The boss from the Kremlin, the director of the puppet theater and Yaroslav the Wise

“Verstka” studied candidates from parties in “elections” in the annexed territories

Among the candidates for elections in the occupied territories of Ukraine were a current high-ranking official of the presidential administration, a Rostov authority, Cossacks, the unemployed and a person without registration. “Verstka” studied who is being nominated as candidates in the annexed regions. The parties also attracted representatives of Russian regions to the elections, since “there are not enough locals,” political strategists say. Despite the promises of the leadership of United Russia and Vladimir Putin to nominate “members of the Northern Military District” to government bodies, even on the lists of the “DPR” there are almost no active military personnel.

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The electoral commissions of the territories of Ukraine annexed by the Russian Federation, which Russian authorities call four “new regions,” have begun publishing lists of candidates for deputies of their “legislative assemblies.” “Elections” for these parliaments are due to take place on September 8–10. Almost half of the candidates from United Russia are people who are already considered collaborators or occupiers in Ukraine - these are current deputies of the legislative assemblies of the DPR and LPR, officials of the occupation administrations, public sector employees and the military. But among the nominees there are also people who came from “greater Russia”, including several high-status persons.

“Elections” in parts of the Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine controlled by Russian troops are scheduled for September 8–10. According to official data from the Central Election Commission, residents remaining in these regions will be able to elect legislative assemblies, as well as municipal representative bodies of government. The deputies who pass there will later elect the leaders of both regional and local executive authorities. Elections to the legislative assembly were officially announced on June 15. From August 2 to August 17, parties can submit their lists for registration. There are no elections under the majoritarian system in the “new territories” even at the local level.

Promotion at risk of life

The most complete lists of candidates have already been published by the “election commissions” in the “LPR” and “DPR” - candidates from United Russia, New People and the Liberal Democratic Party are officially considered nominated there. In addition, the list of nominees from the “liberal democrats” was “exposed” by the election commission of the occupied part of the Zaporozhye region. Until the last moment, the Russian Central Election Commission doubted whether to publish complete lists of candidates.

Just the day before, CEC member Konstantin Mazurevsky told Vedomosti that the commission was not going to do this “for reasons of physical safety” of the nominees - attacks on collaborators regularly occur in the annexed territories .

At the same time, the LDPR lists were published on August 2, on the first day of accepting documents from parties. The election commission delayed for almost a week with United Russia members who handed in their papers in early August - candidates began appearing in the State Automated System “Elections” only this week.

The selection of candidates for the “DPR” turned out to be the most representative. United Russia nominated 129 people there , and the first place on the list was taken by “acting head of the DPR” Denis Pushilin. Among United Russia nominees, the largest number—36 people—are current deputies of the “People’s Council of the DPR.” This is the name given to the “parliament” of the so-called republic since 2014. The lists of United Russia include representatives of both factions of this body - the Donetsk Republic, which has a majority (30 out of 74 current deputies), and the Free Donbass, which is conditionally “opposition” to it (6 out of 26). The speaker of this parliament, Vladimir Bidyovka, is not among the nominees.

The second largest group of candidates are public sector employees and heads of state-owned enterprises. Among them are the rectors of all major local universities and people who can be called “cultural figures,” for example, the head of Donetsk State University Svetlana Bespalova and the director of the Donetsk Puppet Theater Olga Arutinova. Among the candidates are local energy workers, utility workers and heads of state-owned mining companies. Another 20 nominees represent various pro-government public organizations, such as the head of the Donetsk branch of the “First Movement” Denis Chernobay and an employee of the staff of the “Young Republic” organization (the local analogue of MGER) Anton Achkasov.

However, among the candidates there are also truly status characters. The highest-ranking of them is political strategist Artyom Perehrist. He holds the position of head of one of the departments in the Kremlin’s internal policy department. His unit is responsible for constant monitoring of the situation in the regions and, among other things, is involved in approving the appointments of high-ranking local officials.

