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The mayor of Moscow, Yuri M Luzhkov, a dominant figure in Russia in the two decades since the Soviet collapse, was dismissed on Tuesday by President Dmitri Medvedev after questioning the president’s fitness and thus rattling the tightly controlled government here.
Officially, the Kremlin attributed Mr. Medvedev’s decision to his “loss of trust” in Mr. Luzhkov. But the two men had been feuding, and Mr. Luzhkov had seemed in recent weeks to be trying to create a rift between Mr. Medvedev and his mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir V Putin, who is widely considered the country’s pre-eminent leader.
The conflict turned into a highly unusual spectacle because such defiance of the country’s leadership by a senior official rarely occurs in public.
Mr. Luzhkov had been under pressure to resign, but on Monday, declared that he would not. It appeared that Mr. Medvedev then had to move to avoid undercutting his own standing.
Mr. Medvedev, who was elected in 2008 and has championed policies to modernize the country, has been clearing away a generation of a older regional leaders who have long clung to power in Russia. The dismissal of Mr. Luzhkov is the most pronounced step yet in this campaign.
On a state visit to China, Mr. Medvedev told reporters on Tuesday that he had no choice but to oust Mr. Luzhkov.
“It is difficult to imagine a situation under which a governor and a president of Russia, as the chief executive, can continue to work together when the president has lost confidence in the leader of a region,” Mr. Medvedev said. (Legally, the Moscow mayor’s position is equal in rank to a regional governor.)
A current deputy mayor of Moscow was named temporarily to head the city while Mr. Medvedev considers candidates to replace Mr. Luzhkov.
Mr. Luzhkov did not immediately issue a statement. But leaders of Mr. Putin’s ruling party, United Russia, who had sat nervously on the sidelines while waiting for the dispute to be resolved, sprang to Mr. Medvedev’s defense and echoed the Kremlin’s remarks.
“We regret that one of the founders of the United Russia party, due to his own mistakes, has lost the trust of the head of the government,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, a party secretary.
Mr. Putin’s role in the quarrel between the president and the mayor has been the subject of intense speculation, and he also did not offer any comment on Tuesday.
But it seemed very unlikely that Mr. Medvedev would have dismissed Mr. Luzhkov without Mr. Putin’s assent.
Frictions burst into the open this summer after Mr. Luzhkov published an official commentary in which he disparaged Mr. Medvedev for dithering over plans for a highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, and also seemed to call for Mr. Putin to return to the presidency.
At the same time, Mr. Luzhkov came under attack for remaining on vacation in August while Moscow was facing a heat wave and lingering smoke from nearby forest fires.
The state-controlled television channels, which rarely if ever voice criticism of party leaders, suddenly went after Mr. Luzhkov, signaling the Kremlin’s displeasure with him. They broadcast programs that questioned Mr. Luzhkov’s performance and suggested that he was responsible for corruption in Moscow.
Mr. Luzhkov, 74, a gruff, plainspoken politician with a fondness for keeping bees and wearing a Soviet proletariat’s cap, came to office in 1992 and has spearheaded a makeover of the city that has turned it into a glittering symbol of Russia’s resurgence.
Moscow has more than 10 million people, and its lively economy attracts job seekers not only from all over Russia, but from other former Soviet republics as well.
Even so, Mr. Luzhkov has endured sustained criticism for reigning like an autocrat, muzzling dissent and allowing blatant corruption to flourish. During his tenure, his wife, Yelena Baturina, has obained much of the construction business in Moscow, becoming one of the world’s richest women.
Mr. Luzhkov is also disliked by preservationists for approving the destruction of historic buildings for new development. And he has sparred with gay rights groups after barring gay parades and referring to homosexuality as “satanic.”
On Tuesday, opposition parties, which have often clashed with Mr. Luzhkov, celebrated his removal.
“All that the mayor has succeeded in doing in his post has been canceled out by the lawlessness, destruction of architectural monuments, petty tyranny and blatant corruption,” a liberal party, the Right Cause, said in a statement.
Moscow’s mayor used to be elected, but when Mr. Putin was president, he pushed through a change that made it an appointed post — part of his effort to consolidate authority in the Kremlin.
The mayor, like regional leaders, is expected to be a loyalist who staunchly supports the Kremlin and the United Russia party.
But Mr. Luzhkov was not a standard regional boss. He once vied with Mr. Putin for the presidency, and he has his own power base in the capital. He seemed to chafe at having to take orders from Mr. Medvedev, a former law professor who is 45 and has styled himself as a technology-friendly politician with a video blog and a Twitter account.
NYTIMES
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