UPD: Former head of the Kursk region Roman Starovoit explained the resignation of Alexey Smirnov due to communication problems with the residents of the region. "Recently, Alexey Borisovich Smirnov has had problems establishing communication with people because a large number of support measures have been adopted at the regional and federal levels — both material and legal, but organizing the communication to people on how these measures are being implemented has faced issues," said the Minister of Transport and former Kursk governor Roman Starovoit.
The governor of the Kursk region, Alexey Smirnov, who won the election just two months ago with a result of 65.3% of the votes, suddenly submitted a resignation letter, although a "direct line with the governor of the Kursk region Alexey Smirnov on December 11" was announced just yesterday. No comments followed from him.
The message on the Kremlin's website states that in the current situation in the Kursk region, "crisis management is in demand," and Khinshtein was an advisor to the director of the National Guard from 2016-2018.
Residents of the Kursk region constantly complain about poor organization of the defense of border areas, evacuation of refugees, lack of assistance from the state, and looting by Russian military personnel.
Alexey Smirnov, and before him Roman Starovoit, who was promoted to the government, could not cope with the information landscape, possibly Khinshtein's main function is to cover events in the Kursk region from the right angle.
A State Duma deputy cannot simultaneously hold a state or municipal service position. However, nothing was reported about Khinshtein resigning his mandate.
Khinshtein became a State Duma deputy in 2003, in 2020 he was appointed head of the committee on information policy, technology, and communications, in this capacity he fought against "foreign agents" and anti-war citizens, forwarding reports to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecutor's office. Khinshtein co-authored laws prohibiting advertising with participants of the "foreign agents" registry and registering owners of Telegram channels with an audience of more than 10,000 subscribers with the RKN.