Perechrist comes from the Chelyabinsk region. According to Vorstka sources familiar with him and close to the AP, this official is known as “a specialist in resolving neglected and conflict situations.” In the mid-2010s, in Chelyabinsk, he conducted Russia’s first campaign for elections to representative bodies of intra-city districts and was “responsible for 174 candidates at once.” In addition, during the mass protests in Ingushetia in 2018-2019, Perechrist, “as a person from the special services,” actually led the internal political bloc of the government of this republic , his friend recalls.

Despite the promises of the leadership of United Russia and Vladimir Putin to nominate “members of the Northern Military District” to government bodies, there are only three active military personnel on the “DPR” lists. Among them is Artyom Zhoga, the father of the commander of the Donetsk detachment “Sparta” Vladimir Zhoga, who died in 2022. The latter was repeatedly cited as an example of the heroism of the Russian military by Vladimir Putin. There are practically no “ordinary Donbass workers” on the lists , with whose support Russian leaders have more than once explained the need for an invasion of Eastern Ukraine since 2014. There are only three of them, and it’s not easy to call these people ordinary workers: among the candidates, for example, is the chief engineer of the Glubokaya mine, Sergei Mikhalev.

Among the candidates from United Russia is a deputy of the Rostov-on-Don City Duma from the LDPR, ex-candidate for governor of the Rostov region Pyotr Pyatibratov. Interlocutors of "Vestka" among Rostov politicians call him an "authority", and his entourage - people "like bandits." Pyatibratov is known for his tough speeches against city authorities, and he announced his departure from the LDPR in 2021. There are also 11 local entrepreneurs among the United Russia candidates. Some of them apparently just recently moved to Donbass. For example, the head of Donpostavka LLC, Vladislav Podkova, does not officially have any “permanent place of residence in Russia.”

The LDPR has its own party list for the Donetsk elections. It, like in all other annexed territories, was headed by party chairman Leonid Slutsky. Among the LDPR candidates are five deputies of the current “parliament” of the “DPR”, three from the “Donetsk Republic” and two from the “Free Donbass”. And also a whole troop of dozens of regional and municipal deputies of the Kemerovo and Tomsk regions. The source of “Vestka” in the central apparatus of the party explains this “Siberian anomaly” by the fact that the department of new territories in the LDPR is headed by State Duma deputy Alexei Didenko, a native of Tomsk and party curator of Kuzbass. “There weren’t enough local people, so he brought in his own,” said Vorstka’s interlocutor. Didenko’s assistants are also present among the candidates in the Zaporozhye and Lugansk regions. The most colorful candidate of the LDPR in the “DPR” was acting. O. the head of the flour products department of the Gornyak trading house named Yaroslav the Wise.

However, the party curator of the region “lit up” not only with the LDPR. In the top three of the list of “New People”, in addition to the “DPR” “parliament” deputy Alexei Dorofeev and the “householder” Igor Nekrasov, there is Sergei Gurchenko. This is the official assistant to State Duma deputy from “New People” Anton Tkachev. “Vertski’s” sources in the party call him “responsible for the elections in Donbass.” The list of candidates from the “New People” in the “LPR” does not even have this status of characters: it is headed by two individual entrepreneurs and a householder. And in the Kherson region, the list of SRHR was officially published first, on August 11. It was headed by Igor Shchepelin, who is responsible for “foreign and domestic policy” in the “military-civil administration of the Kherson region.”

A political strategist working with the Kremlin told Vorstka on condition of anonymity that the “DPR” receives the highest attention from Moscow: “Lugansk is a quiet province, there is a “counter-attack” on Zaporozhye, and the regional center there is “near Ukraine,” and in Kherson it is generally unclear what is happening.”

They don’t experiment in Lugansk

In the neighboring “LPR”, the United Russia members in the top three of their list are the classic administrative “locomotives”: the “acting head” of the so-called republic Leonid Pasechnik, the speaker of the “People’s Council” of the “LPR” Denis Miroshnichenko, as well as State Duma deputy and one of the official Cossack leaders of Russia Viktor Vodolatsky. The fourth is the senator from the “LPR” Olga Bas. Of the 74 United Russia candidates, 40 are current parliamentary deputies from the “Peace for Lugansk” (local analogue of “United Russia”) and “Lugansk Economic Union” (analogue of “Free Donbass”) movements.

