[Olog-hai]

Yep, they “found ‘corruption’”, therefore centralize. Kinda like what Obama wanted to do with local police.

[billakay]

More than likely this centralization is temporary. Corrupt local institutions in Russia can rarely be fixed with new elections. The corruption tends to be so long lived and systemic that they usually will need outside (higher) oversight to root out and fix.

Don’t forget that a few years ago Putin suspended gubernatorial elections for the same reason (Constitutionally/legally, by the way, this isn’t an arbitrary process). It was indeed, temporary, and governors are back to being elected. Government in general has improved by leaps and bounds in Russia during the last 10 years. Municipalities are the final frontier, and many are already on notice.