Over the Last Six Years, Putin Visited Russia’s Federal Subjects More than Twice as Often as He has Gone Abroad, ‘Vedomosti’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 5 – Between 2019 and June 2025, Vedomosti reports, Vladimir Putin made 54 trips abroad and 120 to the various federal subjects of the Russian Federation, with the former declining over that period because of Moscow’s increasing isolation and the risk of Putin’s arrest and the latter increasing as the Kremlin leader seeks to show himself active.

            During the same period, the newspaper says, foreign leaders came to Russia to meet him 351 times – including Belarus’ Alyaksandr Lukashenka who came 29 times; and Putin engaged in “no fewer than 858 telephone calls” with such leaders so as to maintain contacts with them (vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2025/07/05/1121907-zarubezhnie-kontakti-vladimira-putina).

            Putin visited only 52 of Russia’s federal subjects, with his most frequent sites being St. Petersburg and Primorsky Kray where internal forums are held and also to Ukraine’s Crimea which Putin illegally annexed to the Russian Federation a decade ago. He did not visit large swaths of the country, however.