Election update XII

In its regular Electoral Bulletin, a digest with news about Russian elections (all issues in Russian are available here), the Movement in Defense of Voter’s Rights ’Golos’ reports on electoral trends and developments in Russia.

REM presents an election update for April and May 2025, focusing on two key topics — preparations for the 2025 regional elections and 2026 State Duma elections, and the further demolition of the system of local self-government.

1. United Russia held primaries

On 14 September 2025, Russia is set to hold direct gubernatorial elections in 20 regions and elect regional parliaments in 11 regions. In total, approximately 6,500 elections at various levels are scheduled to take place across 81 regions.

In April and May, observers paid close attention to the ruling party’s primaries, which identified the main candidates to run in the upcoming local council and regional parliament elections. These primaries mark the beginning of a major electoral cycle that will culminate in the 2026 State Duma elections.

Since its inception, United Russia’s primary system has significantly deteriorated. The most notable change is the near-total shift to an online voting format via the Gosuslugi (“State Services”) platform. This transition has transformed what was once a relatively competitive process into a bureaucratic and opaque mechanism, even for party members. The same problems that afflict Russia’s broader electoral system are now clearly visible in United Russia’s internal primaries.

It has become clear that United Russia plans to fill its candidate lists with veterans of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Vladimir Yakushev, Secretary of United Russia’s General Council, announced that the party will nominate more than 380 war veterans in the upcoming elections. To boost their chances in the primaries, United Russia is granting these candidates special privileges, including an automatic 25% vote increase, relaxed documentation requirements, and a simplified campaign process.

Candidate registration for the primaries opened on the 5th March and ran through the 24th of April. According to party officials, approximately 21,300 potential candidates applied to run in elections at various levels, including 1,116 servicemen and war veterans.

As a result, three-quarters of the military personnel who applied will run in the municipal and regional elections scheduled for September 2025. The majority—1,083—will stand as candidates for municipal councils. At the regional level, 33 out of the 62 veterans who applied secured a place on the ballot, indicating a predictably lower success rate compared to the municipal level.

According to United Russia, more than 3.5 million voters took part in the primaries. The voting took place in 57 regions and covered 227 electoral campaigns (for regional parliaments, municipalities, and administrative centers).

2. Putin dismisses unpopular governors

In late March, Vladimir Putin reshuffled regional leadership by appointing Denis Pasler, the elected governor of Orenburg Region (2024), as acting governor of Sverdlovsk Region. This move led to the removal of Yevgeny Kuyvashev, who had governed Sverdlovsk since 2012 and was last re-elected in 2022.

In Pasler’s place, Putin appointed Yevgeny Solntsev, the so-called “Prime Minister” of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. As a result, two additional gubernatorial elections—in the Orenburg and Sverdlovsk regions—will be held in September 2025. This brings the total number of direct gubernatorial elections scheduled for Russia’s 2025 Unified Election Day to 20.

On 18 March, the governor of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), where gubernatorial elections are also scheduled for September 2025, resigned. Unlike most regions, the NAO governor is not elected by popular vote but is appointed by the regional parliament. Meanwhile, President Putin significantly increased governors’ salaries—by five to ten times—through a decree that will align their pay and bonuses with those of Russia’s deputy prime ministers starting next year.

According to open-source data, the 2025 federal budget allocates 246 million RUB (approximately 2.5 million EUR) for the salaries of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and his ten deputies. After accounting for taxes and social contributions, members of the government earn an average net monthly salary of 1.2–1.3 million RUB (ca. 12,000 EUR). In contrast, governors currently receive significantly lower salaries, ranging from 150,000 RUB (1,500 EUR) to 200,000 RUB (2,000 EUR) per month. Beginning in 2026, the salaries of regional heads are expected to rise by at least five to six times under the new decree.

Experts also point out that the payment of governors' salaries is now managed by the Department of Presidential Affairs and funded from the federal budget. This shift increases governors’ political and financial dependence on the Kremlin. Previously, governors’ salaries were paid from regional budgets, and there was a rule stipulating that their salaries could not exceed the regional average by more than eight times.

