Federalism at war: Putin’s blame game, regional governors, and the invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT

Center–regional relations in Putin’s Russia are marked by strict hierarchies, with regional governors serving as agents to the principal–the federal center. This (authoritarian) mode of federalism allows the federal center to maintain the president’s popularity, by shifting blame for policy failures from the presidency onto other federal political institutions and the regions. The article investigates how the regime reacted to the full-scale warfare against Ukraine. It theoretically elaborates on strategies of blame avoidance in personalist and federal autocracies and applies this framework to the Russian case. Using data from official documents and media reports, it demonstrates that the federal center again resorted to vertical blame-shifting, by formally and informally assigning the regional governors with several unpopular tasks, above all – casualty reporting and mobilization. The war confirmed center–regional relations as a practical venue for blame avoidance, which helps Putin’s regime overcome crises, contributing to its coping resilience.

KEYWORDS:

• Authoritarian federalism
• center–regional relations
• resilience
• blame avoidance
• Russia

Introduction

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which started in February 2022 and is fairly referred to as the worst decision of the Russian authorities ever (Gel’man 2023), can be considered a major, yet self-induced, shock to the stability of the regime of Vladimir Putin. It is the tragic consequence of decades of centralization and personalization of power, which has led to a significant institutional degradation of the Russian political system and the establishment of a highly personalist rule lacking any, even informal and authoritarian, constraints to the leader (Golosov 2023; Klimovich 2023a). Despite suffering tremendous physical, societal, and economic losses, in the third year of war, Russia’s regime demonstrates remarkable resilience and seems to find a new balance in the context of war costs and unprecedented sanctions. The capacity to cope with major challenges and persist in its current form makes Putin’s regime an exemplary case of authoritarian resilience (Holloway and Manwaring 2023; Krastev 2011; Sinkkonen 2021). One of the factors explaining this resilience can be found in the way center–regional relations function in Russia, with Putin taking advantage of the formal federal nature of the country.

Center–regional relations in Russia under Putin, despite being federal on paper, are marked by strict hierarchies, with regional governors serving as agents of the principal – the federal center (Busygina and Filippov 2021; Klimovich 2023b; Libman and Rochlitz 2019; Sharafutdinova 2010). Building up his rule, Putin in general followed the overall logic of maintaining authoritarian institutions (Schedler 2013). He did not fully change the Russian territorial regime (Gibson 2013) by eliminating federalism, but instead brought federal institutions under control, thus limiting the insecurities they produce and enjoying the benefits they bear. The federal center effectively subordinated regional governors, removed them from federal decision-making, and limited regional autonomy and bureaucratic discretion to the necessary minimum (Klimovich and Kropp 2022; Ross 2022).

This, authoritarian, mode of federalism became an integral part of Putin’s consolidated personalist autocracy and an essential pillar of maintaining regime stability. First, the center managed to integrate the regional elites into Putin’s pyramid of patron – client relationships, ensuring the loyalty of the sub-national clients through exchanging rewards and punishments (Hale 2014). Here, the real power-sharing arrangements are limited to the relations with a couple of exceptionally strong regional leaders (Meng, Paine, and Powell 2023; Obydenkova and Swenden 2013; Tolstrup and Souleimanov 2022), while with others only the allocation of spoils – lucrative positions, opportunities for rent-seeking, and other privileges – takes place.

Second, regional governors, primarily serving as representatives of the center’s will in their regions, ensure performance, i.e. maintain socio-political stability, deliver votes at national and sub-national elections for Putin and United Russia, and implement large-scale federal initiatives (Libman and Rochlitz 2019; Rochlitz et al. 2015; Sharafutdinova 2010). Yet the center continuously restricts the regional governors’ capacity to perform, by installing governor-outsiders that lack connection to regional elites and the population. It also permanently rotates and shuffles the gubernatorial corps to prevent their integration into regional power networks that can result in more independent behavior (Klimovich 2023c; Kynev 2019; Remington et al. 2021; Sharafutdinova and Steinbuks 2017; Tkachenko and Esaulov 2020).

Finally, an important function of the regional governors is to be Putin’s scapegoats or whipping boys, to be publicly blamed for policy failures and bear the burden of unpopular decisions and measures. This function is closely linked to the strategy of legitimation in authoritarian regimes (Gerschewski 2013; Schedler 2013). Under this logic, the leader is eager to claim credit for policy successes for herself, as much as to shift the blame for negative policy outcomes to others. In Russia, as in other personalist regimes, the popularity of the leader among the people is one of the strongest sources of legitimacy for the whole authoritarian system (Alexander and Elkink 2014, 2016; Frye 2021; Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2018; Kendall-Taylor, Frantz, and Wright 2017; Smyth 2014; Taylor 2018; Tolstrup and Souleimanov 2022). Therefore, maintaining the popularity of the incumbent becomes the most important task assigned to any political institution in the country. When opportunities for credit-claiming are limited, regardless of the regime type, politicians tend to at least protect themselves and pursue blame avoidance (Weaver 1986).

