Russia plans to unite the occupied territories of Ukraine into a new federal district

According to sources close to the administration of the President of Russia, the creation of the district will be handled by the deputy head of the department of the Presidential Administration with the support of the affairs of the State Council Boris Rapoport. The Kremlin calls him a “crisis manager”:

• in 2018, he worked in Primorsky Krai on the gubernatorial campaign of Oleg Kozhemyak, who failed to win the election;
• in 2019, he also participated in the election of the governor of St. Petersburg, in which Alexander Beglov ran;
• in 2020, he handled the city’s Legislative Assembly elections.

Already last year, Rapoport joined the headquarters of United Russia during the regular elections to the State Duma.

Today, as the publication notes, Rapoport selects personnel for work in the administrations of fake republics and “military-civilian administrations” of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions of Ukraine. It is these officials who will have to prepare the holding of “referendums” on joining the occupying country.

Two referendum dates are currently planned:

• in mid-July, if the situation at the front allows;
• September 11, during the Single Voting Day in Russia.

At the same time, the Kremlin is also recruiting political technologists for the positions of “political instructors” and “deputy political officers.” Personnel are being searched for by the Department of State Council Affairs, where Rapoport works.

“They are looking for people who have experience of working with the opposition, who can act somehow outside the box, because tasks in Donbass are non-trivial“, – says the source of the publication.

Some of the political technologists confirmed this information to the publication. According to them, they were offered to work as “political instructors” in the Ukrainian territories: to oversee politics, public life, the media, social programs and preparations for the “referendum”.

According to two interlocutors of Meduza, Rapoport is now in the Donbass and sometimes even comes to the temporarily occupied territories of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. He is also considered the main candidate for the post of plenipotentiary representative of the head of the Kremlin Vladimir Putin in the new federal district. One, a source close to the United Russia leadership did not confirm the latest information.

Russia, for its part, gives priority to “work” in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine precisely to Russian personnel:

• Political strategist Alexander Kostomarov, who had already worked in a number of Russian regions, became the first deputy head of the “DPR” apparatus.
• the fake government of the “DPR” was headed by Vitaliy Khotsenko (former head of a department in the federal Ministry of Industry and Trade);
• Vladislav Kuznetsov (former vice-governor of the Kurgan region) became deputy chairman of the “government” of the militants of the “LPR”

According to one of the interlocutors, the leaders of the “DPR” and “LNV” militants Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik may lose their posts in the near future.

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