New old curator

Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, whose responsibilities in the new government include energy and industry, will again become the curator of the federal target program (FTP) for the development of the Crimea and Sevastopol. Such a scenario is being discussed, a source close to the Kremlin told RBC, and two interlocutors close to the federal government and the leadership of the Crimea confirmed it.

After the appointment of a new cabinet in May and the redistribution of powers between the deputy prime ministers for the Crimean federal target program, Vitaly Mutko began to answer as the supervising vice-premier. Supervision over the Crimean state program in the near future can be transferred back to Kozak, RBC sources noted. "The program should be transferred from Mutko Kozaku, but Mutko will also participate in the regional policy powers," one source explained. The second source confirmed this, adding that Kozak has "an unprecedented experience in Crimean issues".

"Mutko is hard to sink into the history of the FTP implementation," one of the sources of RBC, close to the Sevastopol authorities, specified. - He recently received the authority of the curator of regions and FTP, and he still consults with Kozak on issues related to the program. The main projects under the Federal Target Program - the Crimean bridge, Artek, Simferopolskaya CHPP - are ready, but questions remain to the quality of documentation and development of funds at the regional level. Kozak is dedicated to these local stories. "

The issue of the transfer of powers for curating the FTP will be resolved in the near future, an interlocutor of RBC, close to the regional authorities, specified.

In the apparatus, Mutko could not promptly comment on the topic of transferring powers over the Crimean FTP. The representative of Kozak told RBC that he did not have such information. The press service of the directorate for the management of the federal target program "Social and economic development of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol" declined to comment.

Correction in working order

At the ministerial level, Maxim Oreshkin, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development, answers for the Krymsk federal target program (his ministry accounts for 84% of construction projects, or more than 555 facilities, within the program). His deputy Sergei Nazarov is a member of the government commission for the development of the Crimea and Sevastopol, which Kozak still leads.

Kozak continues to take an active part in the discussion of FTP. July 5 in Moscow under his leadership a meeting was held on the implementation of the program "Social and economic development of the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol until 2020," the press service of the government of Sevastopol. "Participation in its work was accepted by the governor of Sevastopol Dmitry Ovsyannikov. The course of implementation of the projects of the federal target program in the regions of the Crimean peninsula, including on additional facilities, was discussed, "the city government noted.

"Situations in which changes take shape soon after the formation of the government are not the first. In 2004, for example, the unification of the ministries of transport and communications was announced, and a month later they were again disunited, "recalls Mikhail Vinogradov, president of the St. Petersburg Policy Foundation. The reason for the return of the "Crimean" powers to Kozak is the reluctance to fundamentally change the current system of curating the Crimea, the political scientist is sure.

Problem FTP

The implementation of the Federal Target Program for the Development of the Crimea was accompanied from the very beginning by problems. The cost and volume of the program is more than 800 billion rubles. Most of the money goes through the federal center and is controlled directly by federal executing agencies, but part goes to the budgets of Crimea and Sevastopol and is mastered by local officials. "The first pancake (with funding and development of regional funds - RBC), as they say, was a lump," Dmitry Kozak admitted in February 2016.

In 2017, the Republic of Crimea received from the federal budget 53 billion rubles. to the FTP activities, of which 87% were mastered. "I drove through almost all the unfinished objects of the Federal Target Program and made sure that half of them could be saved and handed in on time. It was just incompetence, lack of control, etc. That's what punishment will be for. And the law enforcers will draw their conclusions. Maybe there will be criminal cases, "- said the head of Crimea Sergei Aksenov in an April interview with TASS.

In early July this year, Aksenov said that about 40 objects with the completion date of construction in 2017 have not yet been put into operation, and called "insufficient" the level of control over the progress of construction and the professionalism of controllers. According to the management of the Crimean Federal Target Program, in 2017, 34% of the objects (215 of 632) were lagged behind the schedule, the reasons - poor organization of work, poor selection of a number of sites, long preparation of tender documentation, increase in the cost of facilities, shortage of building materials and the underdevelopment of the logistics system.

Claims are also available to federal customers of events. In December 2017, as RBC wrote, Kozak threatened to fire the responsible deputy heads of the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Education for violations in the implementation of the FTP. The Ministry of Transport dealt with violations of measures aimed at "ensuring the connection of the Crimean peninsula with the mainland". Two weeks before that, it became known about delays in ensuring the transport safety of automobile approaches to the Crimean bridge. The automobile bridge across the Kerch Strait was finally opened in May 2018.

The timeframe for commissioning projects under the development program for the Crimea and Sevastopol has been fulfilled only by 65%, according to the report of the Directorate for Administration of the Federal Target Program. The reasons are "weak" organization, "poor-quality" design and reliance on Ukrainian analogues.

The total volume of financing of the Crimean FTP was repeatedly revised upwards - most recently in January 2018, to 837.2 billion rubles. (including 791 billion rubles from the federal budget, the rest - from the Crimean budget and extrabudgetary sources). Kozak at the plenary session of the IV Yalta Economic Forum in April announced the need to extend the FTP, which operates until 2020, for another one to two years.