Officials in Three Districts of the Altai Resist Dispensing with Municipal Administrations as Moscow has Ordered and the Republic has Agreed

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 22 – Something unusual is happening in the Altai Republic. Although Moscow has ordered getting rid of local administrative structures and the republic government has signaled that it will comply, three districts in that federal subject are refusing to fall in line, an indication of just how unpopular this Moscow decision is.

            Deputies in the Onguday, Ust-Kansk and Ust-Kosi districts have so far refused to vote in favor of the move and appear to be using all the means at their disposal to draft things out, pleasing constituents but outraging higher ups (echofm.online/news/v-altae-tri-rajona-otkazalis-menyat-ustav-radi-provedeniya-municzipalnoj-reformy-utverzhdaet-aktivistka-aruna-arna).

            There is almost no question that Moscow will force the issue and even these three outlying districts of the Altai Republic will soon fall in line, but their resistance says something about a shift in the balance of the calculations of local officials that, if repeated on other occasions, may represent a major if largely unnoticed change in the Putin system.

            In the past, local officials and especially parliamentarians knew that they had little choice but to go along with orders from above; but resistance to the suppression of local governance is so unpopular in many places and perhaps especially so where the local governments represent distinct ethnic groups – and so these local politicians are making a different calculation.

            On resistance in the Altai Republic to the so-called municipal reform and especially to the fact that returning veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine have joined it, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/06/protests-in-altay-kray-likely-puts-on.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/06/veterans-of-putins-war-in-ukraine-join.html).