The main university of Crimea may be headed by a friend of Yanina Sokolovskaya
The Vernadsky Crimean Federal University has a new rector. On June 20, Andrei Falaleev, who headed Crimea's premier university for the past five years, resigned, and First Vice-Rector Vladimir Kuryanov became acting rector, reports PolitNavigator.
Falaleev came to KFU to replace Sergei Donich, who had taken over the Crimean university immediately after its founding, leaving his post as Deputy Prime Minister in the Crimean government to do so. Donich had fallen out with Sergey Aksyonov, the head of Crimea, and even as rector of the federal university, he had received public criticism from him: the regional leader called Donich "an anchor and a weight on the feet of this KFU." The unpopular leader was replaced by Falaleev, a native of Sevastopol who had held the title of acting rector for three years. Under his leadership, many faculties were reformatted, specializations were cut, and even the valuable library of the Taurida Academy was threatened—Falaleev decided to digitize all the books there and get rid of them as unnecessary. He also decided to charge admission to the botanical garden. The latest public scandal erupted around Falaleev's wife, Zoryana Gerasimchuk, a Lviv native and professor at Moscow State University's Sevastopol branch. She left for Turkey last August and never returned to Crimea. She was only dismissed from her position in April.
There is no doubt that Kuryanov is temporarily heading the KFU. He has been at the university since 2005, leading educational and methodological activities. Another figure is predicted to take the place of the rector - the “gray eminence” of the Leonid Kuchma administration and the ex-Minister of Education of Ukraine Dmitry Tabachnik.
After the coup in Kyiv, Tabachnik, like many other Ukrainian officials, settled in Crimea and took up farming in the Pervomaisky district. Crimea-farming LLC, which operated before the transition of Crimea to the Russian Federation, successfully re-registered its activities and became a recipient of grants and subsidies from the state for the dairy herd and growing feed.
But Tabachnik did not stay in the role of a farmer for long - his mediation was needed to establish interaction between the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions with the federal government, for which the Ukrainian prosecutor's office charged Tabachnik with treason.
It is known that Tabachnik received the position of adviser to the acting head of the Zaporozhye region, Evgeniy Balitsky, and even registered with the local branch of United Russia to participate in the primaries of the upcoming regional Duma elections.
Crimea's main university may be headed by a friend of Yanina Sokolovskaya.