CEPA Why Russia is So Resilient Outsiders have misread the Russian system and why it functions despite the pressures of wartime. By Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov December 11, 2025

 CEPA

Why Russia is So Resilient

Outsiders have misread the Russian system and why it functions despite the pressures of wartime.

By Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov

December 11, 2025

Putin’s system is often described as a hierarchy of power, a so-called power vertical, with direct centralized control flowing downwards from the Kremlin. In fact, the real operation of the system is more complicated.  

While maintaining political control, the Kremlin delegates substantial authority to lower tiers of government. This delegation is an important source of Russia’s flexibility in times of war against Ukraine. 

For many experts and practitioners, Russia’s remarkable resilience during the war with Ukraine came as a big surprise. The unprecedented wave of nearly 24,000 economic sanctions was expected to cripple the Russian economy by making it the most-embargoed country in the world. Instead, Russia’s businesses quickly spun around: trade with China, India, and the so-called Global South replaced closed Western channels, with natural resources providing the foundation for these new partnerships.  

Yet the flexibility of the market economy tells only part of the story of Russia’s unexpected resilience. 

Consider the country’s enormous size. For many Russians, their status as the world’s biggest country by land mass, at almost 6.6 million square miles, confirms its great-power status. However, enormous size means inter-regional disparities, as well as multi-ethnicity and multi-confessionalism inherited by Russia from its imperial past.  

Such a vast and diverse space would appear very difficult to control, especially since the war was bound to exacerbate splits and cleavages. And yet, the fact remains: the Kremlin has managed to maintain the loyalty of all Russian regions without exception. This is critically important because without their support, including the supply of weapons and manpower required, it would be impossible to continue the war. Decisions are made in Moscow, but the regions do the fighting.  

Throughout the war, there has not been a single case of disloyalty on the part of regional governors — all of them enthusiastically supported Putin, the war against Ukraine, the entire “patriotic agenda,” and even the transfer of additional areas of responsibility to their shoulders. Regional governors are essential to the regime’s legitimacy.  

So, how does the Kremlin secure their loyalty? 

The intuitive answer might be total control, including a return to Soviet methods. Indeed, Putin’s vertical power structure does echo Soviet practices, but with crucial differences in execution. These stem from the differing nature of the two systems: The Soviet Union was a party-based regime, while Putin’s Russia operates through one man’s personal authority. Where the Soviets deployed comprehensive ideological control through Communist Party structures, Putin employs a more selective mechanism of elite management.  

In addition, unlike the Soviet command economy, which demanded central control over most economic activity, Putin’s model operates within a market framework, permitting significant economic autonomy while maintaining political centralization. This separation of political and economic control marks a fundamental break with Soviet practice, where the two were inseparable. 

Putin’s central–regional model has achieved equilibrium through an unusual bargain: complete political centralization paired with relative economic freedom. The presidential administration doesn’t attempt to control every gubernatorial action, an impossible but unnecessary task.  

Instead, it demands specific deliverables: voter turnout figures, votes for Putin and United Russia, and support for Kremlin-backed candidates. Governors must recruit contract soldiers, fulfill obligations to military families, and deliver periodic speeches about Russian greatness and Western decline. Beyond these requirements, governors operate with considerable autonomy, monitored only for deviations from Kremlin standards.  

The federal government has established an expanding set of criteria for evaluating gubernatorial effectiveness, with the “level of trust in authorities” serving as the primary metric. This key indicator encompasses both decreased regional protest activity and increased youth patriotism. While the Presidential Administration monitors these, the federal government oversees all other metrics.  

These additional criteria are secondary, and partial compliance rarely results in significant consequences for incumbent governors. But governors, like federal officials and city mayors, work under constant threat of dismissal and criminal prosecution (the main reason being alleged corruption). It was reported in August that 99 senior officials at the federal and local levels had faced criminal proceedings, and that such prosecutions had become much more common since the all-out war began. These red lines are well-recognized and accepted by regional governors.  

Crucially, this model makes the delegation of additional powers a risk-free policy from the Kremlin’s standpoint. Since governors pose no political threat, granting them operational authority enhances regional management without endangering central political control. Regional governors inhabit a cage —but it’s a spacious one that doesn’t constrain their administrative functions. At relatively low cost, Moscow secures loyal and effective governors for wartime, while policing their behavior with the threat of imprisonment and disgrace. The model achieves compliance without extensive resources because it doesn’t seek uniformity across all levels of society, only where it matters most. 

Under what conditions could this model erode? Some believe that discontent “from below” (from the regions) and a localized desire to reconsider their relationship with the center could undermine the system.  

However, these authors see no evidence of this. Regional governors, like Moscow, are interested in preserving the current model. The model could be undermined — and ultimately collapse — only if Moscow were to experience significant and prolonged weakening, causing the regions to stop relying on the center and switch to a strategy of survival using their own resources. This happened in the 1990s and could happen again after Putin.  

Irina Busygina is a Research Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.  

Mikhail Filippov is a Professor of Comparative Politics at the Political Science Department at the State University of New York (Binghamton, NY). 

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.