Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia

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The Kremlin scrambled to shore up its power nationwide after a handful of electoral defeats, while evidence that the poisoning of former double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter was a GRU operation mounted as cybersleuths dug deeper and Russia dug in, repeating its denials. Aleksei Navalny walked out of jail after 30 days – and walked back in hours later, handed another 20 days behind bars over the protests he has mounted against President Vladimir Putin and pension reform.

Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week, and some of the takeaways going forward.

Election SNAFU

When the governor of Russia's Sakhalin region described the "situation connected with the election" in neighboring Primorye as "not very good," President Vladimir Putin immediately took issue: ''Why not good?" he shot back. "It's a normal situation."

The governor hastily agreed, but "normal" is not a word many would use to describe the gubernatorial election in Primorye: The result of a September 16 runoff was thrown out at the recommendation of Central Election Commission (CEC) chief Ella Pamfilova, who cited "serious violations" and said electoral officials were "shocked" by the scale of the fraud.

The annulment of the vote in the most populous region in the Russian Far East came after the Communist Party claimed that a sudden, suspicious surge that propelled the Kremlin favorite ahead of its candidate was fueled by widespread cheating in the final stages of the ballot count.

Primorye is one of four places where runoffs were scheduled after no candidate won a majority of votes in first-round balloting in 21 of Russia' 85 regions on September 9.

Somebody's Gotta Do It

All four have gone badly for United Russia, the dominant party Putin uses as his main instrument of political control across the sprawling country: Candidates from Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) won on September 23 in Vladimir and Khabarovsk, next to Primorye, and the runoff in Khakasia was postponed when the Kremlin-backed incumbent pulled out at the last minute. He cited the need to avert a "schism," but the move was widely seen as motivated by the realization that he would lose.

Putin's meeting with now-former Sakhalin Governor Oleg Kozhemyako was part of a concerted Kremlin effort to control the damage, not just in the four regions but elsewhere as well.

Face-to-face with Putin across a Kremlin desk that has been a prop for countless clearly scripted meetings of its kind -- this one ostensibly called to review the situation in Sakhalin -- Kozhemyako explained that, as a native son of Primorye, he would like to discuss "the possibility of participating in the election for governor…in order to fulfill the expectations of residents and really make it so that the dynamic of development corresponds to those tasks that stand today before the Far East."

After an elaborate exchange that hammered home Kozhemyako's bona fides as a local boy, Primorye born and bred -- "I maintain relations with my classmates, those I studied with, did sports with, worked with" -- Putin appointed him acting governor and wished him luck.

He may need it in the new election, now scheduled for December -- but he seems sure to have the support of on extensive, thorough, and careful Kremlin effort to ensure his victory and avoid embarrassment the second time around.

'Disgrace'

Part of that effort are suggestions by the authorities that both sides are equally guilty of fraud in the runoff, even though the main thrust of the fraud allegations was the accusation that the last-minute surge that erased Communist candidate Andrei Ishchenko's substantial lead was the result of ballot-stuffing and other machinations meant to pump up the vote count for the United Russia candidate, Andrei Tarasenko.

CEC chief Pamfilova said on September 21 that neither Ishchenko nor Tarasenko should run in the new election, charging that both had "discredited themselves in the eyes of the voters."

That criticism could potentially backfire, however: Ishchenko reacted by suggesting that Pamfilova step down and "not disgrace the procedure of democratic elections."

So far, it appears he will run in December. The outcome is hard to predict, but one thing seems clear: Steven Seagal will not be the next governor of Primorye, despite his reported willingness to take the job.

In the space of an hour before his meeting with Kozhemyako, a long-time Far East fixture who has also headed the Amur Oblast, Putin named new acting governors in two other regions – in both cases turning to people with close ties to his ruling elite.

Familiar Names

In Astrakhan, Putin appointed Sergei Morozov, a former aide to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and officer of the Federal Guard Service, the bodyguard agency that protects government officials. He also has the same name, first and last, as the governor of the Ulyanovsk region.

In the North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, Putin named Kazbek Kokov – whose father, Valery Kokov, headed the region from 1992 to 2005. Oh, and the new appointee also shares a last name with his predecessor, Yury Kokov, who held the post for four years.

As a rule, the people Putin appoints as acting governors go on to win the post in elections -- one of the safety features he has built into a system that he calls democratic but that critics say falls far short of that description.

The problems in Primorye and the other regions where United Russia stumbled this month should ring alarm bells in Moscow, and the Kremlin's response suggests that they have.

But a series of votes in the State Duma this week helped show why, when the system fails, it is a headache for Putin -- but not necessarily a nightmare.

Keep On Working

While United Russia is a big part of the wiring of his ruling apparatus, Putin has for years used the other parties in parliament -- the Communists, the LDPR, and A Just Russia -- as cogs in the machine.

