The municipal reform that sparked protests above all in the national republics continues to generate fresh scandals. The latest opponent of abolishing first-tier municipalities — urban and rural settlements — is Nikita Gorelov, head of the town of Sosnovka in Kirov Region.
Gorelov is no ordinary small-town administrator. He is one of the very few actual participants in the war against Ukraine who have been given a position with real administrative clout. As a rule, genuine combat veterans are steered toward jobs in patriotic education, youth work, or the ceremonial post of municipal council speaker — roles that come with neither serious money flows nor genuine decision-making power. Posts that actually matter go to sitting officials or deputies who merely announced they were «heading to the front.»
A mobilized small-business owner, Gorelov managed to land a job with real levers of power, thanks to the direct backing of Kirov Region Governor Aleksandr Sokolov — a former Administration official and subordinate of Sergei Kiriyenko. Governors closely tied to the Kremlin’s political bloc do their utmost to implement its directives, including programs to promote war veterans into administration. Sokolov (and, by extension, Kiriyenko’s team) could point with pride to a mayor who was not just a serviceman but a mobilized one at that — even if they entrusted him with only a small town rather than the regional capital or any sizeable city.
The new head of Sosnovka quickly discovered that the local budget was chronically incapable of covering even the most basic needs. At first, he blamed his predecessors, but he soon realized the problem was systemic: that is simply how resource distribution works inside Putin’s power vertical. The regional leadership did not appreciate such excessive zeal from its own protégé and tried to pack him back off to the front. A scandal ensued; Gorelov kept his job but went quiet on criticism for a while. After that episode, the Kremlin quietly shelved the idea of putting war veterans without prior bureaucratic experience being given posts with real weight.
Gorelov stayed silent until the municipal reform reached his hometown. Sokolov, as a loyal executor of Kiriyenko’s line, opted for the toughest possible version: the complete elimination of all urban and rural settlements and their replacement by unified districts built around the existing raions. Sosnovka found itself on the chopping block. Gorelov issued an appeal to residents: «I ask you to support the initiative to preserve local self-government and to oppose the draft law in the form the governor is pushing. If the law is adopted as proposed, Sosnovka will be left with only an elder and the settlement as a legal entity will cease to exist. Let me remind you that the overwhelming majority of national republics have come out in favor of keeping the two-tier system at home.»
He did not stop at one appeal: he began collecting signatures against the abolition of the settlement, and his arguments are unusually blunt. The mayor reminds people of problems that already exist under the current system — malfunctioning post offices, the closure of the local ambulance service — and warns that once the settlement is liquidated, «degradation will only accelerate.
««Let me ask the entrepreneurs who are sabotaging today and obstructing signature collection all day long: where exactly do you plan to work, and with whom, when nothing is left?» Gorelov says openly.
The head of Sosnovka clearly has no intention of backing down. His efforts are unlikely to halt the reform — regional deputies have already voted to liquidate the settlements. But the town may well end up with a genuine grassroots group and a leader who has emerged organically. Gorelov continues to criticize the governor and, increasingly, the federal authorities who launched the reform in the first place. The irony is that the authorities themselves once offered him the chance to become exactly this kind of leader — and he took the offer seriously.
The new Sosnovka scandal shows that genuine independent politicians capable of mobilizing people really can emerge from among war participants. Gorelov’s case is something of an outlier: he has a higher education, entrepreneurial experience, knows how to handle paperwork and talk to people. There are not many like him among mobilized men and contract soldiers, but a few hundred — or even a thousand — certainly exist.
The Kremlin’s political bloc will almost certainly double down on the view that war veterans must not be given posts carrying real administrative weight. Yet it was precisely people like Gorelov who allowed the Presidential Administration both to fill chronic staffing gaps in tiny settlements (where it is already almost impossible to find heads of administration or even clerical workers) and to tick the box on «promoting veterans.» Abolishing the settlements removes this convenient personnel maneuver, leaving educated, battle-experienced former businessmen with management skills nowhere to apply themselves.
A Tax on Independence
Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko has once again raised the issue of citizens who are not formally employed and do not pay social contributions. Having previously called for the unemployed to be charged such contributions, she has now turned her attention to the self-employed.
Matviyenko expressed alarm at the growth in «fictitious» self-employed and instructed senators to «restore order» in the sector. «The number of fictitious self-employed has risen sharply. This is an absolutely vicious practice,» she declared.
Immediately before her remarks, Senator Ivan Yevstifeev from Omsk Region reported that individual entrepreneurs were switching en masse to self-employed status. He cited beauty salons as an example: their staff were supposedly becoming «fictitious» self-employed, paying less tax and making no social contributions. Matviyenko responded that citizens were using the regime to evade taxation and called for the practice to be stopped.
The Omsk senator was probably not exaggerating. Recent tax increases have already made small business simply unprofitable. At the old rates entrepreneurs could still scrape by; after the latest hikes in taxes and contributions, profitability has gone negative and running a legal business no longer makes sense. St Petersburg’s beauty sector has already reacted: around 40% of the city’s salons are now up for sale. Most likely, stylists and owners are moving to cheaper, leaner formats — working from home as self-employed, for instance.
Yet the authorities intend to press on and block even this perfectly legal shift to a different tax regime. In the end, small businesses will be left with two choices: shut up shop or go fully underground — in which case the state, instead of the promised increase in revenue, may lose a significant chunk of tax receipts altogether.
The next targets will inevitably be those who used to be on formal company payrolls (including in state-owned firms) but were switched to self-employed status to save on taxes and contributions. The state’s hand will reach these «fictitious» self-employed too.
The Kremlin is pushing through unpopular measures using a tried-and-tested scheme: senators in general and Matviyenko in particular are sent out as the lightning rods. Since Federation Council members are not directly elected, they are the perfect outlet for public anger. We are likely to hear many more society-irritating initiatives from Valentina Matviyenko’s lips that will nevertheless enjoy the Kremlin’s quiet approval.
This crusade by the vertical against economically independent Russians is a clear signal: money in the budget is genuinely running out, and the authorities are prepared to squeeze it from anywhere they can.