This holds particularly true in times of unpopular reforms and crises, of which fighting a war would be an extreme case. The literature on Russia demonstrates that Putin’s regime has a vast experience of successful implementation of blame- and burden-shifting for unpopular decisions and policy failures from the presidency onto other federal political institutions and the regions (Busygina and Klimovich 2022; Libman and Obydenkova 2023; Sirotkina and Zavadskaya 2020). The vertical blame-shifting, in the context of a highly centralized, but formally federal country, formally occurs through administrative or policy decentralization, i.e. transfer of additional responsibilities to sub-national authorities. In Russian authoritarian federalism, the virtue of this type of decentralization for the ruler, in contrast to fiscal or political ones (Falleti 2005; Rodden 2004), is that it is limited to a concrete policy field, designed in a temporary top-down manner, and reversible (Busygina and Klimovich 2022).

Nevertheless, any decentralization could be risky for the federal center. On the one hand, it stimulates autonomous decision-making by regional governors, with the respective possibility to learn to act independently. On the other, in the event governors perceive the delegated mission as impossible to implement, they can potentially refuse to perform. Yet in Russian authoritarian federalism, those risks are to some extent mitigated. Libman and Obydenkova (2023) convincingly demonstrate that compliant activism, or the traditional readiness (and willingness) of the sub-national authorities to implement the tasks delegated by the center, incentivizes regional governors to deliver. Moreover, in the current system of center–regional relations in Russia, governors become personally interested in maintaining the status quo, as potential regime swings could jeopardize their diminished but stable position in the power vertical (Busygina and Filippov 2021). This study further examines the role of the limited point administrative decentralization. It demonstrates that when the goal of blame avoidance for the incumbent becomes essential, the regime will opt for shifting administrative responsibilities related to unpopular measures onto the regions, regardless of the potential risks that such a decision can produce. Russian federalism in times of war against Ukraine makes a strong case for this assumption.

This article investigates how a self-produced external shock – the full-scale warfare against Ukraine – has affected center–regional relations in Russia. In particular, it focuses on the reaction of the federal center to this shock and on the role authoritarian federalism plays in coping with the unfavorable context of prolonged war and international sanctions. This study theoretically elaborates on strategies of blame avoidance in personalist and federal autocracies and applies this framework to the Russian case. Using data from official documents and media reports, it demonstrates that, facing the negative consequences of the invasion of Ukraine, the federal center in Russia has again resorted to blame-shifting and used regional governors as scapegoats, by formally and informally delegating to them several unpopular tasks, above all casualty reporting and mobilization. The article argues that the major shock of war has confirmed the importance of center–regional relations in Russia as a practical venue for blame avoidance. The temporary wartime administrative decentralization has helped the federal center to secure the president’s popularity and has boosted regime resilience. In Russian authoritarian federalism, as long as the federal center can effectively run the strategy of blame avoidance, it remains resilient without the need to transform the current system of center–regional relations.

The article is structured as follows. The following section provides a theoretical framework for studying strategies of blame avoidance in the context of personalist autocracies with a formal federal constitutional design. Here, the federal incumbent’s popularity is crucial for authoritarian resilience and regime survival. To secure the popular support of the national leader, the federal center can use the vertical venue for blame avoidance – shifting the burden of unpopular measures and responsibilities onto the regional authorities. The next, empirical, part of the article delivers a case study of blame avoidance in Russian personalist federal autocracy in the context of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A final section concludes by drawing theoretical lessons from this case for authoritarian federalism, the politics of blame avoidance, and authoritarian resilience in personalist regimes.

Theory: the politics of blame avoidance in a personalist federal autocracy

No matter if monarch, first party secretary, junta general, or personalist president, the main goal for any autocrat is to solve the dictator’s dilemma (Wintrobe 2012; see also Tullock 1987), i.e. to guarantee regime survival. As Wintrobe (2012, 116) states,

The autocrat commands the country today, and everyone appears to bend to his will. Tomorrow, the regime may fall. The way the autocrat sees this problem, the steps he takes to try to escape this fate, for example how he structures the leadership of the armed forces, how much institutional protection is built into the regime and so on, are key to understanding how dictatorship work.

Essentially, to survive, autocrats must address the major problem of credible commitment with the elites and ensure the enforcement of the authoritarian deal on both sides. The logic of authoritarian control and authoritarian power-sharing (Svolik 2012) helps autocrats to structure their relationship with different interest groups and maintain the necessary level of loyalty within the authoritarian arrangement. They prevent the rise of potential challengers to their rule, by distributing lucrative rents and spoils among the elite members, controlling and – if necessary – punishing deviant behavior, and hampering collective action against their rule. As a result, the elites become integrated into the autocrat’s power pyramid (Hale 2014) and are interested in supporting the regime, as the expected benefits of the status quo are higher than that of the potential coup d’etat.

