Additional gubernatorial elections to take place in 4 Russian regions in Sept - CEC chair

MOSCOW. May 15 (Interfax) - Additional gubernatorial elections will be held in four Russian regions on Unified Voting Day set for September 8, 2024, Russian Central Elections Commission (CEC) Chair Ella Pamfilova said.

After the governors of four regions were appointed to new posts, gubernatorial elections will take place in four regions - Khabarovsk Territory, the Kaliningrad region, the Kemerovo region and the Tula region - in addition to 16 elections previously scheduled for September 8, Pamfilova said at a CEC meeting on Wednesday. Early elections will be held in these four regions, bringing the total number of direct gubernatorial elections due to take place in September 2024 to 20.

Further changes are possible "until around July 8," she said.

"If anything else happens before July 8, we will let you know. Everything will either remain as it is now, or there could be some changes regarding the elections of senior officials," she said.

A report on the spending of the federal budget funds allocated for organizing the March 2024 presidential election in Russia will be approved by the end of May, Pamfilova said.

"In total, more than 4,000 election campaigns will take place in 83 out of our beloved Russia's 89 regions on Unified Voting Day [...]. Due to an increase in the number of campaigns, the number of our voters who can potentially take part in elections has also grown to 55 million today, and there could be further additions before early July," she said.

Elections are due to take place in the majority of Russia's constituent territories, except for Ingushetia, the Donetsk People's Republic, the Lugansk People's Republic, the Zaporozhye region, the Kherson region and the Magadan region, Pamfilova said.

"It will be quite a multi-layered election campaign, a very intense and quite large-scale one," Pamfilova said.