‘Don’t wake up the voter’

Kremlin strategists think St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov’s best chance of winning reelection is if residents don’t realize there’s a vote

In the fall of 2019, the Russian regime faced a daunting challenge in getting the unpopular Alexander Beglov elected as St. Petersburg governor. Since then, his approval rating has only worsened. He faced near-constant criticism for his poor management of the coronavirus epidemic, displayed ineptitude in dealing with snow and garbage removal, and even became a meme. Now, with gubernatorial elections fast approaching, Kremlin strategists are scrambling to safeguard Beglov’s campaign from any unexpected issues. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev spoke with Kremlin insiders and city officials to get the inside scoop on their plans for the upcoming election season.

Five years ago, officials in the Putin administration’s political bloc faced a challenging task: making Alexander Beglov the governor of St. Petersburg. Almost immediately after he was appointed acting governor the year prior, Beglov started receiving negative ratings. As a little-known bureaucrat, he struggled to establish himself as a public politician. Vladimir Putin had even been advised to choose someone more suitable for the position, but the president decided on Beglov, whom he had known for a long time.

Back then, Beglov’s campaign team included Kremlin staff and political strategists, as well as associates of the Kovalchuk brothers. He also received backing from Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and Vyacheslav Makarov, the then-leader of United Russia’s St. Petersburg branch and the legislative assembly speaker.

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This support, along with weak opponents and election fraud, helped Beglov secure 64.4 percent of the votes with a low turnout of 30 percent and take the governor’s seat. Soon after, however, he clashed with the Kovalchuks and Prigozhin, and he also ousted Vyacheslav Makarov and his entourage from city politics. “Beglov and his team essentially brought the city under their control,” a source close to the Putin administration told Meduza. “But relations with the residents didn’t improve, and his approval rating didn’t grow.”

At the same time, a source close to the city authorities insisted that Beglov “isn’t trying to become a popular politician in the city.” “A bureaucrat simply doesn't need this, such issues don’t concern him,” the source said. According to official data from the state-owned Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), as of March 2024, 48 percent of St. Petersburg residents would vote for the current governor. However, two sources close to the Kremlin told Meduza that Beglov’s real rating is lower — somewhere around 30 to 40 percent — meaning he’s propped up by the “electorate that always votes for the authorities.”

The support team

This past spring, Meduza discovered that Beglov’s election campaign was being managed by Alexander Belsky, the speaker of the city’s legislative assembly and former deputy governor for domestic politics, and political consultant and Pskov Region Deputy Governor Alexander Seravin. However, lacking confidence in the “city team,” Putin’s administration assembled its own group to supervise Beglov’s campaign. This group is led by Boris Rapoport, the deputy head of the Monitoring and Analysis of Social Processes Department, who also oversaw Beglov’s previous campaign.

Two sources close to the Putin administration told Meduza that “Rapoport is working on the elections with the ‘city team,’” but “of course he isn’t at every meeting.” He’s delegated some tasks to Svetlana Zamaratskaya, a former employee at the political strategy firm IMA-Consulting, former deputy governor of Irkutsk, and current executive director of the “autonomous nonprofit organization” (ANO) Dialog Regions.

Meduza’s sources described Zamaratskaya as Rapoport’s “avatar,” noting that she earned his trust during the September 2023 “elections” in occupied Ukrainian territories. According to sources close to Putin’s administration, Zamaratskaya is the one controlling the “city team” and suggesting various strategies. The online campaign, as in 2019, is being handled by Dialog head Vladimir Tabak.

Sources close to Putin’s administration told Meduza they’re confident that despite these efforts, Beglov’s situation won’t change significantly by September, and his rating will likely remain below 50 percent. “The anti-Beglov campaign led by Prigozhin and [Leningrad’s frontman Sergey] Shnurov in the winter of 2022 had an impact. Even residents who were neutral toward [the governor] started mocking him,” explained one source.

