Abuse of Medvedev On City Visit Irks Governor

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: October 17, 2012 (Issue # 1731)

ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — City Governor Georgy Poltavchenko said he was upset by the behavior of some St. Petersburg residents who jeered the cortege of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev during his visit to the city last week.

“When the prime minister and I drove along the streets of our honored city, the majority of drivers honked their horns at us and people standing along the roadside raised certain fingers — to somebody who had come to solve the problems of his native city, our native city,” Poltavchenko told reporters of the Baltic media group, web portal Fontanka.ru reported.

“In that situation I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed not even as his subordinate or his colleague, with whom he has worked for some time, but rather as a St. Petersburg resident. People of other cities might do similar things as well. But I’ve never seen such open vulgarity.”

The governor dismissed the idea that such behavior toward representatives of authority could be a reaction to the way the authorities behave toward citizens.

“That shows a complete absence of St. Petersburg mentality,” Poltavchenko said. “It’s a matter of upbringing. That is a matter not for the authorities but for families. People behave the way they were brought up to by their parents,” he said.

During his business trip to St. Petersburg, Medvedev was also present at the official laying of the keel for a new generation LK-24 icebreaker for the Rosmorport Federal State Unitary Enterprise, and took part in the official handover of new research ship the Akademik Treshnikov to meteorologists. Once launched, the ship will allow Russia to continue studies of the Pacific sector of the Antarctic, where research work was cut short at the end of the 1980s, RIA-Novosti reported.

Medvedev also drove along the new section of the city’s toll road, the Western High Speed Diameter.