The Kremlin’s municipal reform is still creating convulsions in several regions, primarily in Siberia and the Far East, which highlight some interesting patterns about multi-level governance. Meanwhile, Russia’s new cohort of eccentric governors had a bad month – but this does not mean that they are no longer the image of the future. More on this below and an assortment of other regional news from the past weeks.

The unending headache of the municipal reform

The federal (and in some cases, regional) political agenda may have moved on to more pressing matters, such as ballooning budget deficits, but the reform of municipal administrations has continued over the past months, with notable pushback in many regions, especially in Siberia and the Far East. In these large and scarcely populated regions with difficult access to Moscow the absence of local bodies of self-governance and government infrastructure is more keenly felt.

Perhaps the most interesting case has developed in the Republic of Khakassia, which over the past two years has become the scene of a power struggle between United Russia and the region’s communist governor, Valentin Konovalov, the last holdout of designated also-rans who in 2018 won gubernatorial elections in a rare and surprising upset, who has in recent years successfully rallied local elites behind himself. After 2023 it seemed that United Russia would successfully grind down Konovalov’s defenses when the party engineered a supermajority for itself in the regional legislature and successfully bypassed the governor’s veto against a law curbing his right to withhold financing from municipalities. The purpose of the law was likely to change the balance of power in the region by exacerbating tensions between the governor and local leaders, but Konovalov argued that the law ran counter to Russia’s federal budget code. A Novosibirsk court has now decided that the governor was right and the veto stands.

This is not only a rare defeat for one of the governing party’s regional branches, but could also have consequences for the municipal reform, which Konovalov also vetoed in July. Overriding this veto was already a bigger challenge for United Russia than in the first case, with the regional parliament postponing the matter several times. The court case could make it even more difficult. What makes this interesting is that theoretically, the governor and United Russia were both on two different sides in the two cases. Konovalov preserving powers to control municipal finances is very much in the spirit of the Kremlin’s municipal reform (and the government is planning to tighten control over municipal spending even more in a separate law). Yet, in both cases the governor had federal legislation to appeal to; in the case of the municipal reform, the federal law nominally allows regions to decide whether they would like to preserve their two-tier public administration system, even though the expected norm created by the Kremlin is clearly the implementation of the reform, with the exceptions preserved for regions with special rights. The Khakassian conundrum thus provides a good example of how conflicting elites can appeal to various aspects of higher power under conditions of relative pluralism.

But Khakassia is not the only region where the reform keeps creating turbulence. In Buryatia – where the parliament adopted the reform this week – and the Altai Republic local residents have been using public hearings to express their opposition to the reform. This was inconvenient enough for the authorities to start to limit or shut down these meetings; the government of the Republic of Altai argues, for example, that it is precisely the municipal reform itself that forbids local deputies to organize meetings with voters without the approval of the regional government. The authorities have also harassed Aruna Arna, one of the leading local activists who protested against the reform and who was recently also added to the federal Ministry of Justice’s list of terrorists and extremists.

An emerging pattern is conflicts between municipalities and the districts around them, into which they would be folded. In October, the mayor of Olyokminsk in the Republic of Sakha, who opposed the reform in the republic, resigned so that the town council could call for early (direct) mayoral elections before the reform enters into force. Several local deputies obstructed the decision by not turning up to sessions. A quorum was finally reached at the end of October, but shortly afterwards a deputy claimed that he was not present at the session, throwing the election into limbo once again. In the Irkutsk Region, the regional legislature has recently scrapped village councils, in spite of protests and appeals to the federal government. Notably, some towns will be swallowed, in an administrative sense, by the regional capital, which has created a range of concerns among local residents and officials.

The fact that the State Duma is considering legislation to make such mergers even easier, suggests that we are going to see similar conflicts in other regions as well (apparently Vladivostok has been picked as a pilot project). Agglomerations were the focus of the government’s domestic urban development policy even before the war, partly in an attempt to tap the resources of relatively wealthy regions and cities more easily. There are plans to add mayors of regional capitals institutionally to regional governments, codifying a situation that de facto already exists. Many however seem to be afraid that agglomeration-building in practice will lead to a loss, rather than an improvement, of public services.

The reform of municipal administrations was a logical endpoint of the Kremlin’s centralising policies over the past two decades, and while the reform itself took more than two years to adopt due to serious pushback from federal and regional interest groups, the Kremlin considered the matter closed when the law was adopted in March this year and several regions that had not eliminated lower-level self-governance units began almost furiously to do so. At the same time, there are some signals now suggesting that the federal authorities are acknowledging the risks of pressing ahead with the reform’s implementation as planned. Last month Gennady Zyuganov, the head of the Communist Party raised the problems triggered by the scrapping of village councils to Putin in a public meeting. The president acted surprised, almost as if he had heard about the issue for the first time. This does not mean that the Kremlin will pause the reform, simply that the president will want to keep it as far away from himself as possible, defining simply the overall goals and perhaps tightening the monitoring of public opinion, while devolving the responsibility to regional governments. It is also worth noting that a substantial part of the relatively small, but growing number of war participants who have been integrated into the administrative elite, mostly by the United Russia party, were promoted to local councils.

