Russia: Regional Governor Holds Twitter Q&A · Global Voices
Andrey Tselikov

Two days ago Alexander Tkachev, governor of the the southern Kradnodarskiy Krai (one of Russia's 87 federal regions), announced a “twitter-conference” [ru], soliciting questions from his followers. Today he spent a few hours answering several dozen of them. The new-media-savvy public relations move met with hundreds of “trolling” questions like “how is your billionaire niece doing?” and “what types of off-shores do you recommend?” Of course, Tkachev did not answer these [ru]. However, he also failed to address some of the more legitimate concerns, for example about the recently flooded city of Krymsk or local corruption.
Some users have also alleged that Tkachev only answered planted questions from fake accounts [ru]. The Q&A session is now over, but its hash-tag #вопросТкачеву [ru] is still busy, mainly with rhetorical questions like [ru] “Tkachev, where have you lost your conscience?”