Officials in an Arkhangelsk Oblast District Ask to Have Their Territory Transferred to Komi Republic because ‘We Want to Live Better’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 30 – Six deputies of a rural district in Arkhangelsk Oblast on the border with the Komi Republic have appealed to their oblast governor to consider transferring the territory of their district to the Komi Republic because they say “we want to live better” and that is the only way to do it.

            "We are very far from Arkhangelsk. You can get to Moscow by train faster than to the center of our region,” they write; and “the road for several hundred kilometers is unpaved and of very poor quality during the muddy season" (nemoskva.net/2025/06/30/my-hotim-zhit-luchshe-deputaty-iz-arhangelskoj-oblasti-hotyat-v-komi/).

            People who get sick in their district, the deputies continue, can get to the Komi capital of Syktyvkar far faster than they can get to any major city with a hospital in Arkhangelsk Oblast; and they add that Komi officials do a far better job in taking care of infrastructure and preserving historical monuments.

            And they point out that the Kremlin’s plan to amalgamate municipalities will do nothing to help their constituents. Consequently, the only way forward that is fair to the people of Yarensk is to transfer their territory from Arkhangelsk which seems oblivious to their concerns to the Komi Republic which gives promise of treating them better.

            The reaction of officials and Russian activists in Arkhangelsk was immediate and negative. They labeled the deputies who made the appeal “wreckers” and threatened them with unspecified reprisals (vk.com/yarenskchist?w=wall-170660931_19580 and  t.me/IAechosevera/49435).

            Such a response is no surprise given Putin’s failed efforts to unite the Komi Republic with Arkhangelsk Oblast, even arguing this would mean that a poorer non-Russian republic would thus be joined to a larger predominantly ethnic Russian oblast and would benefit as a result (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/kremlin-to-unite-nenets-ad-with.html).

            The appeal of the Russian deputies of a district in Arkhangelsk Oblast shows that they do not see things that way and instead believe they and their people would be far better off to be part not of the predominantly ethnic Russian Arkhangelsk Oblast but instead the Komi Republic which has an ethnic Russian majority but has gone its own way, one the deputies say is better.