Saint Petersburg

St. Petersburg remains one of the most significant political and economic centers in Russia. The headquarters of the largest state corporations, the governing bodies of the Northwestern Federal District and the Constitutional Court are located here. For decades, the city was perceived as the country's most liberal metropolis and an important channel for Russia's interaction with Europe.

For a long time, St. Petersburg remained the main Russian center of contacts with Europe. After the outbreak of a full-scale war, most of the city's political, economic and humanitarian ties with Europe were interrupted or significantly reduced.

For many years, St. Petersburg was considered one of the most liberal regions of the country. In the fifth year of the war with Ukraine, this status may be lost.

General characteristics of life in the region

Externally, St. Petersburg gives the impression of a city little affected by the war. Tourists are coming (instead of European tourists, domestic Russian tourism is developing in the city, tourists are coming from Asian countries, primarily China), cafes and restaurants continue to operate. For most residents, either nothing has changed, or they have adapted to a “new” life.

However, behind the external stability lies structural changes in the economy.

For many years, the St. Petersburg authorities, with the support of the federal center, pursued a policy of attracting large taxpayers to the city: Sibneft (Gazprom Neft), Gazprom, VTB Bank, United Shipbuilding Corporation, etc. Due to war, sanctions and changes in legislation, today most of these companies are no longer the city's largest taxpayers. Among the largest taxpayers are VTB and St. Petersburg banks, construction companies LSR and Setl Group, the largest company in the pulp and paper industry Ilim and the largest food retail chain Agrotorg (Pyaterochka chain of stores). The profits of Gazprom and related companies decreased significantly, followed by a fall in income tax revenues.

St. Petersburg is one of four regions of the country in which revenues from income taxes, which are budget-forming for regional budgets, have been declining for three years in a row.

At the same time, as throughout the country, revenues from personal income tax, which is also budget-forming, are growing. This is due to the growth of wages: since 2022, the nominal average wage, according to government statistics, has increased by almost 50%.

But by mid-2026, home sales in the primary market in St. Petersburg fell sharply, which is associated both with the cancellation of preferential mortgage programs and with the high key rate of the Central Bank, which led to an increase in mortgage prices. Shopping centers are losing visitors, profits and tenant occupancy. Despite the increase in the number of small and medium-sized enterprises and a decrease in the number of corporate bankruptcies, the same figure for individuals at the end of 2025 increased by a third.

As a result, the economy of St. Petersburg adapted to war conditions better than many regions, but growth increasingly depends on defense orders and budget expenditures, rather than on economic activity.

Petersburg and the war

St. Petersburg is increasing budget expenditures to support war participants: for payments when concluding a contract, for material assistance in case of injury or death. There is still quite a lot of “social advertising” in the city, through which they not only recruit for the war, but also “remind” of the “exploits” of the SVO participants.

A significant share of the growth in economic indicators is provided by the military-industrial complex concentrated in the city. City authorities reported a sharp increase in the production of ships and vessels, military vehicles and aircraft, including unmanned ones. The production of drones has become a new significant industry in St. Petersburg, the revenue of such companies is already estimated in billions of rubles.

However, for most of the townspeople, the war remains very far away. According to statistics of Russians killed in war, compiled by the Mediazona publication, St. Petersburg remains at the bottom of the ranking of regions in terms of losses as a percentage of the adult population - 0.06%, only Moscow is lower with 0.04%. For comparison, on average in the northwestern regions of Russia this figure is 0.24%, and the highest in the Republic of Tyva is 0.94%.

“Vertical of power” of St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg plays an important role in the political life of Russia. Therefore, the federal center firmly controls all political leadership here.

The current governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, despite working in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, when Vladimir Putin also worked here (in the 2000s, he worked in the structures of the administration of President Vladimir Putin), was not particularly popular in the city during his election campaign. The election campaign was accompanied by restrictions on competition, the exclusion of a number of opponents, and numerous reports of violations of the voting procedure. According to the results of the 2019 elections, he received one of the lowest results in the gubernatorial elections held that year - 64.4%, five years later even less - 59.8%.

An additional factor of federal influence remains the presence in city politics of representatives of the old St. Petersburg elite, integrated into the federal government, including the Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko.

