MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin moved Saturday to assert sweeping control over Russia's far-flung and often headstrong provinces, decreeing that they be organized into seven vast administrative districts, each overseen by a powerful Kremlin representative.
It is Putin's second attempt in a week to rein in the 89 provinces, and it seems quite likely to stir protest among their elected governors, some of whom rule like potentates.On its face, the 10-page decree does not dilute the governors' power, change province borders or weaken citizens' rights to run local affairs. Mostly, it winnows down the current Kremlin arrangement, which places a presidential envoy in every province, in favor of a handful of administrators who oversee federal affairs throughout huge swaths of Russia.
The decree states that the districts are being created to streamline the unwieldy structure of relations between Moscow and the provinces.
The order also grants the envoys considerable authority, at least on paper, to carry out Kremlin decisions in their fiefs. It makes it clear that they answer only to Putin, who has the sole power to appoint and dismiss envoys, finance their local operations and determine how patronage is dispensed.
The envoys' main task, the decree states, is "the realization by the organs of state power of the main directions of domestic and foreign policy of the state, as determined by the president of the Russian Federation." Among their other powers, the decree states, is "the right to enter any organizations on the territory of this federal district."
Television news programs Saturday evening called the decree an outgrowth of Putin's pledge in his presidential campaign this spring to strengthen central control over the regions. Many politicians and experts say the Kremlin ceded far too much authority to the provinces in President Boris Yeltsin's tenure, to the point where some governors felt free to ignore presidential orders and federal laws.
"Putin wants to make the state more manageable and more monolithic, which he has declared more than once," a television network, NTV, said Saturday night.
"Experience showed the presidential envoy in a region depending more on the local authorities than on the president."
Indeed, the envoys rely on local leaders for housing, favors and even jobs for family members. Putin signaled last week that he would no longer tolerate that.
His decree explicitly shifts to his office the responsibility for housing and supporting the new envoys. On Wednesday in the provinces of Ingushetia and Amur, he suspended local laws that conflicted with federal law and sent a letter to the Bashkortostan legislature to urge it to bring the province's Constitution in line with federal constitutional law.
Putin also announced that he was considering legislation to restrict the governors' power, a proposal highly likely to meet fierce resistance in many provinces.
The new order establishes, in effect, regional capitals in the seven districts and gives Putin the authority to set up staffs in each. Among other powers, the envoys are responsible for putting into effect all federal orders and presidential dictates, coordinating executive agencies, monitoring law enforcement, supervising all federal hiring and "giving rewards and delivering thanks from the president."