There is no one-size-fits-all model for organizing a successful autocracy. To maintain the regime, autocrats usually deploy three broad strategies: co-optation, repression, and legitimation (Gerschewski 2013; Schedler 2013). The co-optation strategy places the source of support for the regime in material and immaterial benefits offered by the autocrat in exchange for loyalty. Repression deals with the general fear of losing status, freedom, or even life in case of non-compliance. Legitimation of the rule occurs through socioeconomic performance (output legitimacy), as well as ideological claims. To co-opt, repress, and legitimize authoritarian rule, autocrats can erect, destroy, and manipulate political institutions: constitutions, legislatures, courts, parties, etc.

The level of regime institutionalization differs significantly among different regime types and is assumed weakest in personalist dictatorships, as compared with monarchies, party-based and military autocracies (Geddes 1999; Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2014; Golosov 2023). Personalist regimes can have all the attributes of a regular political system; however, the authoritarian institutions in these regimes, even if present, put only weak constraints on the dictator’s rule. Rather they are fully subordinated to the dictator’s will and are limited in their scope to serve the immediate needs of the autocrat. On the other hand, weak institutions lead to the greater personal involvement of the leader in the day-to-day administration of the regime: instead of an institutionalized exchange of rewards and punishments, the system highly relies on the manual control of the autocrat. The legitimacy of the whole regime becomes closely tied to the leader’s skill and will, as well as his popularity among the elite members and the public.

To enjoy great public support and approval, politicians have several basic options (Weaver 1986, 375). The best strategy would be to make a good policy that matches the interests of the population and therefore brings well-deserved recognition to the policy initiator. Another opportunity is credit-claiming for policies, i.e. “maximizing surplus of concentrated (claimable) constituency benefits over losses” (Weaver 1986, 375). Whether it is their policy that leads to a good outcome or not, whether the outcome itself is objectively as beneficial as promised or not, politicians can put the spotlight on the positive side of the outcome and praise their important role in the achievement. Finally, in case no credit is to claim, politicians should at least ensure that they are personally not associated with potential policy failures, thus running the strategy of blame-avoiding. This strategy is particularly important in a situation of a negative-sum game when total losses exceed total winnings. In this case, one attempts to minimize own losses at the expense of others. Here, when someone must be blamed for suboptimal outcomes, to avoid being blamed, one can choose between different options (Weaver 1986, 384–390): (a) passing the buck, or delegating the task of politically costly and unpopular decision-making to others, even if it means sacrificing opportunities for potential credit-claiming; (b) finding a scapegoat, or shifting the blame for policy failures onto others; and (c) circling the wagons, or diffusing the blame among many decision-makers to avoid any clearcut blame attribution to a single person or institution.

The politics of getting public support in autocracies can be linked to regime type and regime dynamics. Although there is a considerable debate on whether autocrats can have good policies and, in more general terms, good governance (Bauhr and Marcia 2021; Rotberg 2021; Rothstein 2012), their readiness to invest in public goods is limited, not least by the planning horizon of the incumbent (Olson 1993). Personalist dictatorships’ low durability additionally narrows this horizon (Geddes 1999; Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2014). To be sure, personalist dictators may still opt for public good provision to their citizens. Yet their focus on loyalty and control in choosing bureaucratic agents paves the way for accumulating incompetence, feedback problems, and non-implementation of decisions throughout the entire chain of command (Abbott et al. 2020; Egorov and Sonin 2011; Zakharov 2016). In short, making a good policy in a personalist autocracy is not an easy task, and this also hinders socio-economic performance, thus threatening the output legitimacy of the regime.

Dictators, therefore, are doomed to use credit-claiming and blame-avoiding more often. Although they should mix both options, one can assume that at different phases of the regime lifecycle, they have incentives to resort more to either the former or the latter. During authoritarian consolidation, to legitimize their right to govern, autocrats skillfully present any achievement, regardless of its real nature, as the consequence of their wise rule. By doing so, they neglect the costs of authoritarian transformation: the destruction of institutional checks and balances, the crushing of oppositional forces, civil organizations, and independent media. In contrast, after the regime is fully consolidated, an important task for the regime would be to maintain the authoritarian status quo, i.e. to protect the incumbent’s image from potential flaws and policy failures, which – as argued above – are likely to accumulate under unconstrained personalist rule. Therefore, in the later phase of the regime, blame avoidance should become the main strategy for securing the ruler’s popularity among the people.