Observers have always viewed Lyubov Sovershaeva, Deputy Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative in the Northwestern Federal District, as one of the most influential participants in the regional political system. She worked in the city administration when Vladimir Putin was vice mayor. Later she worked at Rossiya Bank and the National Media Group, associated with Putin and businessman Yuri Kovalchuk close to him.

Sovershaeva’s career and her current role in the city illustrate the system of personnel relations characteristic of St. Petersburg, in which regional leaders, federal officials and structures close to the president’s entourage are closely intertwined. It is precisely such informal connections that allow the federal center to maintain stable control over urban policy. Thus, it can be stated that St. Petersburg is confidently built into the Russian “vertical of power” of people personally controlled by President Putin.

"Systemic opposition" of St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg remains the only large region of Russia where the Yabloko party has maintained significant electoral support for many years. That is why the fate of Yabloko can serve as an indicator of the state of legal liberal politics in Russia.

Yabloko currently has two deputies in the St. Petersburg parliament. Over the past year, the authorities have been making many efforts to decapitate the party. Party deputies are recognized as “foreign agents” or brought to administrative responsibility for “demonstration of extremist symbols” - according to law enforcement officers and judges, such a demonstration is old publications of photographs of Alexei Navalny on social networks. Both “foreign agency” and a fine for extremism deprive people of the right to stand for election. As a result, Yabloko has no recognizable faces left in St. Petersburg who could lead it to the elections.

St. Petersburg is not only the homeland of Vladimir Putin, but also the creator of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash in 2023. He has tried to take part in St. Petersburg politics since 2018, when his media structures actively supported the current governor, Alexander Beglov, in the gubernatorial elections. After this, Prigozhin’s relationship with Beglov deteriorated, and he used controlled media resources to publicly criticize the governor. With the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, their relations did not improve, although in the city, as in other regions, offices were opened for recruitment into the Wagner PMC, and on the outskirts of the city one of the business centers built by Prigozhin’s companies was renamed “Wagner Center”. At the same time, Yevgeny Prigozhin became close to the leader of the A Just Russia party, Sergei Mironov.

After Prigozhin’s death, his business empire fell into decline, recruiting centers closed, and the Wagner Center business center was renamed back to the “Sea Capital.” But relations between the governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, and the A Just Russia party did not improve.

Prigozhin’s story demonstrated how, after his death, one of the structures of political influence within the pro-government camp of St. Petersburg was dismantled. As a result, the space for intra-elite competition in the city further narrowed, and the political system of St. Petersburg became even more dependent on the administration of the governor and the federal center.

Following the results of the 2021 elections, A Just Russia created a faction of five people in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg. Two years later, all the deputies left the party, announcing a break with it, although they retained their mandates. In March 2026, it was announced that these deputies would participate in the next elections from the marginal Green party, which received 1.3% of the votes in the last State Duma elections in St. Petersburg, and did not even participate in the elections to the city parliament. Moreover, in new conditions with recognizable faces, the party can either overcome the 5% barrier in the elections to the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, or get as close to it as possible. Former deputies from A Just Russia may be tacitly supported by the city authorities, because are more acceptable to them than the current leadership of A Just Russia. This transition shows an attempt by some regional politicians to maintain representation in parliament through a political brand that is more acceptable to the authorities.

In turn, as many political scientists note, Sergei Mironov’s party may officially lose representation in the St. Petersburg parliament after the 2026 elections.

Electoral features of St. Petersburg

The city has always been characterized by a fairly low voter turnout in elections at all levels, which was associated with a large number of falsifications over the years, including those proven in the courts, which undermined confidence in the institution of elections. In St. Petersburg, the results of the “party in power” have always been noticeably lower than the all-Russian ones, while conditionally liberal parties have always been more popular - in 2021, St. Petersburg was among the regions where the Yabloko party overcame the barrier in the State Duma elections, gaining 6.9% of the votes with an all-Russian result of 1.3%.

In single-mandate constituencies in St. Petersburg, the majority of deputies are elected from United Russia, which ensures a parliamentary majority - according to party lists in the elections to the Legislative Assembly in 2021, the party received only 33.3% of the votes, but ultimately took 58% of the seats. But unlike most Russian regions, in St. Petersburg the authorities traditionally use a model of limited competition, allowing individual candidates from the systemic opposition to win in predetermined constituencies. Moreover, in elections to both the city and federal parliaments.

