MOSCOW, May 3. First Vice-Governor Chelyabinsk region and ex-senator Irina Gekht will soon be appointed chairman of the government of the Zaporozhye region, the Kommersant newspaper reports, citing its own sources.
According to the publication, the official has already begun her duties in the new region, although she has not yet officially left the old one. In this post, she will replace the former vice-governor and head of the government of the Vologda region Anton Koltsov, who worked in the Zaporozhye region for almost two years.
«A Kommersant source close to the leadership of the new entity confirmed that in the near future the official will receive the post of prime minister. Another Kommersant source clarified that it is planned to officially announce the appointment of Ms. Hecht to this position in mid-May «, the newspaper reports.
Irina Gekht began her political career as an assistant to State Duma deputy from the Chelyabinsk region Mikhail Grishankov. Since 2006, she sat in the Chelyabinsk Public Chamber, in 2010 she received the post of deputy minister of social relations of the region, and in 2011 — the post of minister. In 2012, then-governor Mikhail Yurevich appointed Hecht as his deputy for social issues, and Boris Dubrovsky, who replaced him in 2014, delegated the official to the Federation Council. In the upper house, she served as deputy chairman of the committee on agricultural and food policy and was noted for a number of notable bills — for example, on a ban on the cultivation of genetically modified products in Russia.
In 2019, after the appointment of Alexey Teksler as head of the Chelyabinsk region, Hecht returned to the regional government and took the post of first vice-governor, where she oversaw the entire social block: the ministries of health, education and science, social relations, culture, sports and a number of other departments .