Federalism offers the autocrat a suitable venue for blame avoidance, as it assumes at least some extent of regional autonomy and a complex system of distribution of power between the national and sub-national levels of government. Federalism thus enables vertical blame-shifting from the federal center to the regions. To be sure, blame games are inherent in federal democracies, as regions and the federal center attempt to pass the responsibilities for costly decisions and negative policy outcomes to one another, which is part of their opportunistic behavior (Bednar 2009, 1–16). Yet, in democratic polities, a system of structural, institutional, and political safeguards limits opportunism on both sides, urging the center and regions toward mutual respect and federal bargaining. In federal autocracies, there are only limited constraints to the opportunistic behavior of the incumbents, as the power of these safeguards is diminished to fit the interests of the authoritarian rulers. Here, only those regional leaders who have managed to consolidate their regimes and have become unchallenged rulers in their regions obtain leverage in bargaining with the federal center (Gibson 2013; Obydenkova and Swenden 2013). In other cases, the federal center will dominate the relations with subordinated regional leaders. As a result, the national ruler gets almost unlimited opportunities for vertical blame avoidance: the federal autocrat can easily delegate unpleasant and costly tasks to the regional authorities; blame them for policy failures, no matter how justified it could be; and disperse political responsibility within the complex federal-regional chain of command among as many authorities as possible.

Empirical analysis: Putin’s blame game and center–regional relations in Russia in times of war

After the successful consolidation of personalist authoritarianism in Russia, which had been coupled with rapid economic growth, in recent years the regime has switched to survival mode – when in the context of economic stagnation and decline, the status quo should be maintained at any cost (Gel’man 2022). The president’s popularity in Russia is a key to regime stability, with the Kremlin being “obsessed” with Putin’s approval ratings, which is why some analysts call the regime a ratingocracy (Nikolay, Lipman, and Hale 2014, 6). Indeed, since his appointment as acting president in December 1999, Putin has consistently enjoyed public approval at a very high level, ranging from 60% to 90% (see Figure 1). To be sure, in an autocracy, where the entire system “works” to boost the president’s popularity and massive informational manipulation takes place, one should treat approval numbers with caution (Guriev and Treisman 2022; Treisman 2011). Nevertheless, Putin’s ratings of the last two decades vividly demonstrate major upward and downward trends in the president’s popularity. It becomes apparent that assumed foreign policy successes, such as the annexation of Crimea in 2014, boosted his approval rating and compensated for the general fatigue among the public in the previous period (Frye 2019; Hale 2018; Wilson and Lee 2020). The lowest approval rating of 61% in November 2013 turned into 80% in March 2014. As Wilson (2021, 93) rightfully acknowledges, “there is little evidence, however, that Putin’s foreign policy has worked in the interests of the Russian state or the Russian people.” This foreign policy adventurism in Putin’s case, thus rather fits more closely with the logic of credit-claiming than good policy, with the leader enjoying growing personal support because of the rally-round-the-flag effect. Here, the benefits of restoring the country’s image as a Great Power and enlarging its territory seems to have outweighed the open break with the West, subsequent sanctions, and the far-reaching consequences for relations with neighbors in the post-Soviet space.

Figure 1. Vladimir Putin’s approval rating in Russia, 1999–2023. Source: Statista (2023).

Similarly, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was assumed to be “a short, victorious war,”¹ which would mitigate the negative effects of domestic policy, connected with the unpopular 2018 pension reform, controversial policies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the 2020 constitutional amendments, which further strengthened the hegemonic presidency in Russia and “zeroed out” Putin’s previous presidential terms, effectively allowing him to govern until 2036. After the start of the invasion, again, the president’s approval rating increased from mid-60% level in Autumn 2021 to 83% in March 2022. However, the initial advance of the Russian troops was soon stopped by the Ukrainian army, and “Russia has failed to achieve most of its objectives in Ukraine because of poor military planning, significant logistical problems, low combat readiness, and other deficiencies, which undermined Russian military effectiveness” (Jones 2022). Instead of a short and victorious conflict, Putin has got a prolonged war with tremendous losses on both sides, without any feasible perspective of resolution, let alone victory. In analytical terms, this war presents a clearcut negative-sum game for the Russian authorities, where credits no longer can be claimed, and the question is how the burden of this major foreign policy failure will be distributed among the different political institutions involved. Being not able to run the credit-claiming strategy, Putin and his retinue have opted for blame-avoiding, to take the president out of the firing line of blame attribution and shift it onto others.

Center–regional relations as a venue for vertical blame avoidance

Regional authorities and in particular governors proved to be a suitable scapegoat for the federal center to shift the blame for negative policy outcomes. Facing the shock of a prolonged military conflict, the Kremlin once again resorted to this venue of vertical blame-shifting. In the context of war, no significant changes in the existing pattern of center–regional relations were undertaken by the federal center. It is a highly centralized and personalized political system, where sub-national regimes in Russia are similarly authoritarian, and inter-regional regime differences are subject to the personal characteristics of the governors (Libman and Rochlitz 2019, 101–138), e.g. their origin and background, as well as political will and skill. To put it straightforwardly, center–regional relations in present-day Russia are the relations between the Kremlin and regional governors. Therefore, the federal center’s approach to regional governors serves as a reasonable proxy for checking the dynamics in the relations between Moscow and its regions.

