After the New Year holidays, Russia’s political elite has kicked off discussions about the upcoming State Duma campaign. The Kremlin’s political team is floating various options for the top of United Russia’s party list in public, while initial details are emerging about potential candidates from the systemic opposition parties. The most talked-about storyline right now is the apparent push by former President, ex-Prime Minister, and current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev to return to frontline politics in a more prominent role.
According to Vedomosti, Medvedev could end up as the sole figure in the federal portion of United Russia’s list — just as he was in the 2011 and 2016 Duma elections. Sources close to the paper, however, don’t rule out the possibility that other heavyweights might join him near the top. RBC, meanwhile, reports that Medvedev would lead a top-five lineup alongside Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Vladislav Golovin (head of the pro-Kremlin Yunarmiya youth movement’s headquarters and a participant in the war against Ukraine), chief physician of Moscow’s Hospital No. 52 Maryana Lysenko, and Rossiya TV war correspondent Evgeny Poddubny.
Rumors that Medvedev — as United Russia’s official chairman — might head its list also circulated ahead of the 2021 campaign. But at the party congress that year, Vladimir Putin announced a completely different federal quintet: Lavrov (then foreign minister), Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Denis Protsenko (chief doctor of the Kommunarka hospital), Sirius educational center director Elena Shmeleva, and children’s rights ombudsman Anna Kuznetsova at the time. Medvedev was left off the list due to his low popularity ratings.
Despite the vaguely defined powers of the Security Council deputy chair under Russian law, Medvedev still wields real bureaucratic clout. He chairs the commission on contract-soldier recruitment, giving him leverage over governors who are held accountable for meeting enlistment quotas. He also conducts inspections of defense-industry enterprises. And as a Security Council member, he enjoys regular access to Putin himself. Yet in the public eye since the full-scale invasion began, Medvedev is seen less as a heavyweight official and more as the author of belligerent Telegram posts — a cartoonish ultra-hawk rather than a serious power broker.
Heading United Russia’s campaign as its No. 1 could dramatically reshape that image. One of the campaign’s central elements will be a series of party forums held across all federal districts, featuring deputy prime ministers and federal ministers. In that setting, Medvedev would appear as a politician who genuinely shapes government decisions and can issue directives to its members. Regional tours would also let him dole out social promises to voters.
Sources cited by Vedomosti attribute the potential inclusion of Medvedev to his supposedly strong approval ratings and low disapproval. But data from the Kremlin-aligned VTsIOM polling agency tell a different story: when respondents are prompted with his name, trust in Medvedev stands at 42.5%; in open-ended questions (no prompts), his name barely registers at all. His disapproval rating is 42.6% — slightly higher than his approval. Back in 2021, precisely these popularity problems were a key argument against putting him on the list. This time around the situation is even tougher for United Russia: voters are angry about rising prices, exhausted by a protracted war that will almost certainly still be raging when Duma elections take place. An ultra-hawk with high disapproval would do nothing to boost the ruling party’s appeal.
Kremlin political managers appear to understand this risk and are deliberately allowing leaks about list variants that include Medvedev. The idea is to spark discussion in expert and media circles, weighing the pros and cons. Eventually the debate will reach Putin, who will make the final call on the top slots. There’s still plenty of time — United Russia traditionally holds its nominating congress in June. Clearly, the political bloc’s main tools for delivering a strong result remain corporate mobilization and direct interference in vote counts. But including a controversial high-disapproval figure would seriously complicate both tactics.
The top-five variant reported by RBC is obviously tailored to Putin’s tastes and to a scenario of continued war. It has little to do with what ordinary voters want and feels thoroughly artificial. Golovin and Lysenko are essentially unknowns to the broader public. Poddubny is better known thanks to his profession but hardly registers as a full-fledged political figure. That lineup, however, fits perfectly with Putin’s rhetoric about military personnel as the new elite.
The contrived nature of this quintet makes it easy to swap out for a different configuration if circumstances shift (say, a ceasefire) or simply to accommodate Putin’s latest preferences — preferences that can be shaped by various players, from Sergei Kiriyenko to State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and influential clans in the president’s inner circle. The Kremlin still has ample time to finalize the list, but political managers led by Kiriyenko are already drawing attention to the campaign. At the same time, they are testing public reaction to potential United Russia candidates and can leverage any backlash against figures like Medvedev to advance their own bureaucratic agendas.
The Supreme Court Corporation
New Supreme Court Chairman Igor Krasnov — formerly Prosecutor General — gave a programmatic interview to Kommersant in which he laid out his vision for the judiciary. Judging by his answers, Krasnov deliberately casts himself not as a judge steeped in legal doctrine, nor as a representative of the siloviki power bloc (though he remains one in many respects), but as a technocratic manager. On cadre policy, for example, he speaks in classic corporate terms: «Cadre renewal does not mean losing continuity. On the contrary, I believe it is essential to retain professionals. At the same time, bringing in new managerial and judicial competencies capable of meeting modern challenges is equally important.»
Krasnov also discusses internships for regional judges directly at the Supreme Court and announces plans to standardize approaches to sentencing and rulings. He calls current practices «inconsistent» and argues they «undermine trust in the judiciary.» In his view, the Supreme Court should develop «consistent» legal positions. «The role of the Supreme Court is not to correct errors en masse — that model must be consistently overcome. The highest judicial instance is meant to set standards for applying the law,» he says.
Clearly, the new Supreme Court head is transforming the judicial corps not into an independent branch of power but into a corporation fully subordinated to state interests. He advocates imposing uniformity from above and introduces what is essentially a corporate system of training and professional development.
This overtly technocratic, corporatist approach to state management was aggressively pioneered by Sergei Kiriyenko back when he served as presidential envoy to the Volga Federal District. He later applied the same methods successfully at Rosatom and as head of the Kremlin’s political bloc. Given Kiriyenko’s continuing expansion of influence, this style clearly resonates with Putin.
Other players in the vertical understand this perfectly and are beginning to adopt corporatist practices themselves. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin is turning parliament into a closed bureaucratic institution, while Igor Krasnov publicly frames the Supreme Court as a technocratic machine with strict vertical organization. Of course, this does not mean Volodin or Krasnov are orbiting Kiriyenko’s influence — if anything, the dynamic runs the other way. But as long as the corporatist management style practiced so effectively by the head of the political bloc remains in demand with the president, ambitious figures throughout the power vertical will copy it — even those who previously favored entirely different approaches. Should Kiriyenko fall out of favor, they will just as readily abandon corporatism and pivot to whatever new trend is dominant at the time.
