'He kissed up well' Artyom Zhoga was supposed to embody Putin’s new model of veterans in high places. So far, his performance has fallen flat.
In his February 2024 address to Russia’s Federal Assembly, Vladimir Putin called for veterans of the war in Ukraine to become the country’s “new elites” and to hold “leading positions” in government. In the approximately 14 months since then, this initiative has brought few success stories — though not for lack of trying. One of the most visible of these “new elites” is Artyom Zhoga, a former commander of the pro-Russian separatist Sparta Battalion in Ukraine’s Donetsk region who's spent the last six months serving as Putin’s official envoy to the Ural Federal District. In 2023, Zhoga publicly asked Putin to run for a fifth term, playing a key role in the president’s campaign announcement and raising his own profile. Since his big promotion, however, he's largely failed to become a full-fledged official; he currently spends most of his time meeting with soldiers and defense industry workers, attending ceremonies and celebrations, and making appearances at sporting events. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev explains why no one's holding their breath for Zhoga to start making his own political decisions.
In late March, Salekhard, the capital of Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (YaNAO), celebrated Reindeer Herders’ Day. As part of the festivities, the city held reindeer sled races, inviting sports commentator Dmitry Guberniev to cover the competition. Among the spectators was Artyom Zhoga, Vladimir Putin’s envoy to the Ural Federal District, which includes the YaNAO. “A very popular event, a real celebration. Huge turnout. Guberniev’s on fire as always. Happy Reindeer Herders’ Day, everyone,” Zhoga wrote on his Telegram channel.
The celebration proved to be one of Zhoga’s main stops during his visit to the region. In Khanty-Mansiysk, he met with Deputy Defense Minister Anna Tsivileva — Putin’s niece — and together they visited a local branch of the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, a veterans’ advocacy group that Tsivileva leads. They also spoke with participants of the “Time of Heroes” initiative, a Kremlin program that prepares war veterans for government positions. Later, Zhoga and Tsivileva attended a sledge hockey match held as part of the Defenders of the Fatherland Cup, a winter sports competition for “veterans of the special military operation.”
This is more or less how all of the envoy's regional visits go: he meets with soldiers returning from the front, inspects defense enterprises, and attends sports matches. As sources close to the Putin administration told Meduza shortly after his appointment, Zhoga has spent most of his time in his new role focusing on military-related work. The former commander himself has confirmed that his top priorities are aiding the "socialization" of former Russian army fighters and "promoting sports."
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“Today I had my first meeting with the heads of municipalities in the Ural Federal District. The main topic was support measures for participants in the special military operation and their families,” Zhoga wrote on his Telegram channel on November 15. In late March, he convened a similar meeting with regional governors, once again focused on support for the military. The regional leaders presented education and employment programs for former soldiers, and Zhoga responded by saying that “the future of the entire Urals depends on the quality of these programs.” The envoy also makes regular trips to Ukraine's occupied territories, which have been “adopted” by regions in the Urals under the Kremlin's "patronage" program.
Two officials working in regional governments within the Ural Federal District told Meduza that it didn't take their bosses long to figure out how best to get along with the new presidential envoy. “It feels like he’s doing fine when it comes to supporting the military and handling defense-related issues,” one of them said. “But he also likes to relax. He tries to bring in topics he enjoys — like sports — into his official work. So it’s actually pretty easy to host Zhoga. Lay out a nice spread, throw in some sports if possible, and invite some [war] veterans — done.”
Zhoga really does seem to enjoy attending sporting events, often joined in the stands by regional officials. On March 28, for example, he cheered on the Sverdlovsk hockey team Avtomobilist with acting Governor Denis Pasler. Earlier that month, on March 8, he opened the Russian Biathlon Cup in Zlatoust alongside Chelyabinsk Governor Alexey Teksler.
Governors are keen to stay on Zhoga’s good side, two regional officials said — not out of fear or because they see him as particularly powerful, but because it’s simply easier that way. “Why pick a fight when it takes so little effort to keep things smooth?” one of them said. “If he doesn’t say anything bad, that’s already a win. And a bit of positive attention never hurts. After all, he does have the president’s ear — at least when it comes to military issues.” Another one said, hopefully, “Maybe he’ll even mention the governor to Putin in a good light.”
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Local journalists have also occasionally gone out of their way to show loyalty to Zhoga, sometimes exaggerating his influence, the second official noted. For instance, the website Ura.ru claimed that the recent change in leadership in the Sverdlovsk region was “Zhoga’s first political achievement.” The outlet reported that Zhoga played a role in the dismissal of former Governor Yevgeny Kuyvashev and in the appointment of acting governor Denis Pasler, whom Zhoga is now said to be “helping.” But a source close to the Putin administration told Meduza that Kuyvashev’s departure had been discussed long before Zhoga came on board: “Personnel decisions at that level, especially involving officials with serious connections, are made at the very top. Not even within the Kremlin’s political team — higher. So the envoy had nothing to do with it.”
