On December 20, Putin will hold a meeting with the heads of new regions for the first time

As Vedomosti found out, by the end of 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet for the first time with the leaders of new regions of Russia in their new capacity. The last time Putin, judging by the messages on the Kremlin website, spoke with them in person on September 30, 2022, on the day of signing agreements on the admission of the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions into Russia and the formation of new subjects of the Federation.

Then the heads of the DPR (Denis Pushilin), the LPR (Leonid Pasechnik), the Zaporozhye region (Evgeny Balitsky) and the Kherson region (Vladimir Saldo) came to Moscow. All of them received the status of acting heads of four new regions of Russia. Three sources told Vedomosti about the preparations for the meetings (it is assumed that the president will receive the interim in turn): two sources close to the presidential administration and one to the State Duma. Viktor Vodolatsky (United Russia), who is in charge of ties with the Luhansk People’s Republic in the lower house of parliament, says a meeting of leaders with Putin is planned, but “everything depends on the president’s schedule.”

The heads of the new regions, most likely, will discuss with the president the opening of representative offices of federal territorial authorities in the territories, Vodolatsky believes. According to the government decree, this work should be completed by June 1, 2023. “Naturally, there will be questions about the implementation of that plan [восстановления]which was approved by Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, so that next year all infrastructure facilities – water supply, sewerage, gasification – would be financed and the work completed,” Vodolatsky said.

“If we are talking about the political agenda, then the key events that will be discussed at the meeting will be security issues. The second point is socio-economic development, primarily restoration [республик]. The third is long-term tasks: the development of the education system, integration into the Russian educational space, – Artem Bobrovsky, head of the political science department at Donetsk National University, told Vedomosti. “The key issue in this regard will be the issue of interaction with young people.”

Political scientist Alexander Nemtsev believes that the meeting should be considered as a “positional” one: “The President regularly communicates with the heads of regions. Protocolally, they differ from meetings with foreign states or even territories with an undetermined status, such as Transnistria. Interestingly, this will be the first meeting of the leaders of the territories in the status of heads of Russian regions. It may well be discussed issues of restoration, their economic development.

“A meeting of the current acting president with the president will mean their support from the federal center,” Nemtsev believes. As Vedomosti wrote, there will be no direct elections of governors in the new regions in the near future, and the authorities are not preparing for them either. “Given the martial law declared in the territories of these constituent entities of the Russian Federation, it is not possible to conduct direct elections of their leaders,” Nemtsev believes.

Two Vedomosti sources close to the presidential administration note that a working meeting with the heads of regions will take place on December 20. But other events are planned for this day, they say.

Also on December 20, the president traditionally congratulates a security worker as part of solemn events in the Kremlin. As one of these Vedomosti sources noted, the meeting with the heads of the regions will not break this tradition: Putin is supposed to make a congratulatory speech to the intelligence officers, emphasizing the importance of their work.