Military investigators from Moscow came to arrest the Mayor of Pechenga
Leader of the municipality located along the border with Norway and Finland Andrei Kuznetsov has been dismissed and detained.
Only a few days after Murmansk Governor Andrei Chibis visited the Pechenga area to inspect the heating situation, local Mayor Andrei Kuznetsov has literally been put out in the cold.
Military investigators are reported to have travelled to the far northern municipality and arrested the mayor.
Reportedly, the official reason for the arrest is Kuznetsov’s failure to provide heating to local towns.
The Pechenga area houses hundreds of military families and many of them have filed multiple complaints after temperatures in their homes this winter have dropped dramatically.
In Sputnik and Pechenga, two of the military bases in the district, families in December reported indoor temperatures of only about 10 °C. The same happened in early January.
The two brigades in Pechenga have sent thousands of men to occupied Ukrainian land as part of Russia’s war of aggression. Many hundreds of them have been killed.
Details about the arrest and charges against Mayor Kuznetsov are sparse. But people involved in the case have reportedly confirmed the involvement of the Chief Military Investigating Department in Moscow.
According to Murmansk Governor Chibis, the mayor of Pechenga and his team "have made a number of serious mistakes."
On February 10 Chibis announced that he had dismissed Kuznetsov and replaced him with Aleksei Penshin, the former mayor of Zaozersk.
In a meeting, Chibis told Penshin that Pechenga is "a very important and complicated municipality."
The housing situation for military families is an issue of serious concern for regional authorities. Federal authorities have allocated major sums for renovation and upgrades, but the housing situation remains dire.
"We have a renovation program for the ZATOs [closed military towns] and in all our garrisons, including in Pechenga Okrug, upgrades of existing building complexes are underway and new buildings are being constructed," Chibis told Penshin.
"The area must be actively developed, both the military and industrial potential. And we have to be considerate in our interaction with locals, with people," he added.
Penshin responded that he "understands the scale of the responsibility entrusted to him, and that he will make every effort to reach a fundamentally new level."
The 40-year-old Aleksei Penshin has been mayor of Zaozersk, a closed military town with a submarine base, since early 2022. Prior to that, he was in charge of the election commission in Murmansk region. He originally comes from the city of Dmitrov in the Moscow region. He studied public management and administration at the University of Petrozavodsk in Karelia, and moved to the Kola Peninsula in 2010.
His predecessor Andrei Kuznetsov had served as mayor since November 2020. Prior to that he served as head of the local government in Zapolyarny, deputy mayor of Pechenga and deputy head of the local government in Nikel.
Kuznetsov was re-elected by the municipal council in late 2025. At that time, his candidacy was supported by Governor Chibis.
