‘Qualified people don’t want the job’ Once a coveted prize, Russia’s mayoral posts are now nearly impossible to fill
Soon, mayoral elections will be a thing of the past in Russia’s regional capitals. Instead, the authorities have introduced so-called mayoral competitions: candidates submit applications, a selection committee (made up largely of representatives from the regional governor’s office) screens them, and then chooses a winner from among the finalists. But as it turns out, there are few people willing to compete. In Kurgan, for example, the city has been without a permanent mayor since January 2024, despite holding three separate competitions. And Kurgan is far from the only regional capital facing a leadership crisis. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev explains how going without a mayor has become the new normal for many major Russian cities — and why the once-prestigious post is no longer desirable.
The Russian city of Kurgan has been without a mayor for more than a year. The previous mayor, Elena Sitnikova, resigned in January 2024 after facing criminal charges, and when officials still hadn’t managed to find a replacement by mid-spring, the delay caught the attention of President Vladimir Putin. “You need to organize the necessary procedures and hold a proper election,” he chided that April.
Nevertheless, Kurgan still has no permanent mayor — despite the fact that like other regional capitals in Russia, the city abolished mayoral elections long ago, in favor of an appointment system (something the president apparently wasn’t aware of). The first competition to appoint a new mayor was announced back in May 2024. Three candidates applied, including Dmitry Zhukovsky, head of the local branch of the ruling United Russia party, and acting mayor Anastasia Arghysheva. But the competition collapsed when both Zhukovsky and Arghysheva withdrew, reportedly because regional authorities found their candidacies unacceptable. Anton Naumenko, who previously headed the administrative office supporting the Kurgan regional government, was subsequently appointed interim mayor.
A second competition began in October 2024 and nearly concluded in December. Naumenko and Zhukovsky advanced to the final round — but once again, Zhukovsky withdrew, derailing the appointment. In early 2025, officials launched a third competition. This time, Naumenko reached the final again, along with lawyer Alexey Kondratyev. Still, the city council has yet to finalize a permanent appointment.
At first glance, the situation in Kurgan might seem unusual. But in fact, difficulties with mayoral appointments have become increasingly common in Russia’s regional politics.
In early 2024, not a single candidate applied for the mayor’s seat in Minusinsk, in Krasnoyarsk Krai, forcing officials to hold a second competition. Only then was Dmitry Merkulov — who had previously served as mayor — appointed to the post. In 2020, Magadan faced a similar leadership crisis: no one applied to participate in the mayoral competition, and Yuri Grishan, who had previously resigned, remained in office by default.
Sometimes, competitions fail not due to a lack of candidates but because the selection committee itself rejects them — either on technical grounds or because they fail to meet the expectations of regional authorities. That’s what happened in Bolshoy Kamen, Primorsky Krai. After the city’s previous mayor, Rustyam Abushayev, faced criminal charges in 2023 and quietly left to fight in Ukraine to avoid prosecution, a mayoral competition was announced in fall 2024. Yet, the commission rejected all six initial applicants, and it wasn’t until April 2025 that a new mayor was appointed.
In Astrakhan, a competition to select a new mayor fell apart in September 2024 after one of three candidates withdrew and another failed to pass to the final round. A mayor was appointed on the second attempt.
Meanwhile, officials in the Tomsk region have spent months trying to appoint a new head of the Alexandrovsky District. The first competition failed because only one person applied; the second collapsed when the commission found the candidates’ qualifications insufficient. In the third round, Denis Pyankov, head of the settlement of Alexandrovskoye, applied and is now expected to get the post.
Waning power
Meduza spoke with two regional officials, one municipal deputy, two regional lawmakers, a federal lawmaker, and two political consultants who work with the presidential administration’s domestic policy team. According to these sources, the once-prestigious and lucrative position of city mayor now draws very little interest. The reason, they say, is that the role of mayor in Russian politics has changed dramatically.
As recently as the late 2000s, mayors in most Russian cities were elected by direct popular vote. Elections were competitive, and it was not uncommon for candidates who weren’t backed by the authorities to win — often local politicians or businessmen. In 2005, for instance, businessman Alexander Donskoy was elected mayor of Arkhangelsk. In 2006, Viktor Tarkhov, a member of the party A Just Russia, became mayor of Samara. In 2010, businessman and Communist Party candidate Viktor Kondrashov won the mayoral election in Irkutsk. Even when candidates from United Russia prevailed, they typically still had to win real competitive races.
“Mayors controlled most of the city’s key resources — land allocation, construction, advertising. You had to negotiate with them. Sometimes the mayor’s office was more appealing than the governor’s post. In an election system, it wasn’t easy to remove a mayor — [criminal] cases were opened, some were forced out, but many served at least one full term,” a political consultant who worked on mayoral campaigns across Russia told Meduza.
