Loyalty rules and change of favourites: what do the governor resignations and appointments of spring-2024 tell us?

Peacetime rules

According to peacetime rules, the May reshuffle of the top league of Russian bureaucracy – the government and presidential structures – triggered a secondary wave of reshuffles, now within the gubernatorial corps. Although it looked almost technical at first, it has ended up being a much more substantive continuation of the first wave than it might have seemed at first glance.

On 15 May, Putin appointed five acting governors to replace the regional heads who had been promoted during the first wave of rotations. Sergei Tsivilev (Kemerovo Region), Anton Alikhanov (Kaliningrad Region), Roman Starovoit (Kursk Region), and Mikhail Degtyarev (Khabarovsk Territory) became federal ministers, while Tula governor and former Putin aide Alexei Dyumin became presidential aide and secretary of the State Council. However, at the end of May and beginning of June, three more replacements were announced: the head of the Samara Region Dmitry Azarov was replaced by Vyacheslav Fedorishchev replaced Dmitry Azarov as the head of the Samara region, Ruslan Kukharuk, the former mayor of Tyumen, replaced Natalya Komarova as the head of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Andrey Turchak, the secretary of the general council of United Russia, replaced Oleg Khorokhordin as the head of the Republic of Altai.

The replacement of eight governors in the spring rotation can partly be seen as a transition to peacetime standards. Since returning to the Kremlin in 2012 and establishing a new model of gubernatorial management, Putin has replaced an average of 10 governors per year. In 2012, there were 20 replacements as Putin sought to rid himself of the ‘legacy’ of the 2000s. In 2017, the abundance of replacements was due to the arrival of Sergei Kiriyenko in the presidential administration, who was building a 'Komsomol-Soviet' model of managing the governor corps. 

Rotation of governors in Russia, 2012-2024, number of resignations/appointments

Its essence lay in the concept of a governorship as a nomenklatura position in a bureaucratic career. Similar to the Soviet system, officials were expected to move through the ranks of power structures, transitioning between positions in federal executive bodies and regional roles and vice versa. At the same time, they were required to undergo training at the 'governors' school' at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, akin to the Soviet Higher Party School. In the regions, they were not promoted from local elites, as was common in the early post-Soviet period (1990s-2000s), but rather were ‘overseers’ dispatched by the "centre." Their future career prospects depended on their ability to fulfil this role without causing open conflicts or social unrest. Under the ‘Kiriyenko model’, rotations within the gubernatorial corps were intended to be regular, occurring twice a year – in spring and autumn.

The intensity of rotations decreased in 2020–2021. In May 2022, however, five governor replacements were still made, mostly planned prior to the onset of the war. However, the autumn rotation was cancelled altogether, as it fell during Putin's declaration of emergency mobilisation, during which regional authorities played a key role in mobilising manpower for the front lines. In 2023, there were only six replacements, the lowest since 2012. As political scientist Nikolai Petrov has noted, personnel decisions, beyond the most essential, were "put on hold" after the start of the war (→ Nikolai Petrov: Children, Chaebols, and Adjutants). Therefore, the eight replacements in this year's spring cycle suggest that we can expect no fewer than 10–12 governorship changes by the end of the year, indicating a return to the norms of 2012–2018 (averaging around 13 replacements per year).

The Varangians and the Autochthons

One of the peculiarities of the current wave of rotations is the significant number of "non-Varangians" among the appointees. According to the calculations of regionalist political scientist Alexander Kynev, almost 60% of Russian governors today (49 out of 85) are ‘Varangians’, meaning emissaries of the Kremlin not connected to the region. aEven among deputy governors, they constitute nearly a third. A similar proportion (about 60%) was maintained in the new governor appointments during the Kiriyenko era. Half of this year's appointees — Ilya Seredyuk in the Kemerovo Region, Dmitry Milyaev in the Tula Region, former Tyumen Mayor Ruslan Kukharuk, who became acting head of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Alexei Smirnov in the Kursk Region — are local officials who grew up in local government structures and are closely linked to regional elites. 

Most likely, the abundance of 'autochthonous' officials in the current rotation is due to the fact that the outgoing governors were allowed to leave their protégés behind. In the Kemerovo region, the appointment of Ilya Seredyuk appears to be a compromise with local elites: his name was mentioned in the previous cycle of appointments when Sergei Tsivilev unexpectedly took over from the local political elder Aman Tuleyev, who is Putin's niece's husband.

