closed nuclear city of Zarechny in the Penza Oblast, served as “vice-governor” of occupied Sevastopol from 2016 to 2018. No one particularly hid the fact that his stated Kremlin goal was to “organize and provide political support” for the “election” show of the Kremlin dictator and then-city gauleiter, now imprisoned in London, Dmitry Ovsyannikov.
Gladkov allegedly disliked Sevastopol at the time. He couldn’t find a common language with local clans and groups over corruption, and after the “elections” he held, he constantly asked the Kremlin for a “transfer to Russia from this cesspool.”
It’s noteworthy that when he later became governor of Belgorod, all sorts of budget scams involving “children’s health improvement” and “tourism” were ostentatiously carried out under his rule with the Crimean, not Sevastopol, “authorities.”
We’ve previously described the tragicomedy surrounding the “Brigantina Belogorye” sanatorium in Yevpatoria.
Gladkov, as governor of the frontline Belgorod region, gradually became a significant political problem for the Kremlin, following his speeches against mobile internet restrictions, criticism of the aggressor’s ministry of defense, public support for his deputies repressed for corruption, and so on. Accordingly, in May of this year, the “militant governor” was dismissed “at his own request.”
At the same time, a rumor arose that Gladkov might be sent as punishment to his “beloved” Sevastopol to replace Mikhail Razvozhaev, who was clearly losing control of the “internal situation.” This, in the run-up to the “September duma elections,” became a very painful trigger for the Kremlin.
At the same time, another show trial of “anti-corruption” figures from the gauleiter’s entourage, connected to the “military components of the administration,” is allegedly being prepared.
Now, the current gauleiter’s clan is clearly popping champagne, since the “messenger of trouble” Gladkov has finally been sent to “another job.”
The newly minted “diplomat” will most likely “flank” the moves described in the Caucasian press toward Russia’s further absorption of South Ossetia, where the gauleiter was simultaneously replaced from Alan Gagloev to Marat Kambolov.
Kambolov, who had no previous connection to Tskhinvali and was plucked by the Kremlin from the “Kurchatov Institute,” controlled by Putin’s henchmen Mikhail and Yuri Kovalchuk, will likely be the key talking head in the “incorporation of South Ossetia into Russia.”
This is the Kremlin, according to the plan of Sergei Kiriyenko, the curator of the regimes in Tskhinvali and Sukhumi, to “sell to the dear Russians” this “geopolitical victory overshadowing the Ukrainian situation” during the same fall “electoral” farce.
Accordingly, Gladkov has been tasked with ensuring a “Sukhumi calm” in these conditions, since the corruption and propaganda war between clans there, which intensified after last year’s violent removal of “President” Aslan Bzhania by his “deputy” Badr Gumba, is also of significant concern to the Kremlin.