At the time, conflicts between mayors and governors — something hard to imagine today — were not unusual. In the 2000s, the political influence of mayors steadily grew, often sparking friction with regional leaders. In Kurgan, there was an open feud between Governor Oleg Bogomolov and Mayor Anatoly Yelchaninov. In Omsk, Governor Leonid Polezhayev clashed with Mayor Viktor Shreider. In Arkhangelsk, tensions rose between Governor Igor Orlov and Mayor Viktor Pavlenko.
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Seeking tighter control over local authorities, the Kremlin began implementing measures to abolish mayoral elections as early as 2003. Initially, municipalities were allowed to replace direct mayoral elections with a competitive appointment process. Under this system, the head of the city council — who held no real administrative authority — formally served as mayor. This structure was adopted in many cities, including major regional centers like Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm, and Saratov.
However, direct mayoral elections persisted in many municipalities — including most regional capitals — until 2014. That year, at the initiative of the Kremlin’s domestic policy team (then headed by Vyacheslav Volodin), the State Duma changed the rules, allowing regional legislatures to abolish mayoral elections outright.
By the end of 2014, direct elections had been scrapped in 65 regional centers. By early 2025, mayors were still elected by popular vote in only four regional capitals: Abakan, Anadyr, Khabarovsk, and Yakutsk.
As a result, municipalities have gradually lost not only the ability to hold competitive elections but also much of their authority over urban planning, land use, advertising, transportation — and even a share of their tax revenues.
‘The easiest targets’
Because governors now have near-total control over the appointment and dismissal of mayors, selection committees are typically made up of their representatives. As a result, new mayors are often drawn directly from the governor’s inner circle — usually a deputy in charge of infrastructure or construction. Such figures have earned the nickname “deputies for city affairs.”
However, being closely tied to the governor doesn’t guarantee a mayor free rein — or protection from trouble, particularly from law enforcement.
According to data from the Civil Initiatives Committee, around 15 percent of Russian mayors had faced criminal prosecution as of 2019. In 2021, Vladivostok’s mayor, Oleg Gumenyuk, was sentenced to over 16 years in prison, and in 2023, former Belgorod mayor Anton Ivanov was arrested. In 2024, criminal cases were opened against the mayors of Astrakhan, Sochi, Petrozavodsk, and the former mayor of Minusinsk, Andrey Pervukhin.
Importantly, these arrested mayors were neither opposition activists nor United Russia members challenging regional authorities, a source close to the presidential administration told Meduza. “They were either members of the governors’ teams or local figures who had been vetted and approved when no one from the inner circle wanted the job,” the source explained.
A regional lawmaker from the ruling party put it more bluntly: mayors are on the “front line” of managing city resources — “directly allocating contracts, funding everything from major [city] projects to minor ones.” “Even if there’s no outright corruption," the deputy said, law enforcement “can always build a case around ‘abuse of power’ if they want to. Mayors are the easiest targets these days.”
As a result, the lawmaker added, people close to governors increasingly prefer to work in regional administrations, where the risks are lower. And prominent local politicians and business leaders — wary of potential law enforcement pressure — have little interest in pursuing mayoral posts.
A political consultant who works with the presidential administration pointed to a few more reasons why the job has lost its appeal:
The position still demands some level of public visibility. That carries the risk of clashing with the governor — and jealousy can easily lead to being pushed out. The salary isn’t high compared to what someone could earn running a business or even as a senior manager at a large company.
A regional official from Russia’s Central Federal District agreed:
It’s a dilemma: the competent, qualified people don’t want the job, and the incompetent ones aren’t wanted. Plus, no matter what you do, people will blame you for problems you can’t fix, because there’s just not enough money in the budget.
Soon, mayoral competitions could disappear altogether. Thanks to a new local governance law that took effect this year, regional legislatures now have the authority to introduce rules that would effectively eliminate open mayoral competitions. While candidates today still have at least a nominal chance of winning a mayor’s seat through an application process, soon governors will, in practice, be able to appoint mayors directly. Local lawmakers’ approval of the governor’s nominee will likely be little more than a formality.
The new law also gives governors the power to dismiss mayors freely for failing to meet performance targets. Still, the legislation might have at least one unintended upside. A regional official told Meduza that in some parts of Russia, the changes could help solve the chronic shortage of qualified mayoral candidates. “Governors will be able to promote subordinates [into mayoral roles] — directly and almost as an ultimatum,” he explained. “Want to keep your career moving forward? Go [work for the city].”
Story by Andrey Pertsev