Belgorod authorities could refuse Yevgeny Prigozhin in the construction defensive line on the border with Kharkov region
Last week, the Belgorod authorities, headed by Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, could refuse to finance the construction of a line of defensive fortifications on the border with Ukraine to the structures of businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, a source close to the regional government told Layout.
“They (representatives of Prigozhin. – Approx. “Layouts”) dragged a project in which there were shelters like hotels and other delights worth several billion rubles. [The authorities of the Belgorod region] said the project is still being postponed. And now we are doing it on our own.”, says the source.
This situation, according to the interlocutor of “Layout”, could cause a negative public reaction of Prigogine. Founder of PMC Wagner November 30 through his press service accused Belgorod and Kursk business in obstructing the training of volunteers in the region at the bases of the “Wagnerites”.
“As a rule, these are enterprises and companies not of small and medium-sized businesses, but state-owned, owned by large business players living far from the Kursk and Belgorod regions (as a rule, somewhere in Moscow, on Rublyovka)”– says Prigogine. He urged them to “stop being outrageous” and threatened to publicly name these enterprises and the names of their leaders.
The largest enterprises of the Belgorod region represent metallurgy and agro-industrial complex. Among them are the Oskol Electrometallurgical Plant and the Lebedinsky GOK, which belong to Alisher Usmanov’s Metalloinvest, as well as the Stoilensky GOK from the NLMK group of Vladimir Lisin. In addition, the Rusagro agricultural holding of former senator Vadim Moshkovich and local large meat producers — the Prioskolie group of Gennady Bobritsky and Agro-Belogorye of the officially richest deputy of the regional Duma Vladimir Zotov — operate in the region.
In the Kursk region, Metalloinvest owns the large Mikhailovsky GOK, and one of the largest taxpayers in the region is Rosatom with its Kursk nuclear power plant. All of them have not yet publicly commented on Prigogine’s statement.
Back in October, the media called the constructions under construction in the region the “Prigozhin Line”. But in November, Gladkov began to personally visit these objects under the cameras and call them “notch lines.” At the same time, reports began to appear in the Russian media about a possible attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the border areas of the Belgorod Region, which Gladkov had to comment. A source in the regional government then told Nestka that he suspected “Prigozhin’s pranksters” of disseminating this information.
This week Gladkov in his daily stream, answering a question from a local resident, said that the Belgorod region is “ahead of all” border regions in the construction of such structures. He clarified that local authorities have been engaged in these works since spring. Gladkov did not mention either Prigozhin or the companies associated with them.
Если ситуация усугубится, то Вячеслав Гладков может стать вторым российским губернатором, конфликтующим с Евгением Пригожиным. С начала года бизнесмен жёстко критикует главу Санкт-Петербурга Александра Беглова. Помимо хозяйственных претензий, вроде уборки города, Пригожин официально accused Беглова в государственной измене. Сам петербургский губернатор прямым текстом никогда на эти обвинения не отвечал, но, выступая в апреле перед Заксобранием города, говорил о некоем «известном бизнесмене» с криминальным шлейфом, который «обкрадывал наших детей» и пытался «банкротить наши городские» предприятия.
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