The electoral headquarters of Vladimir Putin at the presidential election in 2018 may be headed by the head of his administration Anton Vaino, say two interlocutors of Vedomosti, close to the presidential administration, and the interlocutor agrees in the administration. The concept of the work of the headquarters will depend on how Putin will be nominated to the presidency.

While the most realistic scenario is self-nomination, previously wrote Gazeta.ru and was confirmed by Vedomosti's interlocutors. In this case, Putin should support a group of not less than 500 voters, after which the candidate will need to collect 300,000 signatures in his support. The name of the chief of staff will be named after the creation of the initiative group that will nominate the candidate, and the headquarters will start functioning after the candidate opens the electoral account, the source close to the presidential administration says: "Now by default everyone thinks that it will be Vaino. But this is not the subject of experts' discussions at the meetings, the decision will still be made by Putin himself, and it may be different. " Traditionally, the headquarters is headed by someone from the administration's administration, but there were exceptions, he adds (see chart). Vaino's candidacy for the post of head of the election headquarters looks logical, the interlocutor agrees in the presidential administration.

The appointment of the chief of staff to the head of the administration is one of the standard schemes, the former federal official explains: "Given the traditional Vaino functionality associated with keeping the president's schedule, this option is all the more likely. In addition, he was at Putin's headquarters in 2012. The Chief of Staff is responsible for the strategy of the campaign and is on the vault of all programs and projects. " According to the interlocutor, Dmitry Medvedev and Dmitry Kozak headed Putin's headquarters in his first two presidential elections, because they were "trusted" people. It's pointless to appoint someone who does not do this in reality, as was the case with director Stanislav Govorukhin in 2012, another person close to the presidential administration believes.

Vaino, a native of the Foreign Ministry, worked in the presidential protocol since 2003. In 2007, he moved to the post of deputy head of the government apparatus, and from December 2011 to May 2012, he directed the White House apparatus. After this, Vaino, after Putin, returned to the Kremlin, where he held the post first deputy head of the presidential administration, and in 2016 - its leader. Vedomosti's interlocutors used to call Vaino a person "personally Putin", equidistant from pure politics and siloviki.

Neither Putin himself nor his press secretary Dmitry Peskov comment on the information about the forthcoming election campaign, referring to the fact that it has not started yet and no decisions on this matter have been taken in the Kremlin so far.

In 2012, the headquarters of public support was formed on the basis of the All-Russian Popular Front (ONF), although the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Vyacheslav Volodin, was responsible for the campaign. The head of the executive committee of the ONF, Alexei Anisimov, said earlier that the front still plays the role of the headquarters of public support for the president: "We continue to participate in solving the tasks that the president sets before the country. The institution of trustees also informally continues to exist, because the president, after meeting with them after previous elections, invited them to stay in public life through the people's front. Even the governing bodies are still called headquarters - central and regional. If we are given a task, we are ready to fulfill it. "

The presidential administration was actually created for the purpose of holding elections, political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky reminds. Nomenklatura posts may be different, but in fact there is always the identity of the administration and the presidential staff, he notes: "Never a campaign was run by an external person for administration. Traditionally, one of the administration was the head of the staff, and someone was in charge of the strategy. For example, in 1999, Medvedev was the chief of staff, and [the head of the administration, Alexander] Voloshin was the strategist, in 2004 the chief of staff was Kozak, but actually ran the staff [deputy head of administration Vladislav] Surkov. " Now the situation is slightly different, since it's not about the election campaign, but reformatting the management of the whole political system, the expert believes: "It's not elections that are being prepared, but a set of measures, which should include getting Putin's mandate from the population to carry out a further reorganization of the state . And it is logical to put in the head of the headquarters an inviolable figure without his own game - Vaino fits perfectly. " Given the "strategic command of Kiriyenko," Vaino will not take the initiative, but "is the ideal point of summation of different forces into a common vector," Pavlovsky concludes.

The headquarters grid and the headquarters management system are formed depending on the objectives of the campaign, regardless of whether the deputy is a campaign, gubernatorial or presidential, says the head of regional programs close to the Kremlin ESI Andrei Kolyadin. Public staffs unite iconic individuals who simultaneously serve as proxies, represent the candidate at events, promote his agenda, he explains: "The technological staff consists of specialists capable of writing strategy, a calendar plan. Some activities should work to recognize the candidate, others - to promote his program, the third - to mobilize to vote. " There is also the so-called bureaucratic headquarters, when the campaign is built on the events planned for this period of time, the expert adds: "For example, an international student festival is taking place - we can assume that it will become a landmark event and candidates will participate in it. Proceeding from the fact that staff technologists can not manage such events, the bureaucratic headquarters is building a system so that there will be no disruptions. "

The headquarters headed by Govorukhin in 2012, when Putin was nominated from United Russia, provided a liaison with the ONF and other structures of public support, says political analyst Dmitry Badovsky: "The presence of a public headquarters depends, among other things, on the scheme of nomination. If there is self-nomination, then the structure of the public headquarters should be ". In 2012, this was also necessary because of the specific situation, since Putin was the prime minister, "part of his team was in the White House, and some in the presidential administration", and also because of the situation with the protests, the expert adds.

The tasks were highly technological - Putin, by and large, does not need a headquarters or political technologists: everything that he does is now perceived only within the framework of the election campaign, political scientist Andrei Kolesnikov says. In his opinion, if Putin goes self-nominated as a people's president, which is logical, then the headquarters will be non-partisan, and ONF in this sense is an outdated structure adapted for other tasks. Both Vaino and [his first deputy] Sergei Kiriyenko should play the basic technological roles here: the state should prepare the state leader to extend his powers, the expert sums up.