On the discontents of the municipal reform, arrest season in the regions, and others

Posted on May 31, 2025 by

How is the Kremlin’s recently adopted municipal reform playing out in the regions, especially given unexpected protests in the Krasnoyarsk Territory? Are the recent arrests of regional officials, among them several ministers and deputy ministers significant? When the Kremlin names a figure that it plans to spend on a long-overdue reform, what happens actually? I am trying to answer these questions and comment on some other assorted themes from the past month in Russian politics.

Municipal reform: a stubbornly contentious issue

I have written more extensively about the implications of the recent federal reform of public administration, on the provision of public services, budgets and regional power games, for Riddle Russia. A more recent article, also on Riddle, by Kseniya Smolyakova, looks at the reform’s implications for regional elites and the protests that broke out in various regions against it.

The reform was one of the most contested bills recently in Russia’s otherwise heavily controlled political system. In spite of its backing by some of the most heavyweight members of the State Duma and the “political bloc” of the Presidential Administration, its adoption was essentially frozen for more than two years before the parliament picked it up again in late 2024 – and then it suffered various delays and pushbacks, including from influential regional leaders such as the head of Tatarstan and Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. A somewhat watered-down version was adopted in March. As several regions had carried out their own versions of the reform even before the adoption of federal law, protests bringing together citizens as diverse as liberal oppositionists and war participants erupted against these.

The most recent example of an unexpectedly heavy backlash against the reform is the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where governor Mikhail Kotyukov – an official with local roots but significant time spent in the federal officialdom – decided to rush through the reform this month, before the federal law mandating it could take effect in June. Kotyukov was not the only governor trying to do this and there are several potential reasons for the urgency: regional governments get to decide specific parameters of the reform on their own, show off their control of local elites, and, most importantly, signal to the Kremlin that they have understood the assignment (especially given that the region’s influential representative in the Federation Council, Andrei Klishas, was one of the co-authors of the federal reform). Kotyukov himself, who has been asserting his position against local elites and officials linked to his predecessor, Alexander Uss, was likely also eager to take a firmer control over the region’s municipalities.

The reform in the vast (though sparsely populated) region would fall on the somewhat more radical side, cutting down the number of municipalities from 472 to 39 and the number of urban districts from 17 to 6, also mandating that city and district heads would be selected from candidates proposed by the governor. The reform was introduced to the regional parliament on April 21, without any meaningful public consultation, and promptly adopted in the first reading, with plans to wrap it up before the end of May. However, protests in several municipalities immediately started with an unexpectedly high number of people from unexpectedly diverse backgrounds, including many usually thought of regime supporters. Several district heads representing the ruling United Russia party resigned in protest and the governor received a barrage of criticism on social media. Instead of taking a step back, Kotyukov doubled down and brought forward the law’s second reading to May 15.

The governor’s goal was likely to create a fait accompli as soon as possible, in order not to drag out the wave of protests and resignations, as this would have been considered a bad look in the Kremlin. The authorities even brought in Klishas personally to explain the “benefits” of the reform to residents. But this is difficult. In the Krasnoyarsk Territory especially the reform, as it was carried out, touches a lot of political pain points: due to the vastness of the region eliminating local government services matters a lot; local pride was not taken into account, with older settlements folded into more recently created ones; and the closeness of regional and local elections, which would have been held in September, means that the authorities will have to negotiate conflicts among local elites in a rush. A similar conflict in the Irkutsk Region city of Bratsk and its adjacent district led to an elite split and the defeat of the incumbent mayor in 2024.

The Krasnoyarsk Territory is not the only one that saw regional authorities rushing through changes in the weeks since the adoption of the federal reform, and in many cases the approach to the reform reveals regional characteristics and conflicts.

In the Far Eastern Maritime Territory, for example, the elimination of the two-tier system, which was finished in May, took place over several years, frequently encountering protests along the way, which however the governor’s team gradually ground down. The reform was considered a part of broader efforts by governor Oleg Kozhemyako to break the local “systemic” opposition, spearheaded by the Communist Party, after a surprise (and later invalidated) upset of the governing party in the 2018 gubernatorial election.

