Looking back on the past couple of weeks in Russian politics, I summarize what is worth watching as Russia prepares for another set of (likely heavily rigged) regional and local elections in September and what these regions may tell us about the Kremlin’s personnel policies. I also reflect briefly on development plans (and realities) in Russia’s remote but economically increasingly important regions, and, in the “also-happeneds” section I look at recent electricity outages, newly appointed mayors and what the government expects to achieve with the nationalization of private assets.

What to watch in Russia’s September elections

In July, candidates have been selected and nominated for the September regional and local elections, which will see gubernatorial elections in 21 regions, local legislative votes in 11 regions, as well as other regular votes and by-elections. Obviously, most of these votes can hardly be called elections in the sense that they would be in a democracy. Nonetheless, as I have underlined several times in the past years, this does not mean that they are irrelevant and do not provide information about political currents. Below I will just list a couple of these that will be worth watching.

• In the Irkutsk Region city of Bratsk, it appears that a competitive mayoral election is shaping up with the governing United Russia party split behind the incumbent Sergey Serebrennikov, a former FSB officer, and Alexander Dubrovin, the head of the Bratsk district, with which the city is planned to be merged. The local Communist Party, a not negligible opposition force in the region, has nominated Elena Kutergina, a local journalist who has covered stories related to social injustices and conservationism and had been fired from his newspaper after criticizing Serebrennikov. The election is interesting inasmuch as it highlights several trends that have shaped local politics in Russia over the past years, notably: how a conflict between local elites can present a challenge for incumbents even in more or less tightly controlled regions; how some chapters so-called “systemic opposition” parties often ally themselves with grassroots figures representing local agendas; how top-down imposed centralization and merger attempts can create tensions between outsiders and locals; and ultimately the reasons and pitfalls of the Kremlin’s push to abolish direct mayoral elections (which often let local voters blow off steam). Bratsk is also not a particularly small town: with more than 200 thousand residents it is the fourteenth largest city in Siberia with notable metallurgical industry.
• In Moscow the authorities will, de facto, switch to complete online and electronic voting (by requiring voters to pre-apply for paper ballots), testing what has been the maximalist goal of the promoters of the system since its initial test a mere five years ago. Since then, from election to election, electronic voting has been relentlessly rolled out in an increasing number of regions, in spite of stories of forced registration, various glitches, an unverifiable tallying and suspicious boosts given to pro-regime candidates. In effect, online voting has allowed the authorities to use the same techniques of manipulation and rigging as in the case of “offline” voting, but more efficiently, having to rely less on cooperation from local officials and without the risk of nosy independent observers and opposition tactics. It is notable that so-called “electoral sultanates” – regions whose relationship with the Kremlin relies strongly on the delivery of high turnout and high pro-regime figures in every election – have so far resisted the introduction of this system. There is of course a flip side of electronic voting, inasmuch as by removing the personal, physical element from the voting process might further erode the legitimacy of the results, but the authorities do not seem to be afraid of this, at least in Moscow.
• In St. Petersburg the approach to the planned re-election of governor Alexander Beglov and the United Russia majority in the city assembly focuses on the more “traditional” techniques of disqualifying opposition candidates, keeping turnout as low as possible (in order to control as large a part of the active electorate as possible), and distributing goodies, such as a temporary stop in utility price hikes. Beglov’s reelection will be a real feat of the Kremlin’s repressive machinery: not only has he been a spectacularly ineffective and scandal-prone governor in policy terms, but the Kremlin’s own polling suggests that St. Petersburg may now be Russia’s most opposition-minded city. However, propping up weak and compromised leaders beholden to the political center fits perfectly into the Kremlin’s domestic political toolbox. Let us also remember that Beglov’s repeated coronation will happen just a year and a half after the now-deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin was still actively trying to oust him.
• In Khakassia, a Siberian region relying on coal and ore mining (and tourism), the region’s communist governor, Valentin Konovalov, saw off a challenge from a Kremlin-backed candidate, Sergey Sokol last year, by successfully rallying local elites behind himself. This was Russia’s only actually competitive gubernatorial election for years, showcasing that the Presidential Administration does not have full control over every aspect of domestic politics (or at the very least that sometimes there is still room for enterprising officials to benefit from rivalry between overseers of domestic politics). But United Russia took over the regional parliament – with a little help from electoral rules, as in many regions – elevating Sokol to the position of speaker. Konovalov immediately thought it wise to find a modus vivendi with the authorities. The culmination of this newfound equilibrium will be an uncompetitive election in September as the region elects a new Duma deputy in former energy minister Nikolay Shulginov who has been in need of a new job since he was replaced by Sergey Tsivilyov, the former head of another coal-mining region (and the husband of deputy defense minister Anna Tsivilyova, the daughter of Putin’s cousin).
• The Khabarovsk Territory is another region, in which the Kremlin will try to set up new rules for local elites with the September election. Dmitry Demeshin, the region’s newly appointed governor was brought in to finish the job of “pacifying” Khabarovsk six years after the region, in a shocking upset to United Russia, elected the local businessman Sergey Furgal as governor, and four years after Furgal’s arrest (and subsequent sentencing to 22 years in prison) on attempted murder charges triggered massive protests with an anti-Moscow flair. In his previous job as deputy chief prosecutor in charge of the Siberian Federal District Demeshin’s brand was to travel to the regions in his portfolio to castigate local officials – and this is exactly that he has been doing in Khabarovsk over the past months too, heading a team that he has brought to the region from the Prosecution. While there is undoubtedly an attempt to make Demeshin look like a “pro-Kremlin Furgal” (as Meduza correspondent Andrey Pertsev called him), I also see parallels with Oleg Kozhemyako, the governor of the Maritime Region, who was sent to the region in 2018 to break the local opposition spearheaded by the local Communist Party chapter – which he did. Demeshin’s next steps could very well include strategic arrests but also the scrapping of direct mayoral elections in Khabarovsk, one of the four last regional capitals still to elect its leader this way.
• In three regions whose governors were appointed to the federal government earlier this year – Tula, Kemerovo and Kursk – the Kremlin is running gubernatorial candidates from the team of these former governors but with local roots. These votes are, of course, shoo-ins, but they are notable as they represens a break with the Kremlin’s personnel policy over the past years, which saw, in most regions, outsiders (colloquially called “Varangians”) being nominated to replace locals. In these three regions the opposite is happening. It seems either that the Kremlin is now comfortable with the current level of homogenization of the regional officialdom or that we see a two-tiered arrangement similar to the one in the federal government where newly appointed ministers (e.g. for agriculture or industry) have seen their predecessors elevated within the government to preserve oversight over the same portfolios. This might also be a sign of moving towards a more diversified approach or a sort of consolidation of regional personnel policies. As journalist Farida Rustamova pointed out recently, a position in the Federation Council – where seven of the 39 governors ousted in the past four years ended up – may soon become a less easy sinecure as the place is prepared for high-profile retirees from federal and security agencies.

