Alexander Kharichev, head of the Presidential Administration’s Directorate for Social Analysis and a senior Kremlin ideologue, has given marching orders to pro-government election observers ahead of the upcoming State Duma campaign. The speech was delivered at the All-Russian Electoral Expert Forum organized by the Kremlin’s Expert Institute for Social Research (EISI).
Loyal media outlets have run Kharichev’s “forecasts”, based on VTsIOM and FOM data. According to these, United Russia is guaranteed to clear the 50% mark, the Communists will take second place (14%-15%), the LDPR third, and New People fourth. Kharichev also assured A Just Russia of parliamentary entry. He added the standard caveat that the projections could be adjusted depending on how the situation develops.
The public airing of these numbers is clearly instrumental. The Kremlin wants to reassure the CPRF leadership ahead of its party congress, discouraging it from placing inconvenient figures (such as Pavel Grudinin) in safe list positions or single-mandate districts. The Kremlin’s political bloc has long been trying to push the not entirely pliable CPRF out of its slot as Russia’s second-most popular party. This has already triggered open protests from the Communist leadership. Faced with Kremlin pressure, the party could respond by “radicalizing” its candidate lists. That is why it makes sense for the Kremlin to calm the CPRF now with a promise to preserve its second-place status — and to do so before the congress at which those lists will be finalized.
The conciliatory gestures toward A Just Russia are equally easy to understand. According to pro-government pollsters, the party is teetering on the 5 per cent threshold and is falling just short. Through Kharichev, the Kremlin is signaling to the party leadership that it is ready to help it cross the line — as long as A Just Russia refrains from sharp criticism of the authorities. The caveat about possible changes in the situation, however, shows how fragile these guarantees really are.
In the part of his speech that loyal media did not carry, the official briefed pro-Kremlin observers on the political bloc’s broader plans. Top priorities include keeping multi-day voting and further shrinking the number of parties.
Multi-day voting was introduced in 2020 during the constitutional referendum. It was publicly justified as a way to stagger voter flows and reduce infection risks. But the authorities always had far more pragmatic reasons. Ballots cast on the early days stayed inside commission premises until the final count, giving the system extra levers of control.
The practice quickly proved its worth for administrative mobilization — one of the political bloc’s key instruments under Sergey Kiriyenko. Heads of budget-funded organizations and loyal companies could “encourage” staff who had not voted on day one. Friday as the first voting day made it easy to check turnout directly at workplaces. The pandemic ended long ago, yet this convenient mechanism for the authorities has remained.
Kharichev told the observers that the Kremlin plans to keep three-day voting “for the convenience of voters”. Formally, of course, the decision rests with the Central Election Commission (Ella Pamfilova endorsed it at the end of the week). He also allowed that the format might eventually be cut to two days, but Friday as a voting day would stay. Voters, he claimed, are allegedly eager to cast their ballots specifically on Friday.
Kharichev’s speech leaves no doubt: the Kremlin intends to retain a tool that is extremely useful for administratively managing elections, even though the original formal justification (the pandemic) has long since disappeared.
The official did not conceal another important Kremlin goal from the forum participants — reducing the number of parties to ten (eighteen are currently eligible to take part). The political bloc has been streamlining the party system for some time. On the one hand, it keeps the “old” parliamentary parties that Vladimir Putin is comfortable with (the CPRF, LDPR and A Just Russia). At the same time, it is embedding niche projects aimed at specific target audiences. These are either long-established parties without a clear ideology (the Party of Pensioners, the Greens) or relatively new constructs such as New People that fit neatly into Sergey Kiriyenko’s technocratic worldview.
Anything that does not fit this template is being systematically eliminated. The most glaring example is Yabloko. Since last year, prominent Yabloko figures have faced criminal cases on various charges, while leading politicians have been designated “foreign agents” — a status that automatically bars them from elections. Speaking to the observers, Kharichev openly stated that the aim of this campaign is to complete the simplification of the party system.
Finally, the official warned that mobile internet shutdowns will prevent the Presidential Administration from making full use of another tool for delivering strong results — remote electronic voting. This can be read as a signal from the Kremlin’s political bloc to the country’s top leadership. The bloc had previously opposed harsh internet restrictions before the Duma elections: if turnout or United Russia’s result falls below target, the blame will fall on the blockades — and therefore on the security services that pushed them through, ignoring the civilian bloc’s arguments.
Taken as a whole, Kharichev’s speech amounts to a kind of manifesto of how the Kremlin political bloc sees elections in today’s Putin system. For its members, the process is entirely administrative and should be simplified and optimized to the greatest possible extent with tools that suit the authorities: multi-day voting, electronic voting and a reduced number of participants. The approach dovetails perfectly with Sergey Kiriyenko’s technocratic philosophy.
Volodinites on the external circuit
Timur Prokopenko, deputy head of the Directorate for Internal Politics (DIP), has moved to an equivalent post in the Directorate for Strategic Partnership. Both structures report to political bloc chief Sergey Kiriyenko.
Prokopenko comes from the team of former Kremlin political overseer and current State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. Like many “Volodinites”, he started in United Russia’s Young Guard, handled youth policy, and later transferred to the DIP. His main area of expertise has always been media technologies, although he also oversaw certain regions. The official worked reasonably well with Kiriyenko’s team but never joined its inner circle (unlike, for example, media manager Alexey Goreslavsky). The current DIP head, Andrey Yarin, is also not part of Kiriyenko’s circle — he is seen as close to the security services.
Vedomosti sources claim Prokopenko has some international experience. Given that in recent years the DIP has mainly dealt with moderating regional elite conflicts and liaising with systemic parties, however, this assertion looks somewhat questionable. More likely, his background was judged useful for media influence operations abroad — one of the tasks handled by the Directorate for Strategic Partnership.
The most convincing explanation, nevertheless, is that an “outsider” cadre has been quietly moved out of an important structure for the political bloc into a secondary one. The unusually long personnel pause while the new directorate was being formed suggests that even core members of Kiriyenko’s team are in no hurry to take up posts there. Budgetary constraints caused by the overall deficit may be one reason.
In addition, media manager Kristina Potupchik, who is close to Prokopenko, has already attracted the attention of the security services; at the time, elite circles actively discussed whether the claims might also touch the official himself.
It cannot be ruled out that Prokopenko’s place will eventually be filled by someone from Sergey Kiriyenko’s own team who could, in the longer term, position themselves for the post of DIP head — should Andrey Yarin be offered a suitable consolation prize. The candidate could be a subordinate of Alexander Kharichev or former Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, who is currently being tipped for the ambassadorship to Abkhazia.