There are six public sector employees and only one military serviceman on the lists of the party in power - Lieutenant Mark Vorzhev, who has been fighting in the Donbass for several years. He is known for becoming the first head of the administration of Severodonetsk, which had just been captured by Russian troops, but two weeks later he was removed and sent back to the front.

Another feature of the “LPR” list is the presence of a high-status “Cossack faction.” In addition to Vodolatsky, she is represented by the “Supreme Ataman” of the “Union of Cossacks of Russia and Abroad” Nikolai Dyakonov. Probably, the presence of these people is explained by the history of the “LPR” - it was on its territory that “Cossack militias” have been active since 2014 . For example, the ataman of the All-Great Don Army, Pavel Dremov, who died as a result of an assassination attempt in December 2015, fought on the side of the separatists.

The LDPR also found its own local “locomotive” in Lugansk. The third number after Leonid Slutsky and the only theoretically “passable” Luhansk deputy Maxim Uvarov for the list of “liberal democrats” is Mikhail Filiponenko in the elections there. This is the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the “LPR”, as well as a representative of this “republic” in the contact group for maintaining a truce in Donbass. Representatives of the LDPR did not find any other well-known characters in Lugansk - their list is dominated by householders, the self-employed, pensioners and the unemployed.

The party has a similar situation in the occupied Zaporozhye region. The “locomotive” of the only list published by the local election commission - from the LDPR - was expectedly the head of the party, Leonid Slutsky. The Liberal Democrats nominated two assistants to the already mentioned deputy Didenko, representatives of the public sector and local authorities - city deputies, a school director; businessmen and managers - the head of a funeral service bureau, the manager of a grain warehouse, and so on. Householders, individual entrepreneurs and the self-employed make up most of the list—about two-thirds of the list.

Everyone except the Communist Party of the Russian Federation

Other parliamentary parties are in no hurry to submit their lists for regional elections. According to the Lugansk Election Commission, only on August 9 did the SRZP bring to the commission the documents of their candidates, whose names the commission has not yet disclosed. There are no candidates from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation there either. The interviewed representatives of all three parties did not share their nominees with Vorstka.

But at the municipal level the situation is different. “New People” and SRZP have already nominated lists for elections to several representative bodies of the “DPR” and “LPR”. The most “competitive” elections look like in Severodonetsk, captured by Russian troops in the summer of 2022 . This city, along with Mariupol and Bakhmut, was the site of the most stubborn battles, after which it almost completely lay in ruins. However, all parliamentary parties, except the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, will compete for seats in the city council. The social status of the representatives of the “opposition” does not indicate that they will be able to seriously fight United Russia. Householder Sergei Kunitsa became the leader of the Severodonetsk SRZP list. He worked as a deputy in one of the previous convocations of the local council, the Ukrainian representative body of Severodonetsk. Kunitsa was elected from the “Opposition Bloc”, and wrote about himself that he “finds understanding with the city authorities” when solving the problems of his district, and concentrated on housing and communal services issues.

The list of “New People” was headed by a more striking character - boxer Vitaly Nevesely. In the Ukrainian database “Peacemaker” he is named as a member of the “Patriots for Life” party of collaborator Ilya Kiva, as well as “the chief physical officer of Severodonetsk” and a person who allegedly traded in raiding.

On paper, the most intense struggle in the “DPR” should unfold in the regional capital, Donetsk. There, 269 candidates from four parliamentary parties were nominated for local elections, again excluding the Communist Party of the Russian Federation i .

“Verstka” was unable to find a single candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in any of the four annexed regions. Representatives of the Communist Party did not answer questions about their nominees “in new regions.” Earlier, sources from Vestka said that the Kremlin’s internal political bloc set local election supervisors the task of minimizing the number of mandates that the communists would receive, “or better yet, reducing their number to zero.”

Cover: Dmitry Osinnikov