The mirage of population growth in the Far East

An article in Kommersant (from late June) quoted forecasts by the Ministry for Economic Development, according to which the population of the Russian Far East will decrease by 216 thousand to 7.65 million by 2030 – in spite of original plans to raise it to 8.166 million by 2023. Russia’s forced economic pivot to Asian markets, looking like a long-term trend now in its third year was not enough to turn the tide in the forecast.

By October 1 “master-plans” for 22 cities and 16 “key points” – worth a total of 4.4 trillion rubles in new investments – should be approved and launched. Some of this will be financed by the state’s main investment vehicle, VEB as well as presidential subsidies. Of course, the plans also assume a lot of private financing, which is not totally impossible given that, as the article highlights, the wider region’s investment and construction growth rate is far above the Russian average and the government is offering significant tax breaks.

But this money is likely to go into port projects, shipyards, railways to export coal and other raw materials, logistical hubs and similar things. The catch is that, no matter how much the Kremlin would like to see new cities grow out of the earth near upgraded transit junctions and industrial clusters – the core idea behind the new “Siberian cities” championed by Security Council secretary Sergey Shoigu for several years – without adequate urban infrastructure and meaningful discounts on the cost of living it is still unlikely that people will flock to poorly linked and previously depopulating regions. They have not in the past, in spite of repeated attempts from the Kremlin to compensate them in the form of cheap land or higher salaries.

One persistent problem, for example, is the weakness of energy infrastructure: the Kommersant article mentions that the wider region’s electricity generation capacity will have to be expanded by 3 GW (or 40%) if the development plans are to be realized. Earlier disputes triggered by railway expansion plans that will also require additional electrification, have shown that it is far from obvious who is supposed to bear the costs. Increasingly frequent utility network breakdowns – partly due to bad upkeep but also due to increased strain due to new construction projects – over the past years have, in turn, shown the risks of underinvesting in these networks.

