Five days after the vote, FSB arrests leading election expert
Aleksandr Kynev, who is considered one of Russia’s leading experts on election processes, faces up to 20 years in prison. The detention comes only few days after the State Duma election.
The Perovsky District Court in Moscow has remanded political scientist Aleksandr Kynev in pre-trial detention on charges of illegal drug trafficking. He is accused of the illegal production, sale or distribution of drugs on a large scale. The offence carries a sentence of between 10 and 20 years in prison.
Kynev denies any guilt.
The political scientist is one of Russia’s best-known experts on elections and regional politics. In 2024, he published the book Who and How Governs Russia’s Regions. Until 2019, he taught at the Higher School of Economics, and until 2012 he headed the analytical department of the Golos movement, which monitored elections. In February 2026, Kynev was added to the register of “foreign agents”.
Colleagues of the political scientist consider it noteworthy that he was arrested under a criminal rather than a “political” charge.
“Aleksandr is a brilliant political strategist. He was definitely actively advising one of the politicians in these pseudo-elections,” political scientist Ivan Preobrazhensky says to the Barents Observer. “Everyone knows that he actively defended the New People party, which was created and overseen by the team of Sergei Kiriyenko, deputy chief of staff of the presidential administration. Most likely, there is a confrontation between the FSB and Kiriyenko’s team, and the FSB side that is prevailing is punishing its opponents in this way. Unfortunately, Alexander found himself inside this system. And he is being imprisoned not as an opposition figure, but as part of the system.”
The latest post on Kynev’s Facebook page was published on the morning of 23 September. He wrote that he was feeling very tired after working “to the point of exhaustion” monitoring the State Duma elections. The political scientist commented extensively on the elections and published an analytical report entitled Coordinated Competition, devoted to the selection of candidates and party lists in the regions.
“As you understand, nobody pays for all this expert and public activity except friends and readers. I need to lie down and recover mentally for at least a little while. So I’ll be writing a little less frequently in the near future – my internal batteries need recharging. Overall, during these three and a half months I managed to do a great deal, and I did it all on my own,” Kynev wrote.
Among other things, the political scientist argued that without electoral fraud, turnout in the State Duma election would probably have been around 40%, while United Russia’s result would have been up to 35%. In an interview with Veter, Kynev stressed that it had been “the most unfair and tightly regulated State Duma campaign”.
