Andrey Prah on why the entry of new entities into Russia is not the same

In September 2023, four new regions – Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), Zaporozhye and Kherson regions – finally acquired executive and legislative powers of the Russian “model”. This happened a year after their legal entry into Russia and a year and a half after the actual one. Is it fast or slow? After all, there is nothing to compare with.

Drawing parallels between the processes currently taking place in Donbass and the events that followed the “Crimean Spring”—the rapid integration of the peninsula into the legal, informational, infrastructural and cultural space of Russia—is not easy for obvious reasons. “Not a single shot was fired there,” they say in new regions whenever someone compares 2014 and 2022. However, it is impossible to avoid this comparison, because in Donbass it was the Crimean scenario that was reproduced very “close to the text” (if not literally). Referendum, formal independence, St. George’s Hall in the Kremlin – history repeated itself both substantively and stylistically. Although back in February 2022, this most likely was not part of the plans of the country’s leadership (at least Vladimir Putin did not publicly talk about the accession of new entities).

The entry of Crimea into Russia happened very successfully from the point of view of its political calendar – in March, six months before the single voting day (EDD).

Initially, the constitutional law prescribed that elections would be held only in the fall of 2015, that is, in a year and a half, but almost immediately it became clear that there was no point in delaying the establishment of official power on the peninsula. Just a week after “returning to his native harbor,” the newly-minted subject delegated two senators to the Federation Council – Olga Kovitidi and Sergei Tsekov (they still remain in their places), and after another two, the constitution of the republic was adopted. On the same day, the State Council of Crimea turned to Vladimir Putin with a request to speed up integration and move the elections to the nearest Unified Democratic Party, which the president granted. In May, the republic’s election commission was formed, and in June, the State Council set the date for the September vote. In Sevastopol, similar decisions were made day after day. Which, by the way, now emphasizes the stylistic continuity of 2014 and 2022: the second wave of new subjects, twice as large as the first, like the Crimean “pioneers”, does everything exclusively synchronously.

The entry of the DPR and LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions also happened successfully in terms of place in the political calendar – in September, at the very beginning of the election cycle. Here, unlike Crimea, there was no need to force the electoral process, and there was nothing to do: some of the territories needed to restore the administrative apparatus. Senators from the new subjects were delegated to the Federation Council with a greater delay than the Crimean ones, only on December 20, when the upper house began to sum up the results of 2022 and “close the gestalts.” One of the appointees, representative of the People’s Council of the DPR Alexander Ananchenko, ultimately turned out to be a temporary figure (in September 2023 he was replaced by a little-known volunteer Alexander Voloshin), and with the grounds that gave the acting head of the LPR Leonid Pasechnik to give senatorial powers to an employee of the presidential administration of the Russian Federation Daria Lantratova, There is still no complete clarity. The law on the formation of the upper house provides for a “residence qualification”, from which there are a number of exceptions – diplomats, ex-governors, officers, etc. It was not reported which of the exceptions Ms. Lantratova fell under.

In the same “final” format, at the end of 2022, the People’s Councils of the DPR and LPR adopted republican constitutions. As usual, in one day. In the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions they were unable to support their colleagues this time, since they simply did not have functioning legislative bodies: until September, laws there were issued on behalf of the acting governors. We must pay tribute, Evgeniy Balitsky and Vladimir Saldo are Ukrainian politicians with rich experience, both people’s deputies of Ukraine of the seventh convocation from the Party of Regions (Mr. Balitsky left it in 2014 and, as a single-mandate, was elected to the next convocation of the Verkhovna Rada, where he joined the “Opposition Bloc “), they coped with the task of consolidating the authorities and gained a foothold at the helm of the territories entrusted to them. Kommersant’s interlocutors in none of the regions had any doubt that the entire “four,” which received a “presidential carte blanche” with the prefix “interim” on September 30, 2022, would safely get rid of it on September 10, 2023. And so it happened.

A striking difference between the current situation and the Crimean one is the shortage of personnel, especially in areas that were led by self-organized “military-civil administrations” for six months.

If the peninsula, having always been a full-fledged republic, that is, considered a ready-made subject, became part of the federation like a greased cog, then the new regions not only experienced a shock outflow of population, but also separated from unitary Ukraine. Even before joining Russia, a number of key positions were occupied by Russian specialists, and with the beginning of full-scale integration, the “newcomers” became, if not the basis, then a very noticeable part of the administrative apparatus. Even at its top level there are entirely Russians, for example senators Dmitry Rogozin, Konstantin Basyuk and Igor Kastyukevich. In the republics, the dominance of nonresidents is not so dramatic: there it was initially smaller, but after a year and a half, “it’s no longer very noticeable,” Kommersant’s interlocutors admit. The teams, they say, are well-established, there is almost no turnover among top managers, and mid-level officials are predominantly local. It would be appropriate to recall here that the new entities became a “springboard” for the rise of many Russian officials, primarily the head of Chukotka Vladislav Kuznetsov (who worked as the first deputy prime minister of the LPR) and the governor of the Omsk region Vitaly Khotsenko (who worked as the prime minister of the DPR), and this is mutually beneficial for the federal center and Donbass, the “forge” will undoubtedly forge many high-ranking careers.

Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko, answering a question from Kommersant about the integration of new entities, recalled that at the federal level it is “largely completed”: 56 relevant laws have been adopted, and now the main thing is to establish close cooperation with the center. As part of Ukraine, the “reunified” regions were “donors” from which resources were “pumped out”, so now, Ms. Matvienko continued, they are in a neglected and dilapidated, even “post-Soviet” state. Of course, as part of Russia, these lands will be able to realize their potential – just give them a fishing rod, not a fish. One of Kommersant’s high-ranking interlocutors in the new regions speaks out a little more down-to-earth: integration is proceeding “normally”, taking into account the transition period, it will be completed by 2026. Another even flaunts: “Crimea did it for eight years, we did it in one year.” Well, you can look at the situation from this angle.