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An ex-kickboxer preaching Orthodox traditions who has effectively banned abortion and declared war on alcohol: ultra-conservative governor Georgy Filimonov is the face of Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia’s Vologda region.<\/p>\n
Accused of authoritarianism and trampling women’s rights, Filimonov will represent the ruling United Russia party in this month’s tightly-controlled parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n
Some 450 kilometres (280 miles) north-west of Moscow, the 45-year-old nationalistic regional leader has built up a reputation for his outspoken views and made national headlines.<\/p>\n
In the historic city of Vologda, 31-year-old worker Artyom told AFP a joke was circulating in the neighbouring Yaroslavl region: “When people from Vologda come to us, it’s for alcohol, petrol or to get an abortion.”<\/p>\n
Filimonov has run the region since 2023, one of the social conservative officials promoted by the Kremlin during its more than four-year war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The 46-year-old bespectacled former kickboxing champion, with the build of a weightlifter, speaks Spanish and French and likes mixing with intellectuals.<\/p>\n
Russia, Filimonov said in June during a discussion with far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin, faces the double threat of “depopulation” and “alcohol genocide… orchestrated by our former foreign partners”.<\/p>\n
For Russia’s decades-long struggle with high levels of alcohol-related deaths, he blamed the West, which Moscow says is de-facto at war with Russia.<\/p>\n
– ‘Abortion tourism’ –<\/p>\n
His rhetoric echoes Putin, who lambasts the “decadent” West and warns of its “deleterious” influence on Russia — a “besieged” fortress where birth rates are at their lowest in 200 years.<\/p>\n
Filimonov hopes his hardline arguments will be enough to convince the region’s one million or so residents to join his conservative crusade.<\/p>\n
In his three years managing the region, to the alarm of women’s rights groups, he has severely restricted abortion access.<\/p>\n
Human Rights Watch calls it a “de-facto ban”.<\/p>\n
“There is no decree” banning abortion in Vologda, Irina Fainman, of the independent Emergency Contraceptive Stockpile Fund, told AFP.<\/p>\n
“It is being carried out by non-legislative means and through some sort of illegal measures,” Fainman added.<\/p>\n
“The governor’s administration is putting pressure on the region’s healthcare facilities,” she said, calling the measures “authoritarian and regressive”.<\/p>\n
While authorities say the ban is meant to improve birthrates, in reality it “only leads to abortion tourism”, Fainman said, with women travelling to other regions.<\/p>\n
Filimonov, however, has remained defiant, declaring at the start of the year that Vologda had “overcome depopulation”.<\/p>\n
Those most directly affected by his policies, however, find them hard to accept.<\/p>\n
Oksana — whose name has been changed — said she believed abortion should be a “personal matter”.<\/p>\n
Filimonov refused AFP’s request for an interview.<\/p>\n
– ‘Tonnes of bottles’ –<\/p>\n
The hardline governor has made fighting alcoholism the other pillar of his agenda.<\/p>\n
Unlike his campaign on abortion, the anti-alcohol drive is regulated by local law, with a ban on shops selling alcoholic drinks outside a two-hour window of 12:00-14:00 on weekdays.<\/p>\n
The restrictions have irked locals.<\/p>\n
AFP saw Nadezhda, 52, filling her shopping basket with bottles of “Chateau Rouge” — a Russian wine — in a supermarket in Vologda’s city centre.<\/p>\n
“Everyone is against” it, she said.<\/p>\n
The result? “We buy tonnes of bottles in a single go.”<\/p>\n
Some have questioned whether Filimonov’s extravagant measures are a show.<\/p>\n
But British historian James Pearce, who lives in Russia and edited a contribution by the governor to an anthology, said Filimonov “actually believes the things he says.”<\/p>\n
“It is not an act… He is a conservative person,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Filimonov erected a statue of Joseph Stalin in Vologda, heralding the Soviet dictator — responsible for widespread mass-killings and atrocities during his rule — as an “extraordinary personality”.<\/p>\n
While Filimonov’s style has worried even Putin supporters, the Kremlin has voiced no public objections.<\/p>\n
Moscow followed Vologda last year by also inaugurating a statue of Stalin in the capital’s metro.<\/p>\n
In this month’s parliamentary elections, Filimonov — like other Kremlin-backed officials — is guaranteed an easy victory, in the absence of any meaningful opposition.<\/p>\n
He is unlikely, however, to relinquish his control of Vologda for a seat in the State Duma — a popular practice known as the “locomotive”, when well-known candidates top the ballot paper, only to step aside in favour of a less famous colleague.<\/p>\n
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