Eccentric governors: still the future?

October was not a great month for Russia’s newest, flamboyant kind of governors. There were rumors that two of them – Vologda governor Georgy Filimonov and Samara governor Vyacheclav Fedorishchev – were on their way out due to their extravagant policies and erratic behavior that have started to develop into a political liability for the Kremlin, but as of mid-November, they were both still in their offices, likely in part due to their friends in higher places: the deputy head of the Presidential Administration Sergey Kiriyenko and State Council secretary Alexey Dyumin. (For a profile on both governors, see the Meduza article linked above; I also profiled Filimonov for The Moscow Times earlier this year). Yet, both Filimonov and Fedorishchev maneuvered themselves into embarrassing situations.

The Vologda governor, whose flagship (and very unpopular) policy was a severe restriction of alcohol sales in the region, got into a row with Rosstat, the state statistical agency. A day after the agency published figures showing that in spite of the governor’s “dry law”, his region’s residents were drinking more, the Health Ministry said that there was a “technical error” and corrected them. Alas, the new figures are not exactly flattering either; they are showing that alcohol consumption has not changed people in the region still drink about 25 percent more alcohol than the Russian average. This, of course, has not prevented other regions from following Filimonov’s lead and curbing alcohol sales, but it did draw attention to lingering questions about the practical results of the governor’s policies.

As regards Fedorishchev, the governor became the center of attention when a video was published of him “dismissing” Yury Zhidkov, the head of one of the region’s districts, using foul language. Fedorishchev reprimanded Zhidkov over a damaged WWII memorial before slapping him on the shoulder and saying “you are fucking fired.” The story was emblematic of Fedorishchev’s ongoing conflict with local elites: it came shortly after threatening local United Russia deputies with making sure that they would lose their jobs. Worst of all for the governor, he did not emerge well from the confrontation: he had to publicly apologize; the ruling party’s local organization rebelled and referred him to the party’s ethics commission; district council deputies did not support Zhidkov’s dismissal (even though later he left his job anyway).

In a way, the recent emergence of these characters is the consequence of the Kremlin’s own policies that have made most regions highly dependent on federal transfers and budgetary loans, lifted ultraconservative tropes into a sort of makeshift domestic ideology and incentivized governors to signal loyalty to the Kremlin by following and promoting such policies, and improving their chances of being “seen” by the boss. More importantly, however, in both cases the underlying conflict is between Kremlin-appointed governors and relatively powerful local elites. Both Vologda and Samara have important industrial facilities (in metallurgy and carmaking), which carry their own weight in regional politics, but whose influence the federal government would like to weaken. Governors are using their backing in Moscow as well as, in some cases, alignment with federally mandated policies (see e.g. Filimonov’s announcement that he would appoint war participants to head districts) as well as the theatrics of cracking down on local officials in the interest of citizens, to carry out this function. A similar conflict seems to be developing in the Rostov Region, where the recently appointed governor Yury Slyusar oversaw the dismissal and prosecution of the capital’s former mayor, Alexey Logvinenko.

It is worth keeping an eye on whether Fedorishchev and Filimonov will be honorably dismissed or whether we are going to see more similar governors appointed. At this point, in spite of their “mensis horribilis”, I still think that the latter is more likely, but both are possible.