3. The dismantling of local self-government continues

In June 2025, the notorious law on local self-government came into force.

The central amendment that the law entails is the abolition of Russia’s two-tier system of local government, effectively eliminating the lowest level of governance, which is closest to the electorate. The original version of the reform called for the complete removal of urban and rural municipalities, and with them, the corresponding councils, across all regions.

However, after several national republics had protested against this wording, the final version of the law softened this provision. Instead of mandating the abolition of the lower tier of local self-government, the revised text allows regions to make this decision independently, at least in principle.

Despite the formal shift to a “voluntary” approach, the adoption of the law has accelerated the elimination of municipalities across Russia. In 2025 alone, all former districts in the Belgorod, Pskov, Chelyabinsk, and Novgorod regions were restructured into consolidated municipal units. A similar process took place in most districts of the Kostroma and Lipetsk regions. Enlarged municipal formations have also emerged in the Omsk, Novosibirsk, Vologda, Kaluga, Altai, and Krasnoyarsk regions.

As a result, local self-government has already been reduced to a single-level system in 28 Russian regions.

In addition, once the new law takes effect, the mayors of all regional capitals in Russia will be selected under a new procedure: they will be elected by municipal parliament deputies from a list of candidates proposed by the regional governors. This system is expected to be implemented as early as 2025 in cities such as Cherkessk, Stavropol, Blagoveshchensk, Oryol, Arkhangelsk, and Nizhny Novgorod.

From this point forward, all regional capitals will be required to adopt the “governor’s model” of mayoral selection — not only the four where direct elections still exist, but also the 61 where mayors are currently chosen through a competitive process.

Moreover, the new law grants governors the authority to unilaterally dismiss any head of a municipality, without approval from the local representative body.

4. Voting on paper ballots will remain, but monitoring the results will become even harder

In April 2025, the State Duma reviewed amendments to the electoral legislation that would allow elections to be conducted entirely in electronic format. The proposal drew strong criticism from both parliamentary opposition (notably the Communist Party) and non-parliamentary parties such as Yabloko, as well as from independent election observers. Nevertheless, the bill passed its first reading.

Whether in response to public criticism or for other political reasons, a major revision was introduced by the second reading of the bill in May 2025. A group of deputies—led by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and the leaders of all parliamentary factions—proposed an amendment guaranteeing voters the right to cast a paper ballot, even in elections conducted electronically. This amendment received unanimous support and was passed.

However, the core issues surrounding e-voting remain unresolved. The State Duma rejected proposed amendments aimed at ensuring transparency and enabling oversight of electronic voting processes. Furthermore, a new provision now legally permits the merging of in-person electronic voting data from polling stations with Remote Electronic Voting (REV) results when publishing official outcomes. As a result, no separate statistics will be available for e-voting at individual polling stations, making it even more difficult to detect potential falsifications.

5. CEC approves new map of single-mandated districts for 2026 Duma elections

Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has approved a new layout for single-mandate electoral districts for the 2026 State Duma elections. The total number of such districts remains 225, but the distribution has changed.

According to the map published by CEC, the primary revisions involve the inclusion of the occupied territories of Ukraine:

- The so-called Donetsk People’s Republic will have 3 districts;

- The Luhansk People’s Republic – 2 districts;

- Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions – 1 district each.

Apart from that, the following districts will be enlarged due to population growth:

- Moscow will gain one additional district, bringing the total to 17;

- Moscow Oblast, which now has 12 districts, will gain one more;

- Krasnodar Krai will grow from 8 to 9 districts.

As the total number of districts remains 225, several regions will lose representation:

- Rostov Oblast will go from 7 to 6;

- Volgograd, Voronezh, and Altai Krai will go down from 4 to 3 each;

- Zabaykalsky Krai, Ivanovo, Kaluga, Smolensk, Tambov, and Tomsk Oblasts will now have 1 district each instead of 2.

Analysts previously noted that the regions gaining districts are mostly Kremlin-loyal, while those losing seats tend to be more opposition-leaning. The redistricting is seen as a strategic move by the Kremlin to reduce electoral risks in the September 2026 vote.