The newspaper Delovoy Peterburg, which was bought a month ago by the ESN group Grigory Berezkin, was replaced by the leadership. The general director of the publication was Natalia Sheludko, who has not yet managed to resign from the post of head of the press committee of the government of the Leningrad region. The main editor will be her former deputy Artem Smirnov. According to Kommersant's information, at a meeting with Mr. Berezkin the editorial staff announced that rotation of the management was one of the terms of the deal to sell the newspaper and it is not related to the elections. On the eve it became known that Vladimir Litvinenko, one of the co-chairmen of Vladimir Putin's regional election headquarters, had submitted a lawsuit to Delovoy Peterburg.

On Friday, the staff of "Business Petersburg" was presented with the management of the publication. For seven years, Maxim Vasyukov held the post of the editor-in-chief of the DP, and for the last two years he combined it with the position of the general director. Natalia Sheludko became the General Director, which until Monday will also head the press committee of the Leningrad region, the editor-in-chief is her deputy Artem Smirnov. A month ago, the "Business Petersburg" was acquired by the ESN group Grigory Berezkin, who also owns the holding company RBC and Komsomolskaya Pravda. Prior to this, the newspaper belonged to the St. Petersburg real estate development company Fort Group (FG). FG bought 80% of the publication from the Swedish holding company Bonnier AB in 2015, before the entry into force of a law prohibiting foreign companies from owning more than 20% of the Russian media. A year later, to distance himself from the fact of ownership of "Business Petersburg", Fort Group sold 99% of its share in the publication to Maxim Vasyukov in installments. However, before the transaction with the UST, Fort Group consolidated all 100% of "Business Petersburg".

Ms. Sheludko assured Kommersant that there will be no changes in personnel or editorial policy. Two employees of Business Petersburg told Kommersant that the new leadership spoke about this at the meeting with the employees.

The general director and the editor-in-chief assured that the rotation of the leadership is not tied "neither with elections, nor with politics," and promised that the employees will not be restricted in carrying out their professional activities. The day before it became known that one of the co-chairmen of the regional electoral headquarters of Vladimir Putin, the rector of the Mining University Volodymyr Lytvynenko, who was writing the publication in one of his investigations, filed a lawsuit against Delovoy Peterburg.

On Friday, the editorial staff of "Business Petersburg" met with Grigory Berezkin. According to Kommersant's three interlocutors, it was announced at the meeting that the management rotation was one of the terms of the deal to sell the newspaper.

Maxim Vasyukov told Kommersant that he is moving to the post of deputy general director of the State Corporation RBC - he will be engaged in the development of new platforms and products. Change management of the publication, he said, is associated with his transition to a new job. "Negotiations on my transition to RBC began before the start of negotiations on the purchase of Business Petersburg by the UST group," Vasyukov said, adding that the appointment of Natalia Sheludko and Artemy Smirnov is the choice of the shareholder he supports.

On the St. Petersburg media market, Natalia Sheludko is called a person close to the deputy presidential envoy in the Northwestern Federal District, Lyubov Sivershaeva, who comes from the structures of the Rossiya bank Yuri Kovalchuk. Natalia Sheludko was the head of the information policy department of the Leningrad region press committee, when the governor Valery Serdyukov was in charge of the region, in 2011 she left for one of the structures of Rosatom. In 2012, returned to work in the Leningrad region, when it was headed by Alexander Drozdenko. Artemy Smirnov worked under the direction of Natalia Sheludko for the last six years, before that she was a reporter of the magazine Expert North-West and the editor-in-chief of the official publication of the St. Petersburg Diary.