MOSCOW, January 18 (AVN) - Colonel Sergei Nino has been appointed chief of the Sochi Interior department and will be introduced to the Sochi police on Thursday, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry's main personnel department told the Military News Agency.
His predecessor, Major-General Alexei Belozerov, was reassigned to a position in the Orenburg region Interior department with a heavier workload.
This can be considered a solution to a conflict between the city's police and the Federal Bodyguard Service that occurred during President Vladimri Putin's October vacation in his residence Bocharov Ruchei. Presidential bodyguards were reported to have participated in two allcomers in the Sochi airport and in Hotel Moskva's nightclub. The city police chiefs were accused of slothful stance during the incidents.
Earlier the city's Federal Security Service (FSB) department was reshuffled. Experts believe that reassignment of Lieutenant-General Sergei Smirnov, former deputy director of the Federal Bodyguard Service, to a position of chief of the FSB department on St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region and removal of Lieutenant-General Alexander Saprunov, chief of the Krasnodar territory Interior department, can also be linked to the case.
The newly appointed Sochi police chief will at the same time be deputy chief of the Krasnodar territory main Interior department.
Nino, 48, graduated from the Omsk Higher Police School and Russian Interior Ministry Academy. Prior to the present position he worked as chief of the personnel department and deputy chief of the Omsk region Interior department.