In the Omsk Region, governor Vitaly Khotsenko’s bill would not only eliminate all remaining city councils (except for Omsk’s) in the region, but would also stipulate that instead of a competition committee, it would be the governor himself selecting potential candidates for mayor or district head, from candidates proposed to him by handpicked organizations. The federal bill makes this possible, but does not prescribe it – the highly centralizing version however is not a surprise coming from Khotsenko, an official who was appointed to head the region after a stint in Ukraine as an occupation official, an experience that left visible marks on the governor’s rather militaristic style of governance. 

In Khakassia, meanwhile, there is not one, but two bills. One of them, drafted by governor Valentin Konovalov, would preserve the region’s two-tier public administration system. The other, written by United Russia, would eliminate it. The regional parliament will consider both in June. The municipal reform thus became another chapter in the conflict between Konovalov – who, with the support of local elites, saw off a challenge by a Kremlin-backed challenger in 2023 – and United Russia, which, having engineered a supermajority in the regional parliament, has since tried to chip away at the coalition Konovalov had assembled. Curiously, doing this has also required the governing party to act against the guiding principles of the federal public administration reform: after months of back-and-forth, the regional parliament has recently overridden Konovalov’s veto against a law that stripped the governor of his power to withdraw funding from municipalities, by appealing, among other things, to the principle of self-governance. On this issue, the governing party asserted its dominance over the governor and this is likely to happen again, but having the debate will allow both Konovalov and United Russia to measure and demonstrate support among local elites.

A widely accepted theory in political science suggests that in autocratic regimes political movements become riskier for the status quo when popular dissatisfaction over an issue coincides and aligns with a split in the elite along the same cleavage. Locally, it seems, the public administration reform has been such an issue in several regions. While it is unlikely to spark a federal-level protest movement, under the current circumstances, it may very well complicate life for the Kremlin’s machine of power locally in the coming months.

Another regional arrest wave

Apart from the aftershocks of the municipal reform, the past month has also seen another wave of arrests of regional officials, including several ministers and deputy ministers. Here’s a non-exhaustive list from the past couple of weeks:

This year’s sweep does not look quite as serious as the one following last year’s presidential election when it looked like the security services got free rein to carry out arrests in cases that had been frozen after the start of the full-scale war in order to minimize the chances of domestic turbulences.

The timing of the arrests, however, is likely not coincidental. May is usually the time when the spring “season of falling governors” is over: newly appointed officials start making changes, those who received the (tacit or active) backing of the Kremlin can rest easy and revisit their relationship with their local allies. Security officials are eager to show that they are busy and wrap up cases before summer vacations begin, and given that there are still four months until regional and local elections in September, no arrest is likely to be too disruptive for the regional political machinery.

Of course, not everything is programmed like clockwork in Russia’s multi-tiered power vertical. Local elites, local branches of the security services and regional officials – most of them, at this point, outsiders – have their own agendas, which do not always converge. But on the whole, major arrests taking place at unusual times would be more indicative of a politically disruptive event interesting to an analyst. Arrest waves like the one in May would rather suggest that political players understand and respect the rules of the game, for now.

