Governors are looking for competitors – Newspaper Kommersant No. 51 (7496) of 03/27/2023

Following Moscow, opposition parties are beginning to decide on candidates for governors in other regions, where elections will be held in September 2023. Deputies of regional parliaments or leaders of local party cells will traditionally run against the incumbent heads of United Russia, but more competitive scenarios are also possible. For example, in the Altai Territory, State Duma deputy from the Communist Party Maria Prusakova can compete for the governor’s chair.

The plans for September 2023 are most readily disclosed in the Liberal Democratic Party. For example, in Primorye, the party is preparing to nominate Andrey Andreichenko, coordinator of the regional cell, deputy of the regional parliament, to the governorship. He has been fighting for this post for almost 10 years: in the elections in 2014, the Liberal Democrat took third place (4.8% of the vote), in September 2018 – fourth (9.5%), and in December 2018, during the repeated voting, – the second (25.2%). Now the post of governor is held by United Russia Oleg Kozhemyako, who has not yet announced his plans to be re-elected.

The Liberal Democratic Party is also preparing to put up an equally experienced candidate in Yakutia. There, the ex-deputy of the parliament of Yakutia and the State Duma, the leader of the local cell, Gavril Parakhin, will compete for the post of Il Darkhan (head of the republic). He participated in these elections twice and both times took fourth place: in 2014 – with 3.2% of the vote, in 2018 – with 6.2%. The current head of Yakutia, Aisen Nikolaev (ER), has already announced his desire to be re-elected for a new term.

In the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Liberal Democrats are planning to bet on a “newcomer” – Deputy of the Legislative Assembly Alexander Gliskov, who has no experience of participating in the gubernatorial race. In 2018, another regional parliamentarian, Yegor Bondarenko, ran for the LDPR, finishing second (23.3%). “I think that I have enough experience and knowledge, we overcome the municipal filter due to the fact that we have a sufficient number of deputies in the region. I didn’t have any obstacles in the form of foreign assets,” Mr. Gliskov told Kommersant. It is still unknown whether the current governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Alexander Uss (ER), will run again for his post: he himself has not announced such plans, and the media have repeatedly written about his possible early resignation.

In Moscow, the pool of main candidates for the mayor’s chair is almost formed (see Kommersant of March 22). On March 21, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Leonid Slutsky, said that Vice Speaker of the State Duma Boris Chernyshov would most likely participate in the elections from his party. A Just Russia – For Truth (SRZP) will nominate State Duma deputy and head of the Moscow branch Dmitry Gusev. The shortlist of likely candidates from the Communist Party includes State Duma deputies Denis Parfyonov, Vadim Kumin and First Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Yuri Afonin. Among the parliamentary opposition parties, only the plans of the New People remain unknown. The current mayor Sergei Sobyanin (ER) has not yet announced his participation in the elections, but, as Kommersant previously reported citing an informed source, he has such an intention.

On September 10, direct gubernatorial elections will be held in at least 21 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. In 20 of them, the election campaigns will be planned (due to the expiration of the term of office of the current leaders), in the Smolensk region – early. Of the governors with an expiring term, only the head of Chukotka, Roman Kopin, has resigned so far, who was replaced in the status of acting deputy governor of the Kurgan region Vladislav Kuznetsov, who recently worked as the first deputy prime minister of the LPR. The resignation of the Smolensk Governor Alexei Ostrovsky (LDPR) was unexpected: his powers expired only in September 2025. Vasily Anokhin, head of one of the departments of the government of the Russian Federation, has been appointed acting head of the region.

The list of elective regions is not yet final: according to Kommersant’s sources close to the presidential administration, new replacements may take place in the governor’s corps by the end of March. We add that in five subjects the heads will be approved through the parliament – in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, as well as in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation names candidates less willingly. So far, only the first secretary of the Voronezh regional committee, Andrei Rogatnev, has declared his desire to compete for the governor’s post. True, after that a scandal erupted in the cell: a member of the same party accused Mr. Rogatnev of beating him and turned to the Investigative Committee. The communist himself is sure that in this way they want to prevent him from participating in the elections.

The most status opposition candidate may appear in the Altai Territory: there the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is considering the nomination of State Duma deputy Maria Prusakova. She herself previously stated that if she wins, the popular Saratov communist blogger Nikolai Bondarenko could become a senator. In the Smolensk region, after the resignation of Alexei Ostrovsky, the Liberal Democratic Party may also bet on a State Duma deputy, the representative of the region in the lower house, Sergei Leonov. In a conversation with Kommersant, this possibility was admitted by the parliamentarian himself. Finally, a State Duma deputy may also take part in the coastal elections: Kommersant’s interlocutors do not exclude that Roza Chemeris, a member of the New People faction in the lower house, who is considered a representative of a part of the coastal elite, opposition to Oleg Kozhemyako, will become a candidate for governor. However, Mrs. Chemeris herself talks about this only in a hypothetical way.

Let us add that the New People are the only parliamentary party that, even before the start of the election campaign, refused to participate in elections in one of the regions. We are talking about the Nizhny Novgorod region, where the party members saw no reason to compete with the current United Russia governor Gleb Nikitin (he himself has not yet announced plans to run for office). Instead, New People will focus on by-elections to the Nizhny Novgorod City Duma and other local campaigns, the regional branch added.

Andrey Prakh, corset “Kommersant”