Arctic Purges
Officials Targeted in Russia’s European North
Since the start of the full-scale war and the 2024 presidential election, the number of criminal cases opened against regional officials and security officers in Russia has surged. This trend is especially visible in regions close to the front line. Arctida and Khroniki.Media looked into what is happening in the European North — Arctic regions far from the fighting but heavily dependent on federal projects and security agencies.
According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, 155 high-ranking officials, regional lawmakers, and security officers were arrested on criminal charges in 2025. That’s a 27% increase from the previous year and triple the number from 2021.
Officials and deputies typically draw the attention of security services ahead of elections. A recent trend, however, has been intensified law-enforcement activity specifically in frontline regions. For example, a case against judges in Rostov that began in April 2023 escalated into sweeping purges across the region and the arrest of the former mayor of Rostov. In the Kursk region, former governor Alexei Smirnov and his deputy are among those implicated in an embezzlement case involving the construction of fortifications along the border. Federal Transport Minister Roman Starovoit, who had previously governed the region, was removed from office amid a potential investigation into his work in Kursk — and was later found dead.
Carnegie Center experts describe these purges within the elite as a new feature of the wartime period, though political scientist Ekaterina Schulman notes that each arrest is presented as an isolated incident rather than part of a coordinated campaign.
This leaves many questions unresolved. Where is the line between political purges and genuine anti-corruption efforts? What is happening in the regions far from the front line? And can the conclusions about the situation in southern Russia be applied to Arctic regions — sparsely populated, economically dependent on major infrastructure projects and extractive industries, yet diverse and marked by their own unique characteristics?
To explore these questions, we analyzed open-source data on cases against officials in Russia’s Arctic regions of the European North from 2018 to the present. The dataset includes both new cases and those that fall only partially within the timeframe, allowing us to capture the overall trajectory of convictions.
Methodology and Limitations
New Repressions After the 2024 Election
The collected data covers 49 criminal cases across five regions of Russia’s European North: Arkhangelsk and Murmansk Oblasts, the republics of Karelia and Komi, and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug. As the data show, the total number of cases dropped sharply in 2022, then began to rise again starting in 2023.
This aligns with the conclusions of researchers studying southern regions and suggests that the mass targeting of elites did not begin immediately after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but only in the run-up to the March 2024 presidential election.
For the European Arctic regions, 2021 remains the peak year. This is primarily due to one region—Arkhangelsk Oblast—where a large number of criminal cases were opened against municipal and regional officials following Governor Igor Orlov’s stepping down in 2020. At the same time, the graphs clearly show a “dip” in 2022. According to political scientist Ekaterina Schulman, a moratorium was effectively placed on high-level intra-elite crackdowns after the start of the war in 2022: older cases were wrapped up, but new major cases were not initiated. Within a year, that moratorium had essentially been lifted.
