Border situation: Putin appoints new acting heads of Bryansk and Belgorod regions

In Russia, two regional leaders resigned at once — Alexander Bogomaz, who headed the Bryansk region since 2014, and Vyacheslav Gladkov, who served as governor of the Belgorod Region since 2020. Vladimir Putin signed the relevant decrees on May 13, appointing new acting governors. The Bryansk region will be headed by Yegor Kovalchuk, head of the government of the LPR, and the Belgorod Region will be headed by Alexander Shuvaev, Hero of Russia, a veteran of a special military operation and a participant in the presidential program "Time of Heroes." Experts are confident that the new faces will help build cooperation between civil and military authorities in their own conditions.

Why did Gladkov and Bogomaz leave

The governors of the Bryansk and Belgorod regions, Alexander Bogomaz and Vyacheslav Gladkov, left their posts on May 13: both politicians resigned of their own accord, the Kremlin website reported. Vladimir Putin has signed the relevant decrees, which have already entered into force.

The media has been writing about the possible departure of these governors for a long time. At the same time, both can be called "old-timers" who knew their regions well. Bogomaz has been in charge of the region for more than 10 years — he took over as acting governor back in September 2014. A year later, he won the election. Then he was re—elected twice, the last one in September 2025. Gladkov took over as acting governor of the Belgorod Region in 2020, replacing Yevgeny Savchenko, who had been in this position for almost 30 years.

Both Alexander Bogomaz and Vyacheslav Gladkov met each other "face to face", since the Bryansk and Belgorod regions border Ukraine. Vyacheslav Gladkov himself once came under fire from the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the town of Shebekino, when he was heading to the site of the attack.

According to political analyst Yevgeny Minchenko, both Bogomaz and Gladkov were confidently in the "yellow zone" of the governor's stability — that is, they generally coped with their tasks. However, according to Dmitry Orlov, head of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications, both politicians still lost their positions: Alexander Bogomaz moved to the inertia of regional management and the obvious lack of achievements. And Vyacheslav Gladkov has entered into a serious conflict with almost all significant federal players, not to mention a serious corruption scandal in his entourage, which has cast a shadow on him, the expert emphasized.

"Gladkov's resignation looks like a natural result of accumulated problems: from a corruption case during the construction of border defenses with the arrest of the governor's closest associate to demonstrative rudeness towards federal agencies,— Dmitry Orlov told Izvestia.

Vice Governor Rustem Zainullin, who was part of Gladkov's inner circle, turned out to be one of the key figures in the corruption case mentioned by the expert. According to investigators, hundreds of millions of rubles were withdrawn through contractors under his control and subcontracting schemes, deliberately false information was entered into acts to steal budget funds, and the official himself received illegal remuneration for patronage when concluding contracts.

— Recent reports that the materials of the case of embezzlement during the construction of defensive structures in the Belgorod region are ready to be brought to court create an ideal point for a possible "lifting" of responsibility vertically — from the level of the profile deputy to the first persons, — stated the political scientist.

According to the April rating of the influence of the heads of subjects of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications, ex-governor of the Belgorod region Gladkov fell by 14 positions at once.

Under ex-governor Gladkov, the Belgorod Region ceased to be a showcase of the "technocratic" model and turned into a point where criminal cases, power interests and personal conflicts of the governor with federal structures converge, Orlov is sure.

Who took over the governors' chairs

New interim officers have already been appointed. In the Bryansk region, this is Egor Kovalchuk, who has been chairman of the government of the Luhansk People's Republic since 2024. He is a graduate of one of the government's management training programs, the School of Governors, which was launched in June 2017 on the basis of the Higher School of Public Administration.

The president appointed Alexander Shuvaev, a participant in the Time of Heroes program, to lead the Belgorod Region. His biography is impressive: A Hero of Russia who went through Georgia, Syria and Ukraine.

Since 2022, Alexander Shuvaev has participated in a special military operation. Thanks to the personnel program "Time of Heroes" in January 2026, he took the post of vice-governor of the Irkutsk region.

For his military services, he was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree, the Order of Alexander Nevsky, as well as three Orders of Courage. He himself is a native of Belgorod region.

— The choice of the federal center is noteworthy: both of the appointed acting governors have extensive work experience in their area. This is a recognition that the border regions cannot actually be governed in the old way, by civilian leaders. In fact, the institute of "governors-general" should be created in the border regions and people with both military and civil service experience should be appointed. The governor of such a region should effectively interact with the military, the federal center and the administrative vertical," Dmitry Yelovsky, a political analyst, told Izvestia.

The appointment also proceeds from the logic that these are representatives of the generation of governors who should build interaction between civil and military authorities, he is sure. Both new leaders met with the President of Russia on the same day. So far, both Shuvaev and Kovalchuk have the prefix "acting" head of the region — until the elections, which will be held on September 20 on a Single voting Day. Moreover, if they were planned like this in the Belgorod region (Gladkov's term of office was coming to an end), then early elections will be held in the Bryansk region.