Skip to main content
  • Share to or

Corrected: Secret Kremlin polling reportedly shows that Muscovites want to keep their incumbent mayor

Source: RBC
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Mayor Sobyanin led the list of regional heads Russians would like to see removed from office. In fact, the opposite is true. Meduza apologizes for the mistake.

In March, the Putin administration reportedly conducted secret sociological surveys to measure how badly constituents in cities and regions across the country want new local leadership. Two sources have apparently leaked the results of these polls to the magazine RBC.

Some of the governors whose people most want them gone were Dmitry Ovsyannikov (in Sevastopol), Igor Orlov (in Arkhangelsk), and Yunus-bek Yevkurov (in Ingushetia). Several of the officials named in the polling have already been dismissed.

The regional head in Russia whose constituents most want him to remain in office is Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, who shares the list with Sergey Furgal (in Khabarovsk) and Ramzan Kadyrov (in Chechnya). RBC points out that Furgal and Kadyrov are the only officials on this list of regional heads who have served more than one full term.

The polling also reportedly measured governors’ trust levels, finding that Ingush leader Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Sevastopol Governor Dmitry Ovsyannikov are the least trusted, while Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and Tula Governor Alexey Dyumin are the most trusted.

Trust level is one of the 15 performance indicators Vladimir Putin instituted for governors in an executive decree in late April 2019.

  • Share to or