Chukotka Wonders What's Next.

(From The Moscow Times)

Editor's Note: This is the first of three reports about Chukotka.

LAVRENTIA, Chukotka Region -- Unbeknown to most of the world, the residents of Chukotka are deeply worried. They wonder what will happen when their much-adored governor, Roman Abramovich, leaves for good.

Few in Chukotka expect Abramovich to stay until 2009, when his current term expires. Even fewer think the region will be able to survive without him and his money.

"It used to be a complete mess here, and now it's all different," said Oleg Dobriyev, 45, a resident of Lavrentia, the main settlement in Chukotka's Chukotsky district and Russia's eastern-most municipality.

"Before, we would not see a tanker with crude or gasoline until about November. Now, tankers always come on time -- in the summer," he said on a recent evening in his new apartment, built by a Turkish firm and paid for by Abramovich's administration.

Dobriyev, who is three-quarters Eskimo and one-quarter Ingush as a result of Russia's 20th-century turmoil, works at Chukotsnab, a Chukotka administration-controlled enterprise in charge of food, goods and fuel supplies to the region. Earlier that day, he had busily pumped gasoline out of a 5,000-ton tanker that brought enough fuel to last until next summer.