The Kremlin assigned experienced officials to support Zhoga, particularly in overseeing the political management of governors in the Ural Federal District and regional branches of United Russia. One of them is Sergey Ryndin, a former staffer on the Putin administration’s political team, who was appointed Zhoga’s deputy. Ryndin had spent many years in the Internal Policy Directorate and, more recently, served as one of the Kremlin’s supervisors of the occupied territories in Ukraine. “He knows Zhoga fairly well — there’s no real conflict between them, at least not yet. But any governor or deputy governor in charge of political affairs knows: if the issue is elections or a key appointment that needs to be discussed or cleared, you don’t go to Zhoga, you go to Ryndin,” a source close to the presidential administration told Meduza.
The same source said Zhoga has been quick to pick up on the “etiquette of the political team” and its inner workings. “If you want to stay in the good graces of [Sergey] Kiriyenko, the head of the team, you need to promote graduates of the various training programs.” For example, Sergey Konev, a graduate of the Kremlin’s “school of governors,” now heads the envoy office’s internal policy department. Zhoga also appointed Alexander Zagaynov, a participant in the “Time of Heroes” program, as his advisor.
Less than a month after Zhoga’s appointment, the city of Verkhnyaya Pyshma (a satellite of Yekaterinburg) hosted a volunteer forum called “Patriots of the Urals.” Officially, the idea for the event came from Zhoga himself. “The forum was created to help you — volunteers and civic organizations — get to know each other. I’m confident you’ll find ways to work together and solve problems. Strength lies not only in truth, but in unity,” Zhoga said at the time. In reality, the forum — and the broader trend of appointing graduates from Kremlin-backed training schools — fits neatly into the political team's playbook. In February, the envoy’s office hosted a second “patriot forum” in the city of Miass in the Chelyabinsk region.
A political consultant working with the Putin administration compared Zhoga to a former envoy to the Ural District, Igor Kholmanskikh, who held the post from 2012 to 2018 and has not held any major position since. During the protests that followed Russia's rigged 2011 parliamentary elections, Kholmanskikh — then a foreman at the Uralvagonzavod plant — famously said during Putin’s annual call-in show that he was ready to “come with the guys to Moscow” and “sort things out” with the demonstrators on Bolotnaya Square. Not long after, he was appointed envoy.
Zhoga, for his part, rose to prominence in December 2023 when he publicly asked Putin — “on behalf of the residents of the annexed territories” and the military — to run in the March 2024 presidential election (i.e., to seek a fifth term). He was later named one of the co-chairs of Putin’s re-election campaign.
The idea for volunteer forums was suggested to Zhoga by the Putin administration, according to a political strategist who spoke to Meduza. “It’s not a new approach. Kholmanskikh also had his own movement: ‘In Defense of the Working Man.’ It allowed the envoy to shape his public image, organize events, and appear more frequently in the media. At the time, the pro-Putin All-Russian Popular Front (ONF) was in vogue, and Kholmanskikh's movement — or rather, his PR project — fit well within its context. Under him, just as with Zhoga, trusted people from the presidential administration handled all the routine tasks like meeting with officials and law enforcement.”
In October 2024, two sources close to the Putin administration and one from United Russia considered Zhoga’s appointment “largely situational.” “If [Andrey] Turchak hadn’t fallen out of favor and been sent to Altai, there would have been no need to find a new head of the General Council [of United Russia]. And if the choice [for new United Russia head] hadn't fallen on [Zhoga's predecessor] Yakushev, the post of envoy would not have been vacated,” explained one of the sources close to the administration.
At the time, other candidates were also considered for the position of envoy, such as the former head of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, State Duma deputy Igor Barinov. However, in the end, the Putin administration’s political team settled on Zhoga. “First and foremost, to show that the career ladder and competition for military personnel are working. The focus is on this now. Zhoga is the ready answer to the question, ‘Who among the military has risen?’” said one of the sources.
Zhoga still writes a lot on Telegram about the “Time of Heroes” program and continues traveling frequently to occupied Ukraine. In an interview with pro-war blogger Semyon Pegov, Zhoga, who was born in the Far East and later moved to Sloviansk, said that Donbas “still has his heart.” However, in the same conversation, Zhoga claimed he couldn’t say where his home was because he “feels at home everywhere.”
According to Yekaterinburg-based political scientist Fedor Krasheninnikov, who now lives abroad, Zhoga doesn’t appear to be a leader “who actually manages anything or whose opinion matters to anyone.” “He’s playing the role of figurehead. He does what the Kremlin tells him, waves his hand at events,” Krasheninnikov explained.
Urals-based journalist Dmitry Fomintsev told Meduza that the Ural Federal District “is catastrophically unlucky" when it comes to federal envoys. “But thank God, this position is completely useless. Representative, yes, but with no real power,” he explained. “We remember Kholmanskikh, who kissed Putin’s ass. Where is he now? Nobody cares. The same thing with this ‘simple guy’ from Donbas. He kissed up well — became an envoy, came to the Urals to revive patriotism, since the Urals is so famous for its liberalism… But he’ll disappear just like his colleague, the 'simple guy' from Nizhny Tagil, Kholmanskikh.”
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Reporting by Andrey Pertsev