Russia holds first gubernatorial elections since 2004

Russia is holding more than 4,800 local elections on Unified Voting Day on Sunday, with voters directly electing their regional leaders in five of the country’s 83 regions for the first time in eight years, RIA Novosti reports.

Russia’s return to direct gubernatorial elections starts with the Amur Region in the Russian Far East, the Bryansk and Ryazan Regions in central Russia, the Belgorod Region in the country’s west and the Novgorod Region in the country’s north.

President Vladimir Putin, who returned to the Kremlin in May, scrapped direct gubernatorial elections in 2004 in a move seen as a rollback of post-Soviet freedoms. But the then-President Dmitry Medvedev, who is now Russia’s prime minister, brought back direct elections of governors as part of a raft of reforms pledged after massive nationwide anti-Kremlin protests earlier this year.