MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev fired Moscow’s boisterous mayor Tuesday, ousting the man who gave the capital a modern face-lift but destroyed some of its most precious historic landmarks amid a construction boom that turned his wife into Russia’s wealthiest woman.
Medvedev signed a decree relieving 74-year-old Yuri Luzh kov of his duties because of a “loss of confidence” in him after Luzhkov openly defied the Kremlin and rejected a face- saving offer to resign after 18 years on the job.
Luzhkov’s dismissal ended an increasingly hostile battle of wills, squashing a regional leader’s mutiny unseen in a decade of tightening Kremlin controls. Medvedev and his predecessor and mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, appeared to be sending a powerful signal that no regional leader was indispensable and no one should openly criticize Medvedev like Luzhkov had done.
The firing also clears the way for a redistribution of the capital’s wealth, a sizable chunk of which has for years been controlled by Luzhkov’s billionaire wife, construction mogul Yelena Baturina.
Some of Putin’s top lieutenants were named by observers as possible successors to Luzhkov, and business groups close to Putin and Medvedev were expected to win more of Moscow’s lucrative building deals.
Some foreign businessmen were optimistic, saying Luzh kov’s ouster could help eradicate some of the corruption and cronyism that poisoned the city’s investment climate.