If Putin wants to maintain power in a less formal role after his six-year term ends in 2024 -- when he is barred by the Constitution from seeking reelection -- he will want to be able to rely on a support base that is broader than United Russia.

This week, dozens of Communist lawmakers managed to support Putin's proposed alteration in the highly unpopular pension-reform bill -- raising the retirement age for women by five years instead of eight -- while voting against the legislation itself.

In the end, of course, it didn't matter -- United Russia has more than 300 seats in the Duma, which passed the bill by a vote of 333 to 62 on September 27.

In retrospect, the plan to raise the female retirement age by eight years seems to have been set up only to be knocked down by Putin, who proposed the reduction in a televised speech in which he cited what he called a "special, caring attitude toward women" in Russia.

If Communists in the Duma fell for it, most other Russians did not.

A poll conducted by the independent pollster Levada-Center found that 40 percent of Russians thought Putin's proposal made no difference, while 25 percent said they made the legislation worse and only 29 percent said they improved it, the daily Vedomosti reported on September 27.

The same poll found that 34 percent of Russians who were aware of Putin's address had a more negative view of the president as a result, while 7 percent had a more positive view.

Jail Time

But the poll had some good news for Putin as well: While 53 percent of Russians were prepared to protest against the pension-reform plan in August, that number dropped to 35 percent in September, Levada said. And Denis Volkov, a sociologist at the polling agency, said the survey also showed that popular support for the plan rose slightly.

Putin's popularity has clearly been dented by the push to raise the retirement age.

But after holding off on the move for years, Putin may now be hoping that he is making it early enough after his March reelection to avoid long-lasting effects on his popularity during his six-year fourth term.

Aleksei Navalny will do his best to ensure that's not the case: He appears determined to continue staging protests over the pension reform. But if Putin's police and courts keep up their current pace, the Kremlin foe may spend a large chunk of the president's current term behind bars.

Navalny has avoided long-term imprisonment, having been handed suspended sentences for two financial-crimes convictions in cases he and supporters contend were fabricated to punish him for his opposition to Putin.

But Navalny has repeatedly been arrested and jailed for what courts have ruled were administrative offenses, mainly alleged violations of what government critics say are unconstitutional restrictions on public assembly.

When Navalny was released before dawn on September 24, after a month in jail, his spokesman Kira Yarmysh said that he had spent 172 days behind bars since 2011 -- and 120 days since the start of his thwarted attempt to challenge Putin for the presidency in March.

'Invented Crap'

Those figures are already outdated, though: Navalny was rearrested immediately upon release and was jailed again by a Moscow judge, this time for 20 days, after an hours-long hearing in which he spoke at length, denying the charge that he organized a protest that caused damage to health or property, mocking the police and courts, and calling documents presented as evidence against him "invented crap."

That is roughly what Russian lawmaker Vitaly Bogdanov said about British-based investigative group Bellingcat's newest report on the poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in March.

In the latest in a flurry of findings, Bellingcat concluded that one of the suspects Britain blames for the poisoning, a man who traveled to London under the name Ruslan Boshirov, is in fact a decorated Russian military officer named Anatoly Chepiga.

Bogdanov dismissed the claim as "complete nonsense."

His comments and other remarks by officials and lawmakers indicate that as the evidence of pointing to Moscow mounts, Russia's response – to deny involvement and assert that there is no such evidence -- remains unchanged.

Editor's Note: To receive Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia each week via e-mail, subscribe by clicking here.

The Kremlin suffered setbacks along edges of its sphere of influence over the past week: Syrian forces shot down a Russian reconnaissance plane, killing 15 servicemen; a ruling-party win in the Russian Far East was annulled amid evidence of "shocking" fraud; and the Russian Orthodox Church slipped closer to a historic loss of clout in Ukraine.

Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week, and some of the takeaways going forward.

Chess Or Checkers?

The troubles in Syria, Primorye, and Ukraine pose challenges for the Kremlin, and its responses may contain clues about President Vladimir Putin's priorities -- as well as lessons about how he handles problems.

For one thing, the Syria shoot-down shows once again that Putin is highly pragmatic: He picks his battles, seeking to avoid confrontation when it's too much of a risk.

Four years of assertive, often aggressive Russian activity on the world stage have generated debate over whether Putin is a strategist or a tactician, acting or reacting, a chess master thinking several moves ahead or a checkers player just hoping to double-jump an overconfident opponent and cry "King me!"

Either way, his reaction to the downing of a Russian plane -- hit by a missile Moscow provided to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- reinforces the fact that Russia's return to the Middle East comes at a price. And that Putin is ready to pay it.

In a kind of good-cop bad-cop routine, the Russian Defense Ministry raged against Israel, accusing its warplanes of using the Russian Il-20 as cover and threatening to take "commensurate measures in response."

But then Putin weighed in with a much softer line, blaming a "chain of tragic accidental circumstances" and saying "an Israeli plane didn't shoot down our jet" -- a fact that may not have been obvious to some who heard Russian military officials talk about it.