Major institutional reforms that fully subordinated the governors to the Kremlin and further centralized Russian federalism, bringing the constitutional and legal provisions into harmony with the authoritarian practice, were completed before the war started (Ross 2022). In 2022, five regional governors were replaced.² Compared with major shuffles of 16 governors in 2017 and 15 regional heads in 2018 (see Klimovich 2023b; Kynev 2019), this rather points to a regular rotation. Four other replacements followed in 2023,³ with commentators forecasting a temporary freeze in gubernatorial shuffling until the 2024 presidential election (Prakh and Vinokurov 2023). By the end of the second year of the full-scale invasion, the governors of regions bordering Ukraine – Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk, Rostov, and Voronezh oblasts – retained their positions. As it would be a challenging task for the Kremlin to find new governors able to head the regions directly affected by the war, it is not surprising that they stayed in office. Worthy of note, not a single one of the 83 regional governors in Russia condemned the war or tried to escape the system silently; all of them continued working and implementing the tasks delegated by the Kremlin.

The politics of wartime blame-avoiding by Putin contained a targeted administrative decentralization, similar to his reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic (see Busygina and Klimovich 2022). The federal center attributed to regional governors several additional responsibilities. Four main missions that the federal center assigned to the sub-national level, both formally and informally, can be identified: (1) the reporting of casualties; (2) the mobilization of military reservists; (3) the introduction of martial law with different levels of response (readiness) across the territory; as well as (4) the right to set up regional military companies. Table 1 summarizes the role that each of these measures played in the blame-avoiding strategy of the Kremlin.

Table 1. The strategies of vertical blame avoidance in times of war.

Delegated responsibility	Strategy of blame-avoiding	Mechanism of blame-avoiding
Reporting of casualties	Scapegoating (b)	War casualties are connected with singular public statements of the regional governors and officials, not with the Kremlin.
Mobilization	Passing the buck (a) + Circling the wagons (c)	Regional governors head the mobilization commissions and are personally responsible for recruiting the reservists. In their function, they attract negative headlines for mistakes and excesses (peregiby) during the mobilization. The responsibility for “partial mobilization” is effectively diffused among different federal, regional, and local agencies.
Martial law	Passing the buck (a)	Regional governors introduce unpopular restrictions on public life and economic activity to maintain security and mobilize resources for the war.
Regional military companies (RMCs)	Passing the buck (a) + Circling the wagons (c)	Regional governors set up paramilitary organizations to maintain security, alongside regular police and National Guard forces. The mandate of RMCs is not clear-cut; exact responsibilities are not delimited. The blame for potential policy failures and institutional conflicts between different security agencies is expected to be diffused at the regional level.

Source: author’s compilation.

Mission I: reporting of casualties

As in any ongoing military conflict, the exact estimation of Russian casualties in the war against Ukraine is almost impossible. For instance, in November 2023, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg estimated total Russian military losses (dead plus wounded) at over 300 thousand people (NATO, 2023). As of 15 December 2023, based on the analysis of open-source data, such as official statements, relatives’ posts on social media, and local media outlets, independent journalists confirmed about 40 thousand military deaths (Mediazona, n.d.). Previous counts, elaborated using excess male mortality derived from official statistics, estimated the true number of casualties in a range between 40 and 55 thousand in May 2023 (Mediazona 2023a). The reports admit that:

the scale of Russian troop losses is far more substantial because not all casualties are announced publicly by the press, relatives, local authorities, or educational institutions. Russian authorities are extremely reluctant to disclose military casualties. The responsibility to report distressing news is traditionally relegated to various local authorities: governors, mayors, municipal or district administrations.

(Mediazona 2022)

The federal center informally delegated the task of reporting on losses to the sub-national level, using the governors as scapegoats. The Kremlin also advised the regional heads to downplay the number of reported losses and thus manipulate information provided to the public (Aleksandrov 2023). This resulted in striking cross-regional differences in governors’ behavior: while some of them, like Governor Artur Parfenchikov of Karelia, continued posting obituaries to fallen local compatriots, others, such as Governor Alexander Tsybulsky of Arkhangel’sk Oblast, decided to stop reporting at all (Chentemirov 2023). The fact that Russian casualties comprised regular armed forces and criminals drafted from the regional prisons put additional moral hazard on the governor’s willingness to report. The delegation of casualties’ reporting further down in the vertical chain of command, informational manipulation, and understatement of losses strongly resembled the regional response to the challenge of COVID-19.