The upcoming elections will also be accompanied by the cleansing of the city from the influence of the former chairman of the St. Petersburg parliament and leader of United Russia, Vyacheslav Makarov, who, after the last elections, had to go to work in the State Duma. Makarov and his deputy in the St. Petersburg parliament, Sergei Solovyov, have been in conflict with Governor Beglov for many years; as a result, both have been working in the State Duma since 2021, where, in fact, they lost contact with the city and were unable to gain support for participation in the United Russia primaries on the eve of the upcoming elections. The change in influence within the city elite indicates a further consolidation of power around the team of Governor Beglov. At the same time, the influence of alternative decision-making centers within the regional elite, which previously could act as independent political players, is decreasing.

The pre-election situation is shaping up interestingly in district 216, from which Sergei Solovyov was previously elected to the State Duma. This constituency covers the central areas of the city, where liberal candidates and parties have always won quite a lot. This time United Russia will nominate the head of the federal Young Guard of United Russia (the youth wing of the party), Alexander Amelin, who during the United Russia primaries indicated that he is a “veteran of a special military operation.” The Communist Party of the Russian Federation will nominate “an active participant in the special military operation” Sergei Lovenetsky in this district. The appearance of two SVOshnik candidates in the traditionally liberal city center demonstrates a change in the political agenda even in the most opposition-minded areas of St. Petersburg. If just a few years ago in such districts the main competition took place between liberal and systemic opposition candidates, including using the most “dirty” methods (it was here that St. Petersburg politician Boris Vishnevsky was nominated in the last elections, competing with two namesakes), now even here the political discussion is increasingly built around the topic of war and participation in it.

Administrative resource

Any St. Petersburg elections have always been accompanied by numerous falsifications and scandals. There was a strong movement of election observers in the city, and many media independent from the authorities who covered any violations.

By the 2026 elections, there is little left of this: the observation movement has been virtually destroyed, many media outlets have either closed or are afraid to write about violations due to the tightening of legislation, which has effectively criminalized any criticism of the authorities.

St. Petersburg was affected by anti-war emigration - many people who held liberal views participated in election observation, participated in the elections themselves, and left the country. It is impossible to assess the scale of this phenomenon, but this can be evidenced by a sharp drop in the number of candidates in the municipal elections in St. Petersburg, which took place in 2024: only 4.5 thousand candidates were nominated for one and a half thousand mandates instead of 7 thousand in 2019.

The St. Petersburg authorities actively use the so-called administrative resource. During the United Russia primaries, there were many complaints from employees of budgetary organizations (schools, clinics, etc.) about being forced to register in these primaries and vote for certain candidates whose names came down from the management. Similar practices have been documented many times before and may continue into the 2026 campaign.

In St. Petersburg, remote electronic voting (DEG) is not used, which simplifies the administration of voting for public sector employees. But the elections will take place over three days, one of which will be on a working day. Previous election campaigns in the city were accompanied by numerous reports of public sector workers being forced to vote, suggesting that such practices will continue in 2026.

Problems with the use of administrative resources and violations of electoral procedures are likely to persist, but their public coverage will be significantly weaker due to the reduction in the number of independent observers, media and active participants in the electoral process.

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As a result of the elections to the State Duma and the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, there will be no major changes in the political system in the city. United Russia will most likely retain its majority through single-mandate constituencies. As in previous electoral cycles, authorities can retain elements of limited competition, allowing individual members of the systemic opposition to win in some districts without threatening overall control of parliament. Apparently, the Yabloko party and possibly A Just Russia will not be represented in the new St. Petersburg parliament, while the New People may strengthen their positions and perhaps the Green party will be represented. Governor Alexander Beglov will thereby strengthen his position by eliminating the opposition that criticized him.

The main intrigue of the elections in St. Petersburg is not who will get the majority - it will remain with United Russia. The question is whether the city will retain its reputation as the most liberal and politically independent metropolis in Russia. Judging by the purge of Yabloko, the emigration of part of the active urban class and the strengthening of administrative control, St. Petersburg is gradually losing its reputation as the most liberal and politically independent city in Russia.