Yellow Light

Sure, he admonished the Israeli military, and warned of measures in response that would be plain for all to see.

But he made clear those measures would be aimed to protect Russian troops, not to avenge the Russian deaths, suggesting he is eager to avoid risking a real rift in ties with Israel.

Putin "needs to exercise caution" to keep hold of the gains Russia and Syria's government have made since Moscow launched air strikes and stepped up its military presence on the ground four years ago, Leonid Bershidsky wrote in a Bloomberg Opinion article.

"This is perhaps the most difficult position for the Russian leader in Syria since 2015," he wrote.

Primorsky Cry?

Still, Putin may be more worried about developments in a more peaceful place that is much further than Syria from Moscow: Russia's Primorsky Krai, or Primorye.

Primorye has always posed a problem for post-Soviet leaders in Moscow. Seven hours ahead and more than 6,400 kilometers east of the capital, its people have complained of being cut off and ignored.

The capital, Vladivostok, has repeatedly been an arena for raucous political battles fought far from the Kremlin between protagonists like "Winnie the Pooh" -- the nickname of a convicted felon who won a 2004 mayoral election after his closest rival "tripped" on a grenade outside his office days before the vote.

Echoes of that restive history have haunted the gubernatorial election this month in Primorye, where Communist Andrei Ishchenko was headed for victory in a September 16 runoff until a last-minute surge put Kremlin-backed United Russia party candidate Andrei Tarasenko ahead – and was quickly followed by allegations of blatant cheating in the vote count.

With speed that surprised some, Russia's elections chief called on regional electoral officials to declare the vote invalid, citing violations on a scale she said "shocked" the authorities -- and they complied less than 24 hours later.

Interesting Times

Russian gubernatorial elections were annulled six times in the 1990s, but this is the first time it has happened since Putin became president in 2000 -- sort of. Following a 2002 runoff in the Krasnoyarsk region, officials voided the result over "numerous legal violations" but reversed the decision after Putin went ahead and appointed ally Aleksandr Khloponin acting governor anyway.

One journalist called the Primorye vote "Russia's most interesting election in years" -- and it's not over yet.

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'Unprecedented Audacity': A 'Magic' Comeback For Kremlin's Candidate In Disputed Gubernatorial Ballot

The Central Election Commission announced that a new election will be held in three months, but the Communists are planning a legal challenge against the decision to void the election. They say their candidate was robbed and that the best solution is to review the results in some 20 districts where they contend that ballot-stuffing and other illegal methods gave Tarasenko the lead at the last minute.

But if the Kremlin wants a new vote, of course, that is what's pretty much certain to happen. And it looks like that's what the Kremlin wants.

In fact, the online publication The Bell suggested there was a method to the mad rush of falsifications that both the Communists and election officials suggested occurred late in the vote count: United Russia and its backers in government may have deliberately set out to torpedo the election once they realized their candidate -- the incumbent, appointed acting governor by Putin in 2017 -- was headed for defeat.

United Russia may win in the end, of course. But even if it does so, and its formal dominance is not dented, the vote may forever be seen as a sign of Kremlin weakness -- an embarrassing show of the machinations required to "manage democracy" in Russia -- and a harbinger of potential trouble to come later in what may be Putin's last term.

Orthodox Conflict

Moscow's involvement in the Syria war is part of Putin's 21st-century effort to restore Russian clout in lands to its south, and its possession of Primorye is the result of tsarist-era expansion to the east. To the west, meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church – which has close ties to the Kremlin -- is struggling to maintain influence in Ukraine.

It looks like a losing battle.

With the "first among equals" in the Orthodox Christian world apparently edging closer to granting the Ukrainian Orthodox confession that is not loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church ecclesiastical independence, Moscow-based Patriarch Kirill traveled to Istanbul in late August to meet with Patriarch Bartholomew in an apparent last-ditch effort to prevent that from happening.

It did not go well: Kirill didn't even stick around for lunch, reports said. And a week later Bartholomew sent two bishops to Ukraine "within the framework of the preparations for the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine," strongly suggesting it had already decided to grant independence to the Ukrainian church.

'Friend' To Foe

So far, the Russian Orthodox Church has responded by saying it is suspending participation in all structures chaired or co-chaired by representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople -- a step a senior Russian cleric, Metropolitan Ilarion, likened to cutting diplomatic ties.

There's probably plenty more tension to come: Ilarion warned that disputes over church property in Ukraine could lead to "bloodshed."

He may have overstated the threat in order to attract attention, but in any case the developments in Ukraine's religious landscape are part of a rift that has opened wide between Kyiv and Moscow since 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and fomented separatism in eastern Ukrainian regions where the ensuing war has killed more than 10,300 people.

Another sign of the growing divide: On September 17, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree to terminate a 20-year-old Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership treaty with Russia.