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organized to benefit? Russians who are uncomfortable with non-systemic figures like Alexei Navalny but still want to register their discontent might turn to historically Kremlin-friendly parties like the LDPR and KPRF. This will put pressure on the political party system as the systemic opposition suddenly finds opposing United Russia more politically beneficial than cooperating with it. Expect to see the Kremlin experimenting with other vehicles for its candidates (including the Just Russia party) as an alternative to United Russia.
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In Khabarovsky Krai, United Russia candidate Vyacheslav Shport lost by 40% of the vote to LDPR candidate Sergei Furgal.
In Vladimir Oblast, the United Russia candidate trailed the LDPR candidate by 20%.
The current governor of Khakassia, Viktor Zimin, removed himself from the race just before September’s planned election. In two weeks, KPRF candidate Valentin Konovalov will face off against Just Russia candidate Andrei Filyagin.
The US mildly expanded the Russian sanctions regime on September 21 under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which was passed by the Congress as response to Russia's involvement in the separatist conflict in Ukraine, alleged cyberattacks and election meddling. According to an executive order from the President Donald Trump and simultaneous action from the State Department 27 individuals and six legal entities were added to the list, while a foreign individual was sanctioned in a first for violating the sanctions rules. Chinese national Li Shangfu was sanctioned for allegedly being engaged in the purchase of Russian combat aircraft and S-400 surface-to-air missiles, which violates the CAATSAA. An update on CAATSA makes the second unilateral sanction move by the White House in the past weeks, and might again be seen as an attempt to show activity in this respect and sway US Congress away from adopting further radical sanctions. Congress is due to consider possible “nuclear” DASKAA sanctions in November that possibly include sanctions on Russia’s debt.
In a surprise move, the Kremlin has responded to popular pressure over a controversial regional election that showed clear signs of vote rigging and decided to hold the election again. The election committee of the Primorsk region of Russia cancelled the results of the second tour of gubernatorial elections, in which Andrei Tarasenko of the ruling United Russia party narrowly beat the Communist Party’s Andrei Ishchenko. Previously the protestors took it to the streets protesting against what they saw as rigged voter count, which put Tarasenko in the lead only after the last 1% of the ballots was counted, reversing a three point lead Ishchenko had enjoyed until the last minute. The new third round of the elections will be held in the coming three months. The Primorks (Pacific) region and the city of Vladivostok was one of four regions where the race went into a second round as part of last week’s local government elections. No candidates secured an all-out majority on election day September 9. Sources of the Vedomosti daily and The Bell claim that the voting count fraud was not aimed to make Tarasenko a winner, because in large cities he was loosing by a too large margin. Instead, the goal was indeed to meddle with the vote count, cancel the results of the second tour, and re-run the elections with the same candidates. Kommersant d aily claims that Tarasenko will resign in the coming two-three weeks, with another temporary governor to be appointed by the presidential administration.
23 RUSSIA Country Report October 2018 www.intellinews.com