KRASNOYARSK GOVERNOR’S RACE OFFICIALLY BEGINS.

Aleksei Lebed, who heads the government of the Khakasia Republic and is the brother of late Krasnoyarsk Krai Governor Aleksandr Lebed, has been officially nominated to be a candidate in Krasnoyarsk’s gubernatorial election, set for September 8 of this year. Aleksei Lebed’s name was put forward today by Honor and Motherland–the movement created to serve as Aleksandr Lebed’s political vehicle–as a candidate in the race to replace his brother.

The decision on Aleksei Lebed’s candidacy was made yesterday following a meeting between the heads of various parties and movements with representatives in both the State Duma and Krasnoyarsk Krai’s legislative assembly. A representative of Honor and Motherland, Aleksandr Shvedov, said the movement has already had discussions with Aleksei Lebed about his possible candidacy, that the talks were going well and that the movement hoped the Khakasia chief would answer in the affirmative. Aleksei Lebed’s official consent, however, may not come right away. Indeed, Aleksandr Lysenkov, Khakasia’s deputy representative in Moscow, said the younger Lebed would probably make no official announcement about his plans vis-à-vis the Krasnoyarsk governor’s race before June 6, which will mark forty days since his brother died in a helicopter accident (see the Monitor, April 29). A representative of Nikkolo-M, a high-powered Moscow-based political consultancy, denied rumors that Aleksei Lebed had already contacted the firm about running his campaign for the Krasnoyarsk governorship (NTVru.com, May 24).

The Krasnoyarsk governor’s race got officially underway on May 21, when the krai legislative assembly’s official decision to hold the gubernatorial election on September 8 was announced in the newspaper Krasnoyarsky Rabochy. The deadline for candidates to register is August 8. Each prospective candidate for governor is required to present the regional election commission with a list of signatures of no fewer than 23,000 residents of the krai. Aleksandr Uss, speaker of the Krasnoyarsk Krai legislative assembly, has declared his intention to run for governor and is expected to register as a candidate next week. It was reported yesterday that Aleksandr Khloponin, head of the Taimyr Autonomous District, had also decided to run for Krasnoyarsk governor (NTVru.com, May 24; Regions.ru, May 23; see also the Monitor, May 8, 16).

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), for its part, is expected any day now to put forward its candidate in the Krasnoyarsk governor’s race. Vladislav Yurchik, who heads the KPRF’s regional branch in Krasnoyarsk, flew to Moscow yesterday for further talks with the party’s likely candidate–Sergei Glazyev, the well-known economist who is now a member of KPRF’s faction in the State Duma (NTVru.com, May 24; Utro.ru, May 23). Glazyev served as minister for external economic relations in one of Boris Yeltsin’s cabinets in the early 1990s and, ironically, later became close to Aleksandr Lebed, even serving as an economic adviser on Lebed’s campaign team during the 1996 presidential election. Glazyev subsequently moved leftward, writing the KPRF’s economic program for the 1999 parliamentary elections.

UKRAINE SEEKS CLOSER RELATIONS WITH NATO AS TOP PRIORITY.