Mission II: mobilization of reservists

As the losses have been growing dramatically, after six months of war, the need for mobilization of reservists became apparent to fill the thinning ranks of Russian armed forces. Putin signed a respective decree on “partial mobilization” in September 2022, which obligated regional governors to deliver reservists in accordance with individual regional plans provided by the Ministry of Defense, or MoD (President of Russia 2022a). Concrete numbers were kept secret, and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced the goal of mobilizing 300 thousand people (RIA, 2022). Other sources pointed to a number of one million reservists behind the secret provision of the decree (Novaya Gazeta, 2022). A couple of weeks later, Putin reported on 222 thousand successfully mobilized reservists (TASS, 2022). By the end of October, the MoD stated that the targets were achieved, and Putin announced that mobilization was over (Vedomosti, 2022). Yet apart from the president’s statement, there exists no official document that would legally confirm the end of mobilization activities. The official reason provided by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov is that the original decree contains several other important provisions involving the wartime administration of the country (TASS, 2023). Observers suggest, however, that, despite the statements of federal and regional officials, without official termination of the “partial mobilization” by a presidential decree, new waves of mobilizing activities could be easily started, if the MoD were to send new targets to the regional governors (Meduza, 2022b). In the end, no one knows for certain whether the mobilization is over, and responsibility for it is effectively dispersed between the federal government and regional administrations.

The “buck” of mobilizing people on-site was passed to the governors. According to the official and unofficial mobilizing plans from 18 regions, journalists from Novaya Gazeta estimated that governors planned to mobilize between 0.3% and 3% of draft-age men (Asanova, Kaganskikh, and Talanova 2022). The targets and their implementation varied significantly across the regions. Estimates based on excess marriage rates⁴ indicated about 530 thousand mobilized throughout the country (Mediazona 2023b). These calculations demonstrate that 1.79% of draft-age men (between 18 and 49 years) had been mobilized in Russia. Tables 2 and 3 present the best and the worst-performing regions in terms of the 2022 mobilization in Russia.

Table 2. Regions with the highest mobilization rate in 2022, by absolute value and by ratio (percent).

Top 5 mobilization performers by absolute value			Top 5 mobilization performers by ratio
Region	Value	Ratio, %	Region	Ratio, %	Value
Moscow	28,600	1.1	Amur Oblast	5.4	9,500
Krasnodar Krai	28,600	2.4	Primorsk Krai	5.1	22,400
Primorsk Krai	22,400	5.1	Zabaikalsky Krai	4.9	11,900
Tatarstan	20,600	2.5	Buryatia	4.8	10,400
Saratov Oblast	17,200	3.4	Kalmykia	4.5	2,600

Source: author’s compilation based on Mediazona (2023b).

Table 3. Regions with the lowest mobilization rate in 2022, by absolute value and by ratio (percent).

Bottom 5 mobilization performers by absolute value			Bottom 5 mobilization performers by ratio
Region	Value	Ratio, %	Region	Ratio, %	Value
Kabardino-Balkaria	200	0.1	Kabardino-Balkaria	0.1	200
Nenets AO	200	1.6	North Ossetia	0.1	200
North Ossetia	200	0.1	Ivanovo Oblast	0.1	300
Ivanovo Oblast	300	0.1	Astrakhan Oblast	0.4	900
Chukotka AO	400	3.1	Chelyabinsk Oblast	0.5	3,300

Source: author’s compilation based on Mediazona (2023b).

The regional estimates show that the Russian Far East mobilized disproportionally more men of draft age than the average. Here, Governor Oleg Kozhemyako of Primorsk Krai, Putin’s well-known troubleshooter in the Far East (Klimovich 2023c, 17–18), proved to be one of the best performers by both ratio and absolute value, having mobilized over 22 thousand men. In absolute numbers, populous Moscow, Krasnodar, and Tatarstan in aggregate delivered almost 80 thousand reservists. Strikingly, Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia with over 5.6 million population, performed poorly by ratio (0.8%) and by value (8,800 reservists).

Among the five underperformers, Ivanovo Oblast, as well as two North Caucasian republics – Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia – also failed in both value and ratio. Here, the case of Sergey Menyaylo of North Ossetia deserves particular attention. He was Deputy Commander of the Black Sea Fleet and Governor of the annexed city of Sevastopol’ in Crimea before serving as presidential envoy to the Siberian Federal District and then being installed as head of this North Caucasian republic. A naval officer and governor-outsider, lacking close ties to the region of service, Menyalo nevertheless seems to have failed in implementing the task of mobilization. This record is similar to the neighboring Kabardino-Balkaria, but the exact opposite of another republic – Karachay-Cherkessia – where the long-serving governor-insider Rashid Temrezov managed to mobilize 4,300 reservists or 4.4% of draft-age men.