Also-happeneds

  • Mine your own business: The crackdown on cryptocurrency miners has continued this month with the government proposing a ban on mining in two additional regions: Buryatia and the Transbaikal Territory. Similary to an earlier ban in the Irkutsk Region, the problem is a growing pressure on the power grids feeding electricity to these regions. Apart from cryptomining, this is a consequence both of Russia’s trade pivot to Asian markets and lagging maintenance and upgrades. The risks associated with power cuts to industrial establishments and residential areas are apparently deemed large enough for the government to crack down on cryptomining, in spite of the growing influence of mining companies. Oleg Deripaska’s En+ has also sued one of Russia’s largest cryptomining companies, BitRiver, for its unpaid electricity bills.
  • Khabarovsk rows: According to URA, a news site that often shares regional political gossip, Dmitry Demeshin, the head of the Khabarovsk Territory will use the reform of municipal public administration to appoint a new mayor of Khabarovsk, in a bid to wrench the city away from the region’s old elite. While a lot of local observers have commented on the possibility, it has, of course, not been independently confirmed. The move, however, would make sense, given that Demeshin, a former deputy prosecutor general known for his toughness on regional elites, was appointed to head the region with a mandate to break the opposition of local elites to the Kremlin, after a surprise electoral upset in the 2018 gubernatorial election and the subsequent arrest of governor Sergey Furgal in 2020, which triggered a major protest wave. Khabarovsk is the largest remaining regional capital in Russia still to have direct mayoral elections – that the region’s parliament has notably refrained from scrapping even as other similar regions made the move – but the reform, which will enter into force in June, will invalidate this.
  • A funny thing happened on the way to the Federation Council: The parliament of the Republic of Tuva appointed Sholban Kuzhuget as a new member of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, from the region. The appointment essentially ended months of intrigue in the region’s politics, as people kept guessing whether Ruslan Tsalikov, a former deputy defense minister under Sergey Shoigu, a native of Tuva, who is now the Secretary of the Security Council, would receive a Federation Council seat – and with it, immunity from prosecution. This was important, as, following his dismissal from the Defense Ministry, several of Shoigu’s former subordinates were arrested on corruption charges – something that Shoigu has been unwilling or unable to do much against – and reports suggested that Tsalikov himself might be in danger. The former deputy minister promptly entered the Tuvan parliament, but the vote on his appointment kept disappearing from the legislative agenda. Domestic commentary on the issue highlighted that Kuzhuget, a doctor, is himself a distant relative of Shoigu, who was thus not entirely ignored; however, the mere fact that he was apparently unable to secure the position for his former ally is significant and will certainly be noted.    
  • Coal blues: The crisis of the Russian coal sector shows no signs of ending. According to official data, all coal companies of the Kemerovo Region, Russia’s main coal mining region, are now operating at a loss, and the combined losses of the whole coal industry in the first quarter of 2025 had reached 70 billion rubles. Another sign of how unprofitable coal exports have become is that coal exporters, who last year were lobbying for more guaranteed cargo capacity on Russia’s Eastern railways, are now refusing to ship even the guaranteed amount, even though forcing railway operators to provide shipping discounts was at the core of the federal government’s rescue plan. Coal companies are turning to short-term financing instruments, suggesting growing liquidity problems. The budgets of both Kemerovo and the neighboring Khakassia have been suffering for the second year in a row from a steep drop from fiscal receipts from the coal sector. The federal government, which has been in no rush to bail out the sector – or Kemerovo – would now like to nudge the region to diversify its economy instead, which will take a significant amount of time and money. Short of a major fiscal injection – which seems unlikely under the current circumstances – higher global demand could ease the pressure on coal companies, but this is not where the market seems to be headed.
  • When the Kremlin says a number: The federal government signed memoranda with regional governments on the modernization of utility networks. This obliges them to standardize consumption and maintenance fees, reduce consumer debt towards utility providers by 2 percent annually and have them approve investment programs (a draft law on these was introduced in April), which will then have to be implemented in full by 2030. Crucially, of the 4.5 trillion rubles that the Kremlin had earlier pledged to spend on fixing dangerously decaying utility networks, more than half (2.8 trillion) will have tom come from private investors. Just like in several earlier cases, essentially the federal government, after announcing a major spending program, is outsourcing a large chunk of the financing to the private sector (which has been reluctant to invest under the current financial conditions), and the implementation of the policy (that is, pressuring investors) to regional governments: a textbook example of how many similar policies (e.g. the waste management reform, COVID-era policies or military recruitment) work in todays’ Russia.
  • “Victory” Museum: The Omsk Region’s governor, Vitaly Khotsenko, a former occupation official in Ukraine (also mentioned above) announced the creation of a “Museum of Victory in the Special Military Operation”, ostensibly suggested to him by war participants. The museum, which would have representations across the region, would be opened “after the final victory” of Russia in the war, conveniently leaving an unspecified time for the governor to actually realize the vision. The proposal, however, is another example of a shiny, but, beyond its publicity value, meaningless pro-war measure, designed to improve the governor’s position in negotiations with the Kremlin. I have recently written for The Moscow Times about how Vologda governor Georgy Filimonov has come to exemplify this kind of regional policymaking.
This entry was posted in Dispatches, Policies and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.