Head of Moscow Electricity Company Quits After Public Roasting By Putin

Jun 04 - BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union

A session of the Security Council in Moscow today discussed the reasons for the recent power crisis in the capital. Some sharp accusations were levelled at the power engineers. In particular, the president rejected calls to increase electricity tariffs to pay for modernizing the industry.

[Putin] I think this is simply blackmail, designed to benefit group and corporate interests at the expense of the consumer. In fact, at the expense of all society. I draw the attention of the chairman of the government to the cynicism and obvious incompetence of the Mosenergo [Moscow energy company] management.

[Presenter] So it looks like we can expect some personnel upheavals at Mosenergo. But not just the Moscow electricity company came in for criticism. Putin pointed to the recent rise in power outages, in Krasnodar, Saratov, Sochi, Tula and Ryazan, and said this is a clear sign of systemic problems. At this point questions were asked about the national Russian electricity company. For example, why it is not maintaining equipment and where its money is going. [Passage omitted]

To continue the theme, some news just in about the start of the personnel upheaval that we anticipated. The general director of Mosenergo, Arkadiy Yestafyev, has submitted his resignation, a member of the Unified Energy System board, [Andrey] Trapeznikov, has announced.