Comparing the five top- and bottom-performing regions by ratio, one can see that both groups are governed by governor-outsiders, who were installed by the decision of the federal center, lacking previous career background on-site and not being integrated into the regional power networks. The outsider status could provide a good explanation for the overperformance in mobilizing efforts: this is a task from the federal center to implement, and the governor is not bound by family, clan, or other patronage ties and does not feel tied to the regional population. However, Karachay-Cherkessia would present a significant challenge to this explanation. What the outsider status fails to explain according to these data, is the underperformance. According to the logic described above, governor-outsiders have a good starting point to deliver, and nevertheless they have underperformed, as the bottom five regions demonstrate. The Kremlin did not award the overperformers, which is not surprising, as the performance consisted in sending men to the war. But the federal center also did not punish the mobilizing underperformance. This provides a strong argument for the blame-shifting art of mobilization, where the value for the federal center lies not in the exact performance of the task, but in the very delegation of this task to the regional authorities.

Another important passing-the-buck feature of mobilization concerned the mistakes and excesses (peregiby) on-site. Given the vast territory and complex chain of command, such a large-scale campaign inevitably resulted in mobilizing people who were not eligible to be drafted due to age, physical and mental condition, or other reasons. These reservists were soon referred to as “mobilized by mistake,” with regional governors promising the worried public that they would be returned home (Kotova 2022; Lazareva 2022). Valentina Matvienko, the Chairwoman of the Federation Council, the second chamber of the Russian parliament, appealed to the governors to mobilize in strict accordance with legal regulations and “without any mistake” (Plamenev 2022). Soon the conditions in which mobilized reservists were supposed to be prepared for military service at the front became an even greater headache for regional authorities across the country. They lacked everything – from equipment and sleeping accommodation to warm meals. Observers concluded that the governors were not well prepared to manage the task of mobilization (Gruzin 2022). In this situation, the governors did not attempt to shift the blame for lack of support and poor organization back onto the federal center. Once again, it confirmed that blame attribution in Russia works unidirectionally in a top-down manner, and regional authorities are not allowed to challenge the decisions of the Kremlin. In addition, the governors found their own scapegoats and forwarded the blame for mobilization mistakes in the administrative chain downwards onto regional and local military commissioners and supply services (Interfax 2022; Zotova 2022). As in the example of the mobilization decree itself, here the effective diffusion of responsibility throughout the chain of command becomes apparent, which supports the circling-the-wagons strategy of the Kremlin.

Mission III: martial law

In October 2022, Putin introduced martial law to the annexed territories of Ukraine and issued a separate decree on different levels of response (readiness) in the regions directly bordering Ukraine, the regions in the Central and Southern federal districts without direct borders with Ukraine, and other regions of Russia (President of Russia 2022b, 2022c). These decrees established a legal framework for regional governors to maintain public security on-site, provide for the needs of the armed forces, and implement the mobilization of economic and administrative resources for warfare. Again, similar to the administrative decentralization during the COVID-19 pandemic, the governors were assigned to make respective decisions and impose restrictions on public life on their own, based on risk assessments for their territories. Heads of regions bordering Ukraine soon ensured the public that they were not going to institute restrictions, as long as the situation was under control (Tsvetkov 2022). The governors of Belgorod and Kursk regions also actively reported on the successful organization of a system of fortifications and strengthening of the borders (Meduza, 2022a, 2022c). By doing so, they even managed to use the credit-claiming opportunity that the federal center gave them by passing the buck of maintaining regional security.

Mission IV: regional military companies

In June 2023, the Wagner Group rebellion demonstrated the very limited capacity of Russian security forces to maintain order within the country’s borders. Without significant resistance, the private military company of Putin’s former close retinue member Yevgeny Prigozhin occupied the headquarters of the Russian armed forces in Rostov and advanced to the national capital in an action called the “march of justice.” Notably, in this situation the local police, National Guard, and even the regular army failed to curb the rapid advance of the Wagner forces. At the same time, the governors of Lipetsk and Kaluga oblasts, located along the route from Rostov to the capital, actively contributed to slowing down the rebels by blocking strategic overpasses and bridges, as well as destroying roadways with the help of their utility services (Mediazona 2023c).

A month after the rebellion, a new law entitled the president to assign governors the task of establishing paramilitary organizations in the legal form of regional (state) military companies, or RMCs (Meduza 2023). The specific mandate of the RMCs would be defined in their respective charters. To the best of our knowledge, at the time of writing, no RMC has been launched in Russia. However, the very idea of these organizations is advantageous for Putin for at least two reasons. On the one hand, such armed groups headed by his loyal agents could contribute to combating potential military threats both from outside and – as the Wagner coup proved – within Russia, especially when regular security structures stand down. On the other, by creating RMCs the president effectively passes the buck for maintaining public security during warfare on-site to the regional authorities, and simultaneously circles the wagons, by diffusing the responsibility among different federal and regional agencies with overlapping responsibilities.

