The political council opened on Thursday afternoon in a businesslike manner, without discussing the events in Kudymkar, where in the early hours of Thursday morning Mikhail Kodanev and his aide Alexander Vinnik were arrested on suspicion of being involved in the murder of Sergei Yushenkov in April.
The priority task of the session’s agenda was to elect a new chairman in place of Mikhail Kodanev, who was transported to the high-security Lefortovo prison in Moscow.
There were two contenders for the post: a member of the central council of the Chita regional party’s cell Viktor Kurochkin and member of the party’s political council Yevgeny Skripelyov. After lengthy debates Skripelyov withdrew his candidacy.
As a result, the new co-chairman of the party and its new leader (the post devised by the party to respond quickly to any changes in the political situation in Russia, without having to turn to Berezovsky personally on each matter) became Viktor Kurochkin. Kurochkin, who was elected unanimously, will hold the post of the party’s acting chairman until the emergency congress of Liberal Russia confirms the appointment in a general vote.
A statement in which the party warned Vladimir Putin that Russia no longer lives in 1937 was passed by the political council just as unanimously and without prior discussion. The text was composed, according to Gazeta.Ru’s information, by Boris Berezovsky personally. In particular, the statement reads: ''On the night of June 26… Mikhail Kodanev was arrested. The consequence of the actions…against Liberal Russia allows us with full certainty to state that President Putin has embarked on the path of physical extermination of the regime’s opponents.
In August 2002 co-chairman of the party Golovlyov was killed; in April 2003 co-chairman Yushenkov was killed, and the leader of the party Berezovsky cannot return to his homeland under the threat of arrest. And now, there is another arrest, new persecutions. Mr. Putin and others of his ilk, come to your senses, we are not living in 1937, but in 2003. And very soon one will have to answer for Chechnya and for a destroyed democracy in the new Russia, and for the killings and persecutions of our comrades.''
Berezovsky is convinced that that none other than Pokhmelkin, co-chairman of another wing of Liberal Russia, whose leaders parted ways with the tycoon after he called for a tactical alliance with the communists to challenge pro-Kremlin centrists in the State Duma, was behind Kodanev’s arrest. ''I assume that Mr. Pokhmelkin is behind that arrest. But he was not alone in doing that. Pokhmelkin is an obeisant instrument of the Kremlin, used for destroying the party. I hope he fails. The case against Kodanev is fabricated. Actions against Kodanev are actions against me.''
Berezovsky said that a group of lawyers had been dispatched to Kudymkar shortly after he was detained. It transpired that before leaving Moscow for Kudymkar, where he was to take part in the conference dedicated to merging the Komi-Perm Autonomous Area with the Perm Region, Kodanev, evidently anticipating his arrest, had signed a contract with a legal firm.
Then, upon seeing journalists in the conference hall Berezovsky asked his colleague to adjourn the session so that he, using a video link, could hold an impromptu news briefing.
When asked by our Gazeta.Ru correspondent how he would counter Pokhmelkin’s monopoly on the party insignia (Pokhmelkin holds Liberal Russia’s official seal and all the party documentation), the entrepreneur said that there are legitimate means of contesting it. ''Here, beside me, is sitting Mr. Delmayev (Khamid Delmayev, former chairman of the party’s executive committee. – Gazeta.Ru), who had the seals and the documents. But he purposefully left them in Moscow, in the safe. We are not swindlers – Pokhmelkin is.''
Berezovsky also said that he intends to return to Russia, though ''not through the back door, but legally, as a citizen of Russia, perhaps, in the capacity of a deputy of the State Duma''.
The political council session was then resumed. The gathering decided to set up a fund to support ''party members and their relatives persecuted by the authorities''. To that end, the party will allocate 30 million roubles. But if there is little doubt that Kodanev’s family, which has four children, will agree to accept financial aid from the pro-Berezovsky wing of the party, it is unclear if the relatives of Golovlyov and Yushenkov will. Golovlyov had no family at all, while the relatives of the latter have categorically refused to have anything to do with Boris Abramovich Berezovsky.
27 ИЮНЯ 14:33
