For a decade (2011–2021), the Krasnoyarsk branch of the LDPR was one of the strongest in the country, and its public face, Alexander Gliskov, became effectively the most prominent protest figure in the krai. In recent years, however, the party in the region has come under pressure from the security forces.
Throughout those years, the LDPR’s results in Krasnoyarsk Krai were significantly higher than the national average. In 2011, in the legislative assembly elections, the party won 17.5% of the vote; in 2016, 20.3%. In 2018, in the elections to the Krasnoyarsk City Council, the party received 28.1%, against 26% for United Russia.
The party’s strength and popularity in the krai were linked to two people: the “party purse”, State Duma deputy in 2016–2021 and subsequently deputy speaker of the krai legislative assembly Sergei Natarov, and the head of the LDPR faction in the krai parliament, Alexander Gliskov.
Sergei Vasilyevich Natarov had long been part of the krai elite. From the mid-1990s he was associated with General Alexander Lebed, who became governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai in 1998, and assisted him in securing the release of Russian soldiers from Chechen captivity. On 23 December 2001 he was first elected as a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Krasnoyarsk Krai on the list of the “For Lebed” bloc, and joined the LDPR the same year. From 2013 to 2015 he served as deputy minister of economy and regional development of Krasnoyarsk Krai. And in 2015 the post of deputy minister of economic development, investment policy and external relations of Krasnoyarsk Krai was taken by his son, Anton Natarov, who in 2017 became an adviser to the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Alexander Uss.
Alexander Gliskov, a lawyer by training, began his deputy career in 2008, when he was first elected to the Krasnoyarsk City Council on the LDPR list; five years later he was elected again, but in a single-mandate constituency and from a different party — Civic Platform. In the municipal parliament in 2013–2016 he held the post of deputy speaker. He was then twice elected to the krai legislative assembly, again from the LDPR, and headed the party faction there. In September 2023 he ran for governor from the LDPR, won 11.23% of the vote and came second.
The pressure begins
The dismantling of the regional branch began on 15 March 2019, when Sergei Natarov’s son Anton, the governor’s adviser, was detained. He was charged with organising the supply and payment of goods at artificially inflated prices, as well as fictitious services, to the town of Igarka in the Turukhansk District of Krasnoyarsk Krai for the needs of municipal enterprises. According to the investigation, these actions caused damage to the said organisations in the amount of 96 million roubles. Detained at the same time was the accountant of the LDPR regional branch, Denis Bundyuk, who was simultaneously handling the liquidation of Private Industrial Capital LLC (ChPK), founded in 2014 by Anton Natarov.
In 2021, two election campaigns ran in parallel: the elections of deputies to the State Duma and to the Legislative Assembly of Krasnoyarsk Krai. The most striking events of the campaign unfolded precisely around the LDPR list. The party faced the appearance in local media of a large amount of distorted, discrediting information about the LDPR’s activities. Some businessmen who had sponsored the LDPR election campaign came under administrative pressure and, as a consequence, were forced to cease cooperation with the party.
During the elections, one of the party’s leaders in the krai, Alexander Gliskov, abruptly withdrew his candidacy from the State Duma elections in the single-mandate constituency that he was clearly winning, which was received extremely negatively by voters. The LDPR ultimately won 14.7% of the vote in the krai parliamentary elections — almost a third less than in 2016. Sergei Natarov ended up moving from the State Duma to the krai parliament, while Alexander Gliskov simply did not make it to the State Duma, remaining a regional deputy.
The case of Natarov Sr
However, this obvious favour did not help him escape further action by the security forces. On 21 December 2021, Sergei Natarov was detained — in the same case as his son. The former State Duma deputy was charged with committing eight counts of misappropriation or embezzlement (Part 4, Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). Despite a sharp deterioration in his health during the detention, he was remanded in custody. While in the pre-trial detention centre, Natarov suffered a severe form of coronavirus, underwent heart vascular surgery, and the politician’s eyesight and musculoskeletal function also deteriorated significantly. He has now been assigned a third-degree disability. Nevertheless, the Krasnoyarsk Krai Court recently extended Sergei Natarov’s detention once again, until mid-May 2026, meaning that Sergei Natarov has been in custody for more than four years, although he has still not been convicted.