Conclusion

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine is an unprecedented shock for Putin’s regime and the whole political system in Russia. One can argue that the war and its consequences are the toughest survival test that Putin’s regime has ever had to pass. Yet, in the third year of the invasion, the power vertical remains intact, the fragile status quo has been maintained, and there are no signs of an impending authoritarian breakup. At least a part of the explanation for the striking authoritarian resilience can be found in the opportunities that Russian federalism grants to the national leader in terms of regime legitimation. To cope with the challenge of war, the regime maintains the president’s popularity by resorting to the established practice of blame-shifting.

Facing the major shock of war, center–regional relations in Russia contributed to authoritarian resilience, serving as a practical tool of blame avoidance. As with the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal center shifted unpleasant tasks and unpopular decision-making onto the regional governors. In their study on administrative decentralization during the pandemic, Busygina and Klimovich (2022, 8) concluded: “Future shocks and crises may require a different approach, when manipulated reports and blame-shifting would be insufficient, and policy changes would be needed.” Yet although the war against Ukraine should be considered a shock of a completely different origin compared with COVID-19, the regime demonstrates quite the same response, by running the well-established strategy of blame avoidance. To put it straightforwardly, in a highly centralized personalist autocracy, the national leader enjoys practically unlimited opportunities to shift the blame downwards in the chain of command, no matter if it concerns a war he personally started or a virus that spreads across the country. Moreover, as with the pandemic, the center neither rewards the best performers among the governors nor punishes those who underperformed with the delegated tasks. Apparently, without strict control of performance, the temporary wartime administrative decentralization is primarily used to avoid blame.

The Russian case provides vivid empirical evidence for the role authoritarian federalism plays in the regime’s capacity to absorb shocks. Here, there exist almost no restrictions on the opportunistic behavior of the federal center (Bednar 2009), as it fully dominates in the relations with the regions, which nevertheless enjoy some residual autonomy. It enables the federal incumbent to effectively avoid blame, especially in a situation of a negative-sum game, where no gain but only losses are to be distributed. As this study shows, the national leader can simultaneously run the strategies of passing the buck onto the regional leaders, using them as scapegoats, and circling the wagons by effectively diffusing the responsibility within a complex federal chain of command. To be sure, blame avoidance works in democratic federations with all the safeguards limiting opportunism as well, as in the US, where “President Reagan has been able to use his decentralized management style to deflect blame to subordinates on many occasions, giving rise to the term ‘Teflon presidency’ (nothing sticks to the President)” (Weaver 1986, 388). In a federal autocracy, such as Russia, the Teflon presidency takes its extreme form, where nothing, really nothing, sticks to the president, even prolonged large-scale warfare.

Blame avoidance grants the Kremlin an effective tool of coping resilience (Keck and Sakdapolrak 2013, 8), enabling the regime to overcome crises and challenges, without adapting or transforming center–regional relations. Having a simple and proven strategy of keeping the president popular, the federal center is interested in running blame avoidance as long as possible. During the war against Ukraine, the blame-shifting function of regional governors confirmed its efficiency and importance. Instead of changing the system that is already demonstrating the appropriate level of functionality, the federal center maintains the status quo, following to the golden rule: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Finally, with growing personalism, authoritarian resilience and the very survival of the regime are closely coupled with the incumbent’s popularity (Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2018; Kendall-Taylor, Frantz, and Wright 2017; Klimovich 2023a). When policy failures accumulate, the pie shrinks, and resources are scarce, the role of legitimation – through ideological claims or charisma and the exceptional standing of the leader – becomes increasingly valuable for maintaining regime stability. To preserve the status quo at any cost, especially in times of multiple crises, when massive credit-claiming is no longer available, the regime aims primarily at blame-avoiding. In the absence of good news, it is important at least to disconnect the national leader from bad news. The Russian case demonstrates the blame-shifting strategy at near perfection, with all political institutions working on protecting and enlarging Putin’s public support. As long as he wins this blame game, his legitimacy can hardly be contested. Taking the president out of the harm’s way seems to become a universal response to shocks and challenges (even those provoked by himself), and this makes Putin’s regime remarkably resilient.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Irina Busygina and Ekaterina Paustyan, who organized the workshop “The Regional Dimension of Russia’s Resilience during Its War against Ukraine,” for insightful discussion, valuable feedback, and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This quote is attributed to Vyacheslav von Plehve, Minister of Interior of the Russian Empire, in his reference to the Russo-Japanese War in 1904.

2. Kirov, Saratov, Ryazan, and Tomsk oblasts, as well as the Republic of the Mari El.

3. Smolensk and Vologda oblasts, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, as well as Krasnoyarsk Krai.

4. Reservists subject to mobilization are entitled to register their marriage immediately, without an obligatory official waiting time of one month. These data permit estimation of the rate of such excess marriages and then calculation of the estimated number of mobilized people in a region. The exact methodology is explained in the study by Mediazona (2023b).