Also-happeneds

• Still no bridge over the Lena: the bridge over the river Lena, which would connect the Sakha Republic’s seat, Yakutsk, to Russia’s highway network, and has become the epitome of vital domestic infrastructure projects put off due to the Kremlin’s focus on the war in Ukraine ever since its first postponement after 2014, is suffering further delays, in spite of the announcement of the completion of its first support. Sardana Avksentieva, the former mayor of the city, now a fairly well-known Duma deputy of the New People party, claimed in October that both the region and the federal government are failing the task, in spite of governor Aisen Nikolayev having promised to “eat his tie” if the bridge isn’t ready by the end of 2025. Avksentieva says that the federal government has only allocated 1.3 billion instead of 65 billion rubles to support the project, while the regional budget coughed up 4.8 instead of 9.6 billion. Part of the reason of the ballooning costs is the reclassification of the land on which the bridge is supposed to be built, by the regional government; another one seems to be the involvement of the VIS Group, a notorious company that has been involved in several other overpriced and underdelivered infrastructure projects, including another delayed bridge in Novosibirsk. VIS is supposed to finance about half of the exorbitant, 175-billion-ruble cost of the bridge, but this is contingent on loans.
• Coal and construction sector applies for government help: as of October, 137 coal producers had applied for government support, according to the Energy Ministry. These include loan restructuring, tax and tariff deferments and help with logistical costs. In spite of the federal government stepping in, the situation in the sector continues to be dire. 18 companies in the Kemerovo Region, Russia’s main coal producing region, have suspended operations, throwing the region’s budget into tailspin; eastward exports from Khakassia dropped by 22.5 percent, to a large part due to the significant discounts on Russian coal in the Chinese market, as a growing number of companies are operating at a loss. While coal producers and officials are pointing at the tariffs set by the Russian Railways (RZhD) as the core of the problem, the company’s maneuvering space is itself limited due to its ambitious investment program, past bad management decisions, growing debt service costs and the necessity to guarantee throughput capacity for coal exports. Apart from coal production, the government is also planning to adopt support measures for the construction sector, which has been hit by high rates – a consequence of wartime policies – and the phasing out of subsidized mortgage programs. A recent study by the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting found that the net debt of construction companies exceeded their profit by almost six times. The details have not been determined yet, but it appears that the government aims to outsource at least part of the task to regions.
• Blackouts in Belgorod and Bryansk: as Russia’s war against Ukraine drags out and the Ukrainian army’s hits on Russia’s industrial establishments and power stations become more and more precise, life in Russia’s border regions is increasingly reminiscent of life in a country at war. The federal government recently transferred 3.5 billion rubles to Belgorod and Bryansk, two border regions, to purchase generators before the winter months in order to ensure electricity and heating. Recently around 40,000 residents were left without electricity after attacks on a power station. The heightened financing needs and the frequent blackouts in the regions are all the more striking, since prior to the full-scale war Belgorod was considered to be a relatively wealthy region due in part to its profitable agrarian businesses. The war, however, which has affected several border districts and the regional capital, has changed the picture. As of September, the region’s budgetary reserves were at a mere 200 million rubles—around 0.1% of its yearly spending plans.
• Meet the new senator, same as the old: the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, confirmed its new composition in October, after regions that held gubernatorial elections in September confirmed their new “senators”. There are no massive surprises, but two changes are interesting to highlight. First, the Kursk Region, now headed by Alexander Khinshtein, a firebrand conservative politician, will send olympic fencer Yevgeniya Lamonova to the upper house, thereby replacing Alexey Kondratyev, a former war participant whose appointment a mere year ago, when a part of the Kursk Region was still under Ukrainian occupation, was touted domestically as a proof of the Kremlin’s commitment to elevate the status of war veterans. True, Kondratyev will not lose his job entirely: as it happens, he will now represent the Tambov Region, whose newly minted governor, Yevgeny Pervyshov, is himself a former war participant. True, both men are first and foremost career officials: before his brief stint in the war, Pervyshov was mayor of Krasnodar, while Kondratyev had already represented Tambov in the Federation Council in 2010-15. Another telling switch occurred between the Jewish Autonomous Region (EAO) and the Komi Republic: after Rostislav Goldshtein, the EAO’s former head was appointed to head his native Komi last year, he apparently decided to bring his senator, too, even though Vladimir Dzhabarov’s political career had taken place entirely in the EAO, showing how personal relationships can override the federative principle of the chamber. Perhaps it is also worth noting that no former governors were appointed to the upper chamber this time, even though historically this has been a popular sinecure.
• Further cuts in regional budgets: regional governments have continued cutting their expenditures over the past weeks. The end of the year is usually when regional budgets face the heaviest expenditures, and in spite of the federal government increasing discretionary transfers somewhat over the past weeks, the aggregate deficit of regional finances will likely be larger than in recent years, with little hope to fill treasuries in 2026. I have detailed the causes and potential effects both here and for Riddle last month. Some recent examples follow. The Irkutsk Region is setting up a crisis management committee due to a 27-billion-ruble, or roughly 10-percent gap in expected fiscal receipts, and will reduce spending in several key areas, including on health care and education this year and on development projects and drone production next year. Rostov governor Yury Slyusar ordered “urgent proposals” to reduce spending until the end of the year, as the region does not want to take out further debts from the market. The deficit of the Novosibirsk Region will also be higher than planned. Other populous industrial regions, e.g. Chelyabinsk and Nizhny Novgorod are also facing ballooning deficits and will likely have to cut either social spending or capital expenditures. Twelve regions have also reduced salaries in education, and regions are not even close to finishing the drafting of 2026 budgets.