The Kremlin is preparing to replace the human rights commissioner. Incumbent ombudswoman Tatyana Moskalkova’s second term expires in April, after which — in line with the law — she will be unable to continue in the post. According to sources close to Kommersant, her successor will be State Duma deputy Yana Lantratova from the Just Russia party, frequently described in pro-Kremlin media as a «human rights defender.» The formal logic of continuity is straightforward: Moskalkova herself represented the Just Russia faction in parliament before her appointment as ombudsman, and Sergei Mironov’s party has quietly retained an informal quota for the position.
Lantratova’s nomination also fits another piece of formal logic. Since 2014 she has been deeply involved in Crimea and Donbas issues: she served as an observer at the «referendum» on the peninsula’s annexation and, in 2015, founded the Union of Volunteers of Russia, an organization that operated primarily in the so-called people’s republics. That is precisely why, before receiving her Duma mandate, Lantratova was positioned as a public figure and human rights activist. In reality, she has always been a full-fledged representative of the system.
Lantratova began her career in the Young Guard of United Russia (the youth wing of the ruling party), which at the time was overseen by Vyacheslav Volodin while he served as secretary of United Russia’s General Council. After Volodin’s move to the Presidential Administration, she secured a place on the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights and soon became its executive secretary. When Sergei Kiriyenko took charge of the political bloc in the Administration in 2016, Lantratova retained her positions: she stayed on the Council while simultaneously taking up a role in the Administration’s Department for Public Projects under Sergei Novikov, one of Kiriyenko’s closest associates.
In 2021 Lantratova was elected to the State Duma on the Just Russia ticket — a party she had previously had no connection to. To guarantee her passage, she was placed on the party’s regional list in Chelyabinsk oblast, where Just Russia has traditionally held strong positions thanks to local leader Valery Gartung. After the launch of the full-scale war, Lantratova focused her activities on visits to the occupied regions of Ukraine and established close ties with their direct curator, Andrei Yarin, head of the Presidential Administration’s domestic politics directorate. In 2025 she was appointed chair of the Duma committee on the development of civil society.
Thus, the future human rights commissioner cannot reasonably be called a «human rights defender» or an «activist.» She is a professional politician whose entire career — from its earliest stages — has been built strictly inside the system. At every step she has deliberately chosen actions that advanced her upward along the power vertical: whether working in the occupied territories of Ukraine or filing denunciations under the banner of defending «traditional values.» For officials of this type, the actual content of their work is secondary — what matters is that it leads to the desired promotion. It is equally irrelevant which specific post they occupy or under the flag of which Kremlin-loyal systemic party they run.
The political bloc will find it easy to fit Lantratova into two formal quotas at once: the party quota and the «war» quota. This will allow them to report to the president on the steady promotion of cadres tied to the invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, her connection both to Just Russia and to the war theme is purely instrumental. It is obvious that Lantratova has no intention of becoming a genuine human rights defender. On the contrary, she will smooth over rough edges: emphasizing the protection of the rights of residents of «historically Russian territories» and military personnel — a line already visible in her speeches at meetings of the Human Rights Council.
The current ombudswoman, Tatyana Moskalkova, also had no real background in human rights advocacy. A retired major-general of the Interior Ministry, before entering the Duma she actively promoted prohibitive legislation and lobbied the interests of the siloviki bloc. Nevertheless, in the 2000s Moskalkova genuinely focused on social rights protection — which is why she joined Just Russia at a time when the party still positioned itself as a social-democratic force. Today that agenda is becoming increasingly risky: the economic situation is deteriorating, the volume of social grievances against the authorities will only grow, and Lantratova clearly has no desire to fuel those sentiments.
If the system previously at least pretended to maintain some link to the human rights field — appointing people with genuine experience in the democratic movement (Ella Pamfilova, Vladimir Lukin) or prominent figures from the systemic opposition (Moskalkova) — now there is no longer any need to sustain that illusion. Lantratova will first be formally «camouflaged» as a representative of Just Russia, and then placed at the head of the country’s main human rights institution. She will operate strictly within the boundaries set by the Kremlin, allowing no independent initiative.
Corporate Bribery
The Presidential Administration is considering involving major marketplaces in the agitation campaign for the September 2026 State Duma elections. The idea is to integrate special «cards of the future» directly into the interfaces of online platforms. Users would be able to add to their virtual shopping carts not only goods but also «social options» (for example, infrastructure repairs, public transport upgrades, or renovation of social facilities), thereby constructing an idealized picture of life in their locality. For participating in this «assembly» of the future, citizens would be offered prize draws, promo codes, or other bonuses. The scheme is expected to be accompanied by calls to visit polling stations and even veiled hints of support for United Russia.
In essence, this is a concealed form of voter bribery, dressed up as the familiar gamification mechanics that marketplaces already use to keep users engaged and encourage extra purchases. Once again, the political bloc is applying its favorite technique: legally dubious practices are given a trendy corporate buzzword that blurs the negative connotation. Earlier, forced mobilization of dependent voters to polling stations was rebranded as «corporate mobilization.» Centrally imposed turnout and United Russia result targets were turned into KPIs, while ballot stuffing became «result adjustment.» In the new paradigm, bribery is transformed into a «promo code» or «prize draw.»
All kinds of lotteries and gift giveaways are already a well-established practice among regional authorities. Such schemes regularly draw criticism from independent observers and the opposition but rarely receive serious legal scrutiny. Now the authorities want to scale this form of bribery to the federal level, concealing it behind the routine mechanics of how marketplaces interact with customers. Users are already accustomed to gamification, point accumulation, and surprise bonuses, so the psychological barrier to participation will be minimal. Yet from the standpoint of Russian electoral legislation, such actions should be classified precisely as voter bribery.
The very fact that the Kremlin is contemplating — and even leaking — such ideas to the press indicates that the situation with meeting turnout and United Russia performance KPIs is far from rosy. Previous methods of mobilizing the electorate no longer deliver the required effect, forcing the federal political bloc to resort to dirtier tactics previously left to the discretion of governors and local United Russia functionaries. The conditions for receiving a prize are predictable: most likely, participants will need to check in at a polling station or scan a QR code there to confirm turnout. One small detail: the scheme assumes stable mobile internet in the locality. Marketplaces are formally supposed to be included in «white lists» and remain accessible during shutdowns, but past experience shows that even these lists do not always function reliably under total restrictions.
