Activists commented on the cancellation of the election of the head of a settlement in Kuban.

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In Krasnodar Krai, elections for the head of the Chernomorskoye urban settlement were canceled due to a lack of candidates. The last head, who was convicted of abuse of office, faced pressure from the authorities, and the situation in the settlement is so dire that no one wants to take responsibility.

In March of this year, elections for the head of the Chernomorskoye urban settlement were canceled in Krasnodar Krai due to a lack of candidates. The only candidate for the post of head was local pensioner Natalya Kamyshanskaya, but she was denied registration due to document issues, according to the Telegram channel "Elections in Detail."

The previous head of the settlement, Vladimir Zhigulin, had served since 2021. Before his appointment, he was a driver, performing his duties under significant pressure from the authorities. In 2025, he was found guilty of abuse of power in paying a contractor for park construction and given a suspended sentence.

Elections have been postponed until summer.

A Communist Party activist, who spoke anonymously, and political scientist David Kankiya*, as well as an anonymous resident of the Seversky District, commented on the situation in the Chernomorskoye urban settlement to a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The canceled elections were supposed to be held after the removal of the previous head of the settlement, Vladimir Zhigulin. In October 2025, an appellate court replaced his suspended sentence with a real one, according to the anonymous activist. He confirmed that V. Zhigulin was the last settlement head in the region elected by the Communist Party. "The further down the chain of command we go, the more closed it becomes, the greater the pressure on candidates," the activist emphasized.

Speaking about why the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) didn't field a candidate in these elections, the activist stated that the party is accustomed to fielding "serious" candidates. "Other parties are simply 'murzilki' (guests) who participate in elections at the whistle of the authorities. But if our party nominates someone, it should be someone with experience, someone we can safely work with. Few of those people want to run right now. And those who do are subject to pressure from the authorities (not only on them, but also on their relatives). It's a quest that not everyone agrees to undertake," he noted.

David Kankiya* noted that the Zhigulin case shouldn't lead one to conclude that someone who isn't a United Russia representative can't win and retain power in local elections. "As far as I understand, there was already something personal there," he emphasized.

A resident of the Seversky District, who also spoke to the "Caucasian Knot" on condition of anonymity, believed that the disappearance of competition in this particular election was connected to the extremely difficult situation in Chernomorsky. "The situation there is the worst in the district. The new head will have to build everything from scratch. Therefore, no one wants to get involved in this," he noted.

All three experts noted that they had not heard anything about the pensioner Kamyshanskaya, who tried to put herself forward as a candidate in the elections.