The politician’s detention dealt a serious blow to the LDPR’s reputation in Krasnoyarsk Krai. In addition, the LDPR faced organisational and financial difficulties. As a result, in the 2023 Krasnoyarsk City Council elections, the party won just 19.8% of the vote and four mandates (compare with 28.1% and 11 mandates five years earlier). Party leader Alexander Gliskov simultaneously took part in the gubernatorial election and won 11.2% of the vote. Gliskov ran a very modest campaign, not concealing the existence of a collusion with the campaign headquarters of acting governor Mikhail Kotyukov: whereas at the start of the campaign he spoke of problems collecting signatures from municipal heads and deputies, in the end he calmly submitted the required number of autographs and publicly thanked acting governor Mikhail Kotyukov and his administration for the notarial assistance provided and for help with the logistics of signature collection.
The Gliskov case
This “electoral favour” again did not help the LDPR: a couple of months after the elections, Gliskov was detained. The public reacted extremely negatively to his detention; many openly called it a “politically motivated, fabricated case”. Party chairman Leonid Slutsky also supported the politician:
“We will look into the situation together with the law enforcement agencies. The case is an old one; there were no previous claims against Gliskov. He was checked several times as a candidate. We ourselves asked the security forces to check all our candidates before the elections. Out of more than 9,000, a couple of people had minor violations. We will scrutinise this closely, and if, as we think, this is a political case, if the reason for the investigative actions is the overly active performance of deputy duties and fighting for the needs of voters, then we will bring in all party resources, the deputy corps.”
Gliskov was detained on 1 November 2023 on suspicion of receiving a bribe on an especially large scale. The events he is charged with took place much earlier — in 2017. According to the investigation, the deputy, through an intermediary, demanded a bribe of 5 million roubles from Samed Yusubov, deputy head of the road maintenance company “KraiDEO” (owned by the region). The deputy allegedly promised him patronage and assistance in retaining his position. According to the case materials, Alexander Gliskov had previously presented negative information about the company’s activities to officials of the executive authorities of Krasnoyarsk Krai and the media, and demanded the dismissal of its managers. The deputy, according to the investigation’s version, with which the court agreed, received only the first tranche of the bribe, in the amount of 1 million roubles, through an intermediary. The trial in the Tsentralny District Court began in May 2024.
On 2 October 2024, Alexander Gliskov was sentenced to 10 years in a strict-regime penal colony and a fine of 10 million roubles. In addition, he was deprived of the right to hold elective office in regional legislative bodies for 8 years. On 25 February 2026, the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Krasnoyarsk Krai Court unexpectedly overturned the sentence and returned the case to the prosecutor; Gliskov was placed under house arrest.
The Boikov case
However, the persecution of Krasnoyarsk LDPR members did not end there. After Gliskov’s detention, the bulk of the work, including leadership of the faction, fell to Legislative Assembly deputy Alexei Boikov. He also oversaw internal party coordination and strategic planning for the upcoming election campaign, and worked with citizens’ appeals, including making deputy inquiries that often irritated the authorities. For example, with Boikov’s help, residents of Khatanga secured a recalculation: resource companies will return four million roubles to people for erroneous charges.
In March 2026, news sources reported that Boikov had been placed on an international wanted list. He is suspected of stealing property from PJSC “Rosseti Sibir” — “Krasnoyarskenergo” by deception, committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy on an especially large scale (Part 4, Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
The LDPR also commented on the deputy being placed on the wanted list. The LDPR’s Telegram channel stated that the party considers Boikov’s case to be political. The party drew attention to the fact that the information about Boikov being placed on the wanted list initially became known not from investigators, but from a local administration official, former governor’s adviser Andrei Agafonov, who, having no connection to the investigation, published the relevant message in his Telegram channel even before the entry appeared in the Interior Ministry database.
What to expect on the eve of the 2026 election campaign?
In 2026, in Krasnoyarsk Krai, alongside the State Duma elections, members of the krai parliament will also be elected. After five years of continuous pressure and the successive arrests of three of its leaders, the party has practically no serious politicians left; the finances of the regional branch have suffered; and organisational and campaigning work has been largely broken. It is true that the unexpected release of Alexander Gliskov from the pre-trial detention centre, which officially casts doubt on the charges, could have a serious and positive impact on the LDPR’s reputation in the krai, especially given that the party is actively defending its popular members.