Moscow Now Feels It can Again Make Changes in Russian Regions without Risk to Itself, Kynyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 9 – During covid pandemic and in the run-up to the presidential elections, the Kremlin slowed making changes in the leadership of Russian regions fearing that any such moves during a period of potential turbulence was dangerous. But now, Aleksandr Kynyev says, it believes such limiting factors are behind it and that it is free to make more changes.

            As a result, the HSE political scientist says the Kremlin is likely to increase still further the percentage of outsiders in charge of regions – that figure now stands at 60 percent – and will further destroy anything worthy of the name of a regional elite (semnasem.org/articles/2024/08/07/kto-upravlyaet-regionami-kynev).

            Last year, Kynyev published a study of how the leadership of political and business institutions in predominantly ethnic Russian regions has changed over the last 30 years (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/no-ethnic-russian-region-has-elite.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/putin-has-gelded-regional-elites-but.html).

            He repeats the arguments he made then that there are no elites in the regions of the kind that existed in the 1990s and that no predominantly ethnically Russian oblast or kray is currently capable of pursuing independence. Those who think otherwise are basing their arguments on a situation that existed in the 1990s but no longer does.

            There are no real regional political elites because those the Kremlin has installed no longer identify with or care about the future of their areas of responsibility because they won’t be living there in the future, Kynyev continues; and something similar has happened to leaders of businesses in the regions: they increasingly head branches of federal companies.

            “If there is turbulence in Moscow, then the rules of the game could change … and its control over the regions would weaken,” he says. If that happens, then regional challenges could emerge. But “until that control weakens, there won’t be any such ‘fermentation.’ This system is stable … and it can exist for a very long time.”