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Russians are voting again for regional offices, and Meduza’s sources say the elections will test the Kremlin’s plan to replace the Communist Party

Source: Meduza

Russia is nearing the end of its latest gubernatorial and regional elections — voting that offers virtually no political competition but nevertheless tests the Kremlin’s elaborate management of public office. While early voting necessitated by Ukrainian military operations has been underway in the Kursk region and parts of Crimea since August 28, the rest of Russia’s elections are being held this weekend, September 6–8: races for 21 gubernatorial posts and seats in 13 regional parliaments. To learn more about the Kremlin’s plans for this voting, Meduza spoke to two sources close to the Putin administration’s political policy team, two regional officials, and a political consultant currently working on a regional campaign.

Three races to watch

Meduza has already reported on Russia’s three most noteworthy gubernatorial campaigns: St. Petersburg, Khabarovsk, and the Altai Republic. 

St. Petersburg

In St. Petersburg, Kremlin spin doctors and election officials have ensured Alexander Beglov’s victory by limiting his opponents to little-known politicians with deeply unpopular campaign platforms. The only political party with State Duma representation to nominate a candidate in St. Petersburg is LDPR, and two smaller “opposition” parties are fielding their own politicians. All of these rival candidates have endorsed policies that alienate voters who might otherwise cast ballots for anyone but the incumbent Governor Beglov: Pavel Bragin (“Green Alternative”) advocates banning gasoline and diesel cars from entering the city’s center (even for local residents), and he proposes narrowing the roads; Maxim Yakovlev (LDPR) wants to ban foreign music; and Sergey Malinkovich (“Communists of Russia”) suggests renaming the city to Leningrad, dissolving all food delivery services, and reviving the USSR’s Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization.

Sources close to the St. Petersburg regional government and the Putin administration acknowledged to Meduza that fielding such weak opponents could knock voter turnout lower even than the last election’s pitiful 30.8 percent. A source close to the Kremlin told Meduza that officials abandoned an initial plan to suppress turnout by keeping the campaign mostly “invisible” to the public, deciding instead “out of an abundance of caution” to pack the ballot with absurd competitors. Beglov’s actual popularity rating is thought to be between 30 and 40 percent, said Meduza’s source.

Khabarovsk

There’s been no such change in tactics in Khabarovsk or the Altai Republic. In Khabarovsk, former Deputy Prosecutor General Dmitry Demeshin has served as acting governor since May. The United Russia member has tried to replicate the appeal of his imprisoned predecessor Sergey Furgal, an LDPR politician whose arrest in 2020 sparked some of the region’s biggest and best-sustained protests in recent memory. A local state official told Meduza that Demeshin has run into trouble with his act, which relies on criticizing the region’s lower officials to demonstrate his commitment to the people. “People have started to realize that Demeshin is overdoing it and just playing the Furgal role,” said Meduza’s source, explaining that Demeshin’s constant attacks on municipal authorities have become too “annoying and exaggerated.”

The Altai Republic

In the Altai Republic, Acting Governor Andrey Turchak is fighting for his political life after showing too much ambition in angling for Beglov’s job in St. Petersburg and growing too close to the late mercenary leader and insurrectionist Yevgeny Prigozhin. As Meduza previously reported, Turchak is now committed to winning his way back into President Putin’s good graces by demonstrating his readiness to take on whatever assignment is handed to him. He’s traveled the Altai Republic more extensively than incumbent candidates in most other regions, and he’ll also face off against just two opponents, making it perhaps the least competitive race in the whole country.

Regional parliamentary elections

According to Meduza’s sources, the Kremlin views this weekend’s gubernatorial races as “just an extra test of turnout.” The authorities have had years to finetune candidacy filtration, genuine political competition is kaput, and the only surprises left are exactly how individual governors and their subordinates scheme to mobilize voters.

At the same time, the Kremlin’s political team questions the “vitality” of Russia’s existing party system, a source close to the administration told Meduza. Just Russia is in danger of slipping below the State Duma’s five-percent threshold for representation, LDPR performs inconsistently in the absence of its late founder, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) has been losing voters for years. “All the established parties are in decline,” said Meduza’s source.

The Kremlin has tried to accelerate KPRF’s deterioration by promoting whichever “opposition” parties poll best in various regions, lifting rivals to unseat the Communists as Russia’s entrenched number two party. (In some places, this means New People, in others, it’s LDPR, and so on.) The Putin administration successfully pursued this same strategy in last year’s elections, and KPRF lost its spot as the top “opposition” party in half the regions where voting was held. 

Meduza’s sources say the reason for cracking down on KPRF is simple: The Communists still criticize the government (albeit moderately and while publicly supporting the invasion of Ukraine).

With such an ailing party system, this year’s voter turnout is expected to be dangerously low. “The lower the turnout, the more skewed the results will be,” said a political consultant who works with the presidential administration. If turnout is too low, even the authorities’ ballot fraud and other manipulations will make it hard to conceal United Russia’s implausible results. The Kremlin will observe voter participation this weekend to gauge its plans for at least 50-percent turnout in the 2026 State Duma elections.

If turnout this weekend is too low and if the established “opposition” parties perform too poorly, the presidential administration will have to decide between boosting one of Russia’s smaller parties (for example, the socially conservative Pensioners’ Party), creating a new one (like the Kremlin did in late 2020), or rebranding KPRF’s most viable rival. (Parties in Russia with seats in just a single regional parliament can field candidates in federal legislative elections without needing to collect public signatures.) Whatever the administration decides to do, the target will be leftist voters, said Meduza’s source. The authorities already have United Russia for loyalists and parties like New People for moderates, but KPRF and Just Russia are dying thanks to demographics and the regime’s own machinations. “If there are changes in the party system, they’ll come from the left,” a source close to the administration told Meduza.

The Kremlin reportedly plans to test what it learns from this weekend’s races in next year's regional campaigns — before Russia’s more consequential 2026 State Duma elections.