Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov may step down before regional elections scheduled for September 2026, the Russian business daily Vedomosti reported, citing three sources close to the presidential administration.
One source told Vedomosti that Gladkov’s possible departure is connected in part to his health, without specifying the nature of the concern.
Public support for the authorities in the Belgorod region is “not the best” due to a decline in quality of life compared to earlier times, a source close to the presidential administration said, adding that it would be “logical to rotate” the governor “if there is such an opportunity.” Another source said Gladkov’s approval ratings are high, but given the difficult situation in the region and the fact that he has already served one term, he “could indeed be rotated.”
“Gladkov’s further career trajectory is being discussed,” one of the sources said.
Leadership changes are also expected in two other regions: the Bryansk region, which Alexander Bogomaz has headed since 2015, and Dagestan, where Sergei Melikov has served as regional head since 2020. In Dagestan’s case, the sources said, the question is “how to change the regional head amid a flooding situation.”
Direct gubernatorial elections are scheduled for September 2026 in seven regions, Vedomosti noted: the Belgorod, Penza, Ulyanovsk, and Tver regions, as well as Chechnya, Tuva, and Mordovia.
Gladkov, 57, has served as governor of the Belgorod region since 2021. He was born in the Penza region and worked in the administration of his hometown of Zarechye, becoming its head in 2009, before serving from 2016 as deputy governor of Sevastopol for internal affairs.
Gladkov took over as governor of the Belgorod region after the departure of Yevgeny Savchenko, who had held the post for a record 27 years. In the 2021 election, Gladkov received 78.79 percent of the vote. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Belgorod region effectively became a frontline region. Gladkov regularly reports on attacks and shelling on his social media, travels extensively around the region, and periodically criticizes certain government decisions — for example, after communications outages he said that the region’s “white list” system was not working properly, and that missile threat notifications were not coming through on the Max messaging app.
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