Moscow City Duma confirms Sobyanin as Moscow mayor
MOSCOW. Oct 21 (Interfax) - Members of the Moscow City Duma confirmed Sergei Sobyanin as Moscow mayor by an overwhelming majority of votes on Thursday.
Sobyanin was earlier nominated for the job by President Dmitry Medvedev.
Sobyanin's candidacy was supported by 32 of the 35 Duma members.
Sobyanin's inauguration ceremony as Moscow mayor will take place at the White Hall of the Moscow city administration building at 13 Tverskaya Street on Thursday evening.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is expected to attend, the presidential press service told Interfax.
As was expected, Communist Party deputies in the Moscow City Duma voted against Sobyanin.
Andrei Klychkov, one of the Duma's three Communist deputies, told journalists earlier that the party "will not support the candidacy to demonstrate our attitude to the system."
He said that, while voting, the deputies would proceed not only from their personal position and attitude toward Sobyanin but also based on a decision by the party ruling bodies,
Sobyanin has been invested with mayoral powers for five years.
He was born in the village of Nyaksimvol, the Beryozovo district of the Khanty-Mansii autonomous district on June 21, 1958. He graduated from the mechanics department of the Kostroma Technological Institute in 1980 and the law department of the All-Union Correspondence Law Institute in 1989.
After graduating from the Kostroma Technological Institute, Sobyanin started working at the Chelyabinsk tube rolling plant.
From 1982-84, Sobyanin worked with the youth wing of the Soviet Communist Party in Chelyabinsk. He returned to Kogalym in the Khanty-Mansii autonomous district in 1984 and worked there as a deputy chairman of the local council, then at the housing and utilities department, the city executive committee, and the tax inspectorate.
Sobyanin became the mayor of Kogalym in 1991. From 1993, he served as the first deputy head of the Khanty-Mansii autonomous district administration. He was elected to the district legislature in 1994 and reelected in 1996 and became its chairman.
Sobyanin became a Federation Council member and head of its committee on constitutional legislation and judicial matters in 1996.
He was appointed as a first deputy head of the presidential representative in the Urals Federal District in 2000, elected as the Tyumen region governor in 2001, and became a member of the United Russia party's Supreme Council in 2004.
Sobyanin served as the presidential chief of staff and a member of the Russian Security Council from 2005-08. In May 2008, he was appointed to head Dmitry Medvedev's campaign team for the presidential election.
He was appointed head of the government secretariat and a deputy primer minister in May 2008.
Sobyanin was elected board chairman of Channel One in 2009. Since January 2010, he has been a member of the government commission on economic development and integration.
He is married with two daughters.