Plans regarding the Arctic coast where the development of the Northern Sea Route – a priority project overseen by Rosatom – is highly dependent on a handful of grand energy extraction projects and shipbuilding, are similarly full of wishful thinking. I am not going to list, once again, the stalling effects that Western sanctions have had on these plans; we have covered them constantly for the Bear Market Brief over the past months, and Nurlan Aliyev has recently summed them up neatly for Riddle and ISPI. LNG projects in the region might survive, but Vostok Oil is heavily dependent on high oil prices and with Norilsk Nickel moving its copper smelting base to China some major companies are actually leaving the Arctic.

In both cases the Kremlin’s choice start and prioritize the war has made previous development plants much more urgent, all while the circumstances – money to spend on development, Russia’s position on export markets, conditions for private investors, the size of the industrial workforce etc. – have significantly worsened.

Also-happeneds

• PS Lab research on Buryatia: one of the most interesting studies of this year has been the Public Sociology Lab’s deep research in three Russian regions – the Sverdlovsk Region, the Krasnodar Territory and Buryatia – documenting how the war has impacted the lives and views of small-town Russians. The findings are available on their Telegram channel but Meduza has also summarized their “ethnographic diaries”. The dispatch from Buryatia is especially interesting as the population of the impoverished Far Eastern region has been overrepresented among Russian soldiers attacking Ukraine (thus also experiencing a disproportionate amount of losses), which also led to turmoil among its Buryat residents, many of whom have felt resentment against Moscow, but are also battling ethnic prejudices. The researchers tell how residents rationalize supporting war participants and how they go about their relationship to the authorities.  
• Nationalizations continued over the past weeks, and the authorities still keep going after companies in the food industry. A Tambov regional court seized Amber Talvis, a distillery in early July, and introduced restrictive measures against its owner. This is the third alcohol producer seized this year. Journalist Tatyana Rybakova has recently warned that the nationalization drive has started to threaten property rights in general, including real estate. And Kommersant’s sources are saying that while the federal government had earlier claimed that nationalized assets would be promptly reprivatized, the authorities are actually looking at these assets as means to control production via regional and local governments. In fact, the assets Russia’s biggest pasta producer, Makfa, which was nationalized in May, have been recently handed over to the state-owned Rosselkhozbank.
• Power cuts and protests are back. Anomalous heat has led to massive power outages in several Russian regions over the past weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity. In some southern regions the situation was exacerbated by Ukrainian drone attacks on power-generating infrastructure and the shutdown of one unit of the Rostov nuclear power plant. In Krasnodar, a relatively prosperous southern city, residents took to the streets to protest against power outages; in Dagestan protests triggered by utility breakdowns have been commonplace for a long time. Nonetheless, it is worth keeping an eye on them, as anomalous heat waves and overburdened electricity grids are problems that are only going to worsen in the coming years as climate change and underinvestment in domestic infrastructure upgrades take their toll, while tariffs keep going up.
• New mayors: the past months saw a significant number of resignations, dismissals and arrests in the regions, including in municipal governments. While these appointments and dismissals are mostly under control of higher levels of government and most mayors have precious little authority to begin with, these appointments still sometimes reflect something interesting about the authorities’ fears or intentions, due to the still somewhat pluralistic nature of local politics (when compared to regional, let alone federal politics).  Most major cities do not elect their mayors directly. Instead, they are appointed by local assemblies, often on the basis of a nominally competitive process, on which however the local governor has significant influence; in some cases, however, business groups have the upper hand. Recent changes at the helm of Tyumen, Novy Urengoy and Surgut, major cities in the Tyumen Region and its adjacent autonomous districts, two of Russia’s main energy producing regions, fall in this category (with Surgutneftegaz holding the reins in Surgut and the new Novy Urengoy mayor having a Novatek-adjacent background). Notably, two men associated by the “School of Mayors”, a new project of Presidential Administration deputy head Sergey Kirienko to uniformize local officials, were recently appointed mayors in Lipetsk and in Astrakhan. Meanwhile, a local police colonel took over the mayorship of Derbent, the Dagestani city which was one of the targets of Islamist terrorists last month (he was already interim mayor during this time). July also saw the dismissal of the mayor of Orsk, the Orenburg Region town devastated by a flood in April whose residents have demanded the resignation of the mayor due to the city’s botched handling of the disaster.