From a hunting scandal to a promotion: Oleg Baranov, head of the Moscow Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, is being groomed to become Russia’s Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs

From a hunting scandal to a promotion: Oleg Baranov, head of the Moscow Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, is being groomed to become Russia’s Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs

In the near future, Oleg Baranov, the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow, may be promoted to Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. The transition could have happened earlier, if not for the incident involving his injury while hunting in 2022.  

According to the source, Baranov’s promotion documents are already in the Russian Presidential Executive Office. Recently, one of Baranov’s deputies, Alexey Makarov, was appointed Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, replacing Vitaly Shulika, who was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense.

Now it was Baranov’s turn. His move to Zhitnaya could have happened earlier, but an incident that occurred in the winter of 2022 prevented it. Oleg Baranov was hunting at the time. Gamekeeper Vyacheslav Salnikov was driving a snowmobile, and the general was positioned behind. He decided to shoot at the game while driving and placed his rifle on the gamekeeper’s shoulder. But the muzzle slipped on a bump, and the shot struck Salnikov right in the shoulder blade. They tried to hush up the incident, but it resonated widely, thanks in part to the Cheka-OGPU. Baranov even wrote a letter of resignation. But then miracles began to happen.    

The victim himself wrote a statement saying he didn’t see who shot from behind and had no complaints against anyone. Anything can happen. Doctors concluded that Salnikov suffered minor injuries.

The Russian Presidential Administration decided that if they fired every high-ranking security official who shot someone while hunting, there would be no generals left. Kolokoltsev threw his report in the trash. But, of course, the promotion issue had to be put on the back burner.

The source says that the main contender for the vacant position of head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow is considered to be the head of the Sverdlovsk Main Directorate, Alexander Meshkov.

The head of the Central Administrative District Department of Internal Affairs, the son of the permanent head of the regional headquarters, General Paukov, also had his eye on this position, but it didn’t work out.