The current relaxation of the Kremlin's unitary policy is unlikely to be seen as a change of course — rather, it indicates the Kremlin's confidence in the repressive mechanisms of control over local elites and new appointees that have been developed in recent years. Conversely, the lack of such confidence is illustrated by the case of the Khabarovsk Krai, where Dmitry Demeshin, a ‘Varangian’ who came from the position of deputy prosecutor general, became the head of the region. In the Kremlin's view, the region remains Russia's Vendée — ever since 2018, when against Moscow's will, popular local politician Sergei Furgal was elected governor. His arrest in July 2020 sparked the largest and longest-lasting protest rallies in Russian regional history.

The disloyalty of the region and its elites continues to worry the Kremlin to this day, as notably demonstrated by the recognition of the local 'I/We Sergei Furgal' movement as extremist in February of this year. The previous governor, Mikhail Degtyarev, was appointed at the height of the 2020 protests and was more of a compromise figure. The new governor, judging by his background, is expected to initiate purges within the local elites.

Change of favourites

However, it was not the first five replacements that proved to be the most politically significant, but the subsequent three. The stalwart of the governor's corps, Natalia Komarova, led the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, one of the richest regions where about 40% of Russian oil is produced, for 14 years (the average tenure of the other seven replaced regional heads is six years) and was considered close to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, enjoying his protection and patronage. In October 2023, explaining the lack of uniforms for mobilised people at a meeting with residents of the region, Komarova said: 'We did not prepare for this war as a nation. We do not need it. We have built our world in a completely different way.' This episode sparked a scandal, during which a police report was filed against Komarova. In reality, Komarova's words reflected a fairly common view on the war in Russia, including among Russian elites. Despite being gracefully handled (Komarova received a position in the Federation Council), her resignation will nonetheless signal the level of loyalty to the war demanded by the Kremlin from officials.

However, the most interesting from a political standpoint are undoubtedly the governor replacements in the Samara region and the Altai Republic. The important thing in these regions is not who left, but who arrived. Dmitry Azarov, who had a long-running conflict with United Russia MP Alexander Khinstein and was dismissed just nine months after his re-election for a second term, was replaced by Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, who served as head of the government of the Tula Region and was a member of Governor Dyumin's inner circle. 

Unlike other appointees born between 1971 and 1976 with a solid bureaucratic career behind them, Fedorishchev is not yet 35 years old. At 24, just three years after graduating from university, he became an advisor to Minister of Economic Development Alexey Ulyukaev (later arrested), and then joined Alexey Dyumin's team, whom he continues to consider his ‘commander’ and mentor even after his new appointment. Thus, Dyumin managed not only to keep 'his man' in Tula Oblast, but also to promote another of his deputies to the governorship of such an important region as Samara Oblast, despite his young age and poor track record. This circumstance undoubtedly should serve as a signal to the elites about the weight with which the former aide to Putin has entered presidential structures.

If Fedorishchev's appointment is an indication of a rising star in Dyumin's career, sending Andrei Turchak, secretary of United Russia's general council and first deputy speaker of the Federation Council, to the governor's chair of the Altai Republic, one of Russia's weakest regions, seems like the sunset of another career. Turchak, the son of a longtime friend of Putin, who held two of the most important political rather than administrative positions simultaneously, was considered a clear favourite of the president and one of the crown princes of Russian politics.

The most common explanation for this resignation is the failure of 'participants of the special military operation' in the United Russia primaries. Whether this is true or not is not so important. What is certain is that Turchak has fallen out of the new line-up of contenders for key roles in Russian politics. As we have previously written, this line-up in Putin's current term may be a preparation for a gradual transit of power, and therefore the seats won in the current cycle have a particularly high value (→ Re:Russia: The Last Term’s Great Game of Solitaire).

Thus, gubernatorial appointments have sent a dual signal to Russian elites. First, about the cost of mistakes even for those who are categorised in the new Russian elite as 'children' of Putin's associates. And second, about the further strengthening of the 'adjutants' party' within Putin's entourage, as evidenced by the powerful rise of Alexei Dyumin in the Kremlin. It is also worth noting in this context the appointment of Valery Pikolyov, another former FSO member who headed the security detail at Putin's residence in Valdai, as the head of the Federal Customs Service, which has gone almost unnoticed by commentators.