He has branded homosexuals satanic, deployed cloud–seeding fighter jets to ensure good weather on bank holidays and ordered riot police to break up anti-Kremlin demonstrations. As mayor, Yuri Luzhkov has ruled Moscow with an iron fist for the past 17 years.

But with only two years of his fourth term left to serve, the populist mayor is coming under a barrage of criticism which some believe could signal the beginning of the end for Russia’s third most powerful politician.

The most common criticism levied at Luzhkov is that he has used his influence to help the business interests of Yelena Baturina, his wife of 18 years and Russia’s wealthiest woman.

In an unprecedented public attack, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the pro-Kremlin ultranationalist leader, last week called for Luzhkov to resign for presiding over “the dirtiest and most corrupt local government in the history of Russia, one which is the stage for the worst kind of fraudulent schemes”.

Zhirinovsky also accused the mayor of fixing recent local elections to favour a pro- Kremlin party.

In a recent opinion poll, voters were asked whether “you believe the rumours about Luzhkov being corrupt and that he provides business assistance to his own wife”; 61% answered yes. Just 1% dismissed the rumours as “definitely not true”. The mayor’s popularity has plummeted to 36%, down by nearly half since April.

“The campaign against Luzhkov is being waged by proKremlin forces. There is an order to hound him, but we won’t take part in this,” said Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the liberal Yabloko party, which, in a sign of the Kremlin’s grip over parliament, has lost all its deputies.

“We don’t want to see him removed because then they could appoint somebody who was unelected and who would do to Moscow anything the Kremlin happens to want.”

In September Boris Nemtsov, a leading opposition politician, published a report in which he accused city hall of awarding lucrative contracts to Baturina’s construction company, Inteko, at the same time as her husband has presided over Moscow’s greatest building boom since the Stalin-era. Critics accuse Luzhkov of allowing city hall to pull down hundreds of historic buildings to make way for glitzy building projects.

“We’ve irrefutable proof,” claimed Nemtsov, “that Luzhkov favoured Inteko while signing permits for commercial development, making Baturina the richest woman in Russia.”

Leonid Gozman, another member of Russia’s beleaguered opposition, publicly called for Luzhkov to be held responsible for Moscow’s rampant corruption.

Baturina, 46, and Luzhkov, 73, have vehemently rejected all accusations and are suing both Nemtsov and Gozman. Luzhkov described Nemtsov’s report as “full of lies”.

The mayor said he had filed about 10 lawsuits a year for the past 17 years — many of which were linked to claims about his wife’s business success. “It’s an impressive figure,” he said.

Baturina, who rose from being a factory worker to Russia’s only female dollar billionaire — said by Forbes magazine to have a post- financial-crisis fortune of £550m — has rejected claims she owes her rise to Luzhkov. Some Russian experts believe her real fortune to be greater than Forbes’s estimate.

In a further blow to the image of Moscow’s first couple, Shalva Chigirinsky, formerly one of the city’s biggest property and oil tycoons, recently claimed in papers submitted to London’s High Court that Baturina secretly owned a stake in an oil producer.

According to Chigirinsky, he entered into a partnership with Baturina in 1999 because “no major projects can proceed in the city without her backing”.

Baturina has said that the claim of a partnership in the oil producer with Chigirinsky is “not only incorrect, it’s the opposite of the truth”.

Some Moscow insiders say the campaign against Luzhkov began after Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, shut down a sprawling wholesale market on suspicion that it was selling smuggled goods.

The market was owned by Telman Ismailov, a close friend of Luzhkov’s, who is believed to have angered Putin by spending £40m on an extravagant party to launch a new hotel in a Turkish resort.

Despite the economic crisis, Ismailov flew in 242lb of beluga caviar and paid Paris Hilton, Sharon Stone and Richard Gere to attend the opening party of the Mardan Palace, which boasts 560 rooms and a five-acre pool and cost £1 billion to build. Ismailov’s subsequent problems were interpreted by some as a warning shot to Luzhkov, who also attended the party.

“In my view we are seeing the beginning of the end of Luzhkov’s long reign,” said a former Kremlin aide who knows the mayor. “He’ll either be asked to step down before the end of his term or will be told not to run again.

“Either way, the Kremlin is starting to look around for someone to take over one of Russia’s most lucrative and powerful posts.”

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