However, Beglov’s team isn’t aiming to quickly boost his rating. This could attract too much attention from St. Petersburg residents, ultimately backfiring. A St. Petersburg administration official who spoke to Meduza on condition of anonymity described Beglov’s political strategists’ main goal as follows: “Ideally, people shouldn’t even know that any elections are happening in the city — especially gubernatorial ones.” According to this source and one of Beglov’s campaign strategists, Boris Rapoport himself believes that “the most important thing is to not wake up the voter.”

The strategy

Beglov’s campaign team has three strategies to save the situation. The first is a so-called background campaign. Instead of giving interviews, meeting voters, and debating opponents, Beglov will simply continue working and highlight the results: inspecting construction sites, visiting new stadiums, and reopening renovated metro stations.

The second method, according to sources in Putin’s administration, is to “dry up” turnout while “mobilizing their own voters — dependent voters and true supporters [of the authorities].” The third and final method is the “complete demobilization of opposition voters.” Beglov’s team plans to achieve this by fielding a set of token candidates to create the illusion of alternative choices.

In the 2019 campaign, such candidates included Oleg Kapitanov from the far-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), film director Vladimir Bortko from the Communist Party (CPRF), Nadezhda Tikhonova from A Just Russia – For Truth, and Mikhail Amosov from Civic Platform. In the end, the governor’s campaign team and the Kremlin realized that even with this lineup, the unpopular Beglov risked a runoff. Oleg Kapitanov (who took a job in the city administration) and Vladimir Bortko (who never never offered a convincing explanation) dropped out of the race.

For these elections, Beglov’s team and Putin’s administration have taken maximum precautions to avoid any incidents. The incumbent governor will face only three “opponents,” whom the Kremlin considers “absolutely safe,” according to sources in the city administration and close to Putin’s administration.

Only one of them is from a parliamentary party — Maxim Yakovlev, an LDPR legislative assembly deputy, who’s virtually unknown. The Communist Party clashed with the St. Petersburg administration over its nominee and ended up without a candidate — a scenario that suits both the Kremlin and the St. Petersburg administration. “The CPRF’s core electorate will still vote for any candidate [from their party] — even the weakest. When every percent counts, it’s better not to risk it. Having no [CPRF candidate] on the ballot is already a win,” a source close to the St. Petersburg authorities told Meduza.

The New People party also decided not to nominate a candidate, even though its local branch was recently headed by well-known city politician and State Duma deputy Oksana Dmitrieva. Party members said their candidate wouldn’t be able to gather the required signatures. A Just Russia – For Truth cited the same reason for not participating in the elections: the party’s regional head, Nadezhda Tikhonova, said only about a hundred municipal deputies were ready to sign for her, far short of the required 155.

The other “candidates” in the race are Sergey Malinkovich from the Communists of Russia party and eco-activist Pavel Bragin from The Greens. According to the news outlet Vot Tak, their campaigns will be managed by the Kremlin-affiliated consulting agency Polilog. The plan is for Malinkovich to campaign with “elements of sensationalism and performance,” Bragin to “quietly” conduct “a few events,” and Yakovlev to be almost absent from his own campaign, leaving everything to his trusted aides.

Journalists from Vot Tak found out that each “token” candidate is allowed no more than 10 billboards and 10 pickets (in a city of over five million people). A source close to the city authorities and a source close to the president’s administration confirmed this information to Meduza. “All of this is also a way to ‘dry up’ turnout. Malinkovich is alienating the communists with his wild proposals. And [the candidates] who can actually bring voters to the polls practically won’t campaign,” said one source.

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A source close to Putin’s administration emphasized that Beglov should stand out as a “giant of intellect and politics” compared to the other candidates. In fact, one St. Petersburg administration official couldn’t even recall the last names of the governor’s opponents during a conversation with Meduza.

If the reelection campaign strategy works, Beglov is expected to secure about 60 percent of the votes with a turnout of 25-30 percent, according to sources close to the city government and Putin’s administration. “Ideally, it should be no worse than in the previous elections,” one source noted. “Otherwise, people might question why the governor was reappointed. The minimum goal is to win in a single round with Beglov getting 55 percent of the vote.” According to the source close to the president’s administration, this goal is “quite realistic.”

Reporting by Andrey Pertsev