The State Duma received seven new districts for new regions

On April 25, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) approved a new scheme of 225 single -mandate districts, from which half of the State Duma deputies in the 2026 parliamentary elections will be elected. The regions of the Donbass and Novorossiya together received seven single -mandate, also in addition to one district went to Moscow, the Moscow Region and the Krasnodar Territory. Now the GOSIDUDDD should be approved by the new cutting scheme.

As expected, the new regions will receive a total of seven majority districts in the State Duma: three deputies will represent the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), two – the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and one at a time – Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions. Also, one new district will appear in Moscow (now there will be 16 of them), the Moscow region (12) and the Krasnodar Territory (9). They will lose their deputy Rostov (6), Volgograd, Voronezh regions and Altai Territory (3), as well as Transbaikalia, Ivanovo, Kaluga, Smolensk, Tambov and Tomsk regions (each of these subjects will be represented by one deputy in the next convocation).

When determining the borders of the districts, the average norm of the representative office was used (the total number of registered voters is divided by 225), said Deputy Chairman of the CEC Nikolai Bulaev. As of January 1, 2025, there were 111.6 million voters in Russia, thus, the norm amounted to 495.8 thousand people.

18 regions that do not reach this bar are guaranteed to receive one mandate.

In the rest, the number of districts is determined by the private when dividing the number of voters into the norm of representation. The determination of the borders of the districts within the region also occurs on the basis of the norm of representation, but calculated already on the basis of local data. Voters abroad will vote only in the federal district, they were not taken into account in this scheme.

In most regions, the so -called petal principle of cutting will be preserved, when large cities or their units and rural territories are located within the boundaries of the same district, follows from the speeches of the chairmen of regional election commission, representing new demarcation schemes. Among the criteria that they were guided by the determination of borders are compliance with the norm of representation, the convenience of transport communication within the district and preserving the boundaries of municipalities.

For example, the territory of Donetsk will be divided between the three districts – Donetsk, Gorlovsky (it will include key Kiev and Kuibyshevsky districts of the administrative center) and Makeevsky, said the chairman of the DPR election committee Vladimir Vysotsky. And in the LPR 11 urban districts and 17 municipal ones will be divided between two – Lugansk and Alchevsky, reported by the chairman of the republican commission Marianne Sumskaya.

In the Altai Territory, where in 15 years the number of voters has decreased by 9.2%, now there will be three districts – Barnaul, Biysky and Slavgorod, and the administrative center will be divided between them in approximately equal proportions, explained the deputy head of the regional election commission Yevgeny Suvorov. According to the chairman of the Moscow Region Ilya Berezkin, a new Mytishchi district will appear in the suburbs, which will include Mytishchi, Korolev and Dolgoprudny. As a result, the main changes will affect the Balashikhinsky, Dmitrovsky, Lyubertsy and Serpukhov districts bordering them. In other areas, they will be minimal. In Moscow, as the chairman of the cityizbirkom, Olga Kirillova, said, will be created by the new Solntsevo district, which will include the districts of Dorogomilovo, Ramenki, Ochakovo-Matveevskoye, Vernadsky Avenue, Troparevo-Nikulino, as well as Solntsevo and Novo-Odedelkino. Accordingly, the change in borders is planned in the Khovrinsky, Novomoskovsky, Leningrad and Tushino districts.

Nikolai Bulaev recalled that the previous cutting scheme was approved in 2015. Its validity period is ten years. At the same time, now the State Duma is considering a bill that will reduce the term of to five years. The commissions believe that this corresponds to modern realities: « It is necessary to respond to a change in the number of voters in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation dynamically. »

Anastasia Root