James Kilner
Sat, September 2, 2023
Vladimir Putin in Khakassia in 2010. Analysts argued that his invasion of Ukraine dented his chances of winning the region - Aleksey Druzhinin/AFP via Getty Images
Vladimir Putin’s party is facing a battle to win back one of the only regions in Russia it does not control after its candidate for next week’s local election quit following a poll showing he would lose.
Unable to stuff ballots in the remote Khakassia region in southern Siberia, the Kremlin is now looking to cancel the governorship election entirely, according to Russian opposition media.
Analysts said that the Kremlin’s failure to manage the election showed that its messaging was not getting through and its war in Ukraine was not as popular as it hoped.
“This is an indicator of the real mood in the heartland,” said Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter and political commentator who now lives in Israel.
The Kremlin has a near-iron tight grip over politics in Russia and dominates every level from the national parliament to local assemblies, with only a handful of exceptions.
One of the most glaring of these has been Valentin Konovalov’s governorship of Khakassia, a sparsely populated region known for its natural beauty. It is a five-hour flight from Moscow.
Valentin Konovalov, of the Russian Communist Party, has controlled Khakassia since 2018 - Planetpix/Alamy Stock Photo
The 35-year-old Russian Communist Party pin-up, who regards Vladimir Lenin as his political hero, became governor of Khakassia in 2018 off the back of public resentment at the Kremlin’s increase to the age of retirement.
The Kremlin tried to derail Mr Konovalov’s victory in 2018 by repeatedly cancelling a second round of voting until it decided to relent and instead revenge the humiliation at this year’s regional elections.
Mr Gallyamov said that Sergey Kiriyenko, Putin’s election strategist, first used the Kremlin’s propaganda machine to discredit Mr Konovalov and then parachuted in Sergei Sokol, a Russian MP “war hero”, to be the United Russia candidate.
But this plan has failed, he said, because the Kremlin had to win the election fairly as it does not control the main administrative resources in Khakassia and Mr Sokol was a weak candidate as he was too obviously “Moscow’s candidate” for people to stomach.
“As election day approached, it became increasingly clear that Sokol would lose,” Mr Gallyamov said.
This assessment was backed up by pro-government Russian media, with RBK reporting that secret polls showed Mr Sokol would embarrass the Kremlin.
The local elections include the Russian-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine, such as Donetsk - Reuters/Alexander Ermochenko
So with a week to go before the vote, Mr Sokol has decided to quit and on Saturday he posted a Telegram message from hospital saying that he was too ill to stand.
“Being a governor is a serious and responsible job and you can’t be out of action even for a day,” he said.
Mr Sokol had based his campaign on his support for Putin’s war in Ukraine after he served in the Cascade VIP battalion in occupied Donbas. It was set up to allow politicians to pose in military uniform miles behind the front-lines to fly drones rather than defend trenches.
Medusa, a Russian opposition website, said that with its election plan in tatters, the Kremlin now wanted to cancel the governorship election in Khakassia.
It quoted sources saying that officials had been sent from Moscow to find alleged voter fraud and pressure all the candidates to pull out, allowing the Kremlin to appoint a governor.
“Sokol has become a black swan, but we’ll figure it out,” said a source close to the presidential administration.
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