On the single voting day in 2026, the Republic of Karelia will hold elections of deputies to the region’s Legislative Assembly. Voters will have to assess which of the current deputies deserve to receive a mandate again, and who will definitely be unable to claim the status of people’s representative.
Seven factions work in the Legislative Assembly of Karelia. Alongside the five State Duma parties, there are deputies from the Party of Pensioners and the Yabloko party. Three of the seven factions — the United Russia, A Just Russia and New People groupings — were unable to serve until the end of the convocation with their original composition unchanged. This article is about them.
The United Russia faction
The faction has 21 deputies working in it, although initially there were 22 (16 single-mandate deputies, six from the party list). The “missing” deputy is Vitaly Krasulin, elected in single-mandate constituency No. 1. In June 2025, the Petrozavodsk City Court sentenced Krasulin to four years in a strict-regime penal colony and a fine of nine million roubles. The former long-serving (since 2002) deputy of the Legislative Assembly and head of the Budget and Taxes Committee was found guilty of giving a bribe to an officer of the Federal Security Service Directorate for Karelia. In exchange for the reward, Krasulin asked the security officers to pass him information about whether he faced criminal prosecution in the case of the Dietgroup enterprise, which was based on fraud involving hospital meals and the procurement of state contracts for them.
The Dietgroup case is multi-faceted; it contains many episodes, and charges have also been brought in connection with a number of them against the former Deputy Head of Karelia for Internal Policy, Vladimir Lyubarsky, whose trial began in mid-February 2026.
Lyubarsky is accused of receiving bribes totalling more than 33 million roubles. It is known that in the late 1990s – early 2000s, after leaving service in the law-enforcement agencies, he began working as a security officer in Krasulin’s business structures, and in numerous interviews called himself his friend. From 2017 to 2021, Lyubarsky oversaw internal political processes in the republic.
Krasulin’s criminal case had a negative impact on the position of his party colleague Elissan Shandalovich, the speaker of Karelia’s parliament. He lost a crucial position — secretary of the regional branch of the party of power.
Alongside the prosecution of Krasulin, this was also influenced by the scandal caused by Zhanna Androsova, the former head of the information directorate (press service) of the regional parliament’s apparatus. In February 2023, she resigned from her job and moved to Germany, from where she began to expose her former employers and the administrative practices established by Shandalovich.
In 2021, Androsova was a key figure in Shandalovich’s election campaign headquarters when, without coordination with the federal centre, he decided to take part in the preliminary party vote for the nomination of a candidate for State Duma deputy in the Karelia single-mandate constituency. There he entered into direct competition with the incumbent State Duma deputy Valentina Pivnenko. He lost the primary, thereby causing reputational damage, but thanks in part to Androsova’s active media efforts he was elected to the regional parliament and became its speaker.
In July 2024, Shandalovich unexpectedly left for the special military operation zone “as a doctor”, while retaining his post as speaker of parliament, which was in itself rather strange, since even telephone contact with him was not constant.
This decision was preceded by a scandal involving another United Russia deputy, Galina Gorelikova, who had previously headed the Committee on Education, Culture, Sport and Youth Policy. On 15 May 2024, Gorelikova took exception to the fact that Valentina Sukotova, the head of the public organisation “Zaonezhye”, had taken one of the front seats in the committee meeting room intended for deputies. “She should have been put at the back, that hen!”, the committee chair said, among other things.
Gorelikova’s insulting remark was caught on the video broadcast. A scandal erupted. The apparatus of Karelia’s parliament cut Gorelikova’s remark out of the video recording of the committee meeting, and she herself publicly apologised on social media to “everyone she might have offended”. The civic activist was not satisfied with the deputy’s apologies. A few days later, Gorelikova stepped down from her chairmanship.
The A Just Russia faction
Four deputies work in the faction (one single-mandate deputy and three elected from the party list).
Immediately after the 2021 elections, the SR faction entered a series of public conflicts, which manifested itself, for example, in the absence of a leader for many months. At all organisational meetings and gatherings, the faction, having split “two against two”, was unable to overcome interpersonal contradictions. In this configuration, neither part of the faction could obtain a majority. This led to the party’s representative being excluded from participation in the work of the Parliament Council, since it was unclear who the faction leader was.
Only after Royne Izyumov, the head of the regional branch of A Just Russia, was able to obtain the paid position of deputy chair of the Committee on State Building and Local Self-Government did the scales of administrative weight tip in his favour, and he temporarily headed the faction. Having demonstrated the strengthening of his positions, Izyumov then yielded the leadership position to Alexander Fedichev, elected as a deputy in single-mandate constituency No. 15.
This was also facilitated by the expulsion from the party of deputy Maria Gogoleva. The decision was taken by the regional council of A Just Russia in November 2022. The main reason for the expulsion was Gogoleva’s participation in the election campaign of the candidate for the post of Head of Karelia, Yevgeny Ulyanov, who was nominated by the republican branch of the Communist Party (CPRF): Ulyanov included her among the candidates he proposed for membership of the Federation Council. This device was used to present the communist as a single candidate from the systemic opposition. At the same time, the SRs had their own candidate in those elections — Andrei Rogalevich.
It is worth noting that Gogoleva is the only deputy of the republican parliament who is not a member of any profile committee. After being elected as a deputy from the single electoral district, she continues to spend most of her time on art history; she is a co-owner of the museum of her father Kronid Gogolev’s private collection.
The New People faction
Only one deputy, elected from the party list, works in the faction.
Initially, the deputy was the head of the regional branch, Vladimir Kvanin, about whom we have written previously. He was the head of a company that, through collateral schemes, was able to obtain the property of Avtospetstrans, the enterprise that handled waste management before the start of the waste reform in Karelia. The speed with which the redistribution of property took place aroused suspicions of the use of fraudulent schemes.
New People entered the regional parliament, and Kvanin became a deputy and began lobbying for increases in waste removal tariffs and state investment in organising the work of the regional operator.
In 2024, Kvanin voluntarily relinquished his deputy’s mandate and left Karelia, and in 2025 he was arrested, along with other participants in the regional “waste reform”: the former head of Karelia’s Ministry of Natural Resources, Alexei Shchepin, and the former directors of the Avtospetstrans enterprise, Ivan Novikov and Yevgeny Moshnikov. At present, the preliminary investigation in the criminal case is ongoing.
Since 2024, the deputy of the parliament and head of the New People faction has been Sergei Usatenko.
What is happening in Karelia’s party system shows that even against the backdrop of the SMO, life in regional politics continues: both the parties and the administration periodically become immersed in internal scandals, often linked to the redistribution of power and financial flows; a constant struggle is underway. The notion that everything in the country came to a standstill over the past five years is completely unfounded. And the events taking place in the regions will undoubtedly influence the course of the election campaign in the summer of 2026.