Putin Sends Ex-Belgorod Governor to Abkhazia as Ambassador

The Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin has appointed former Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov as Russia’s ambassador to the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia, which is recognized by most countries as part of Georgia.

According to Russian investigative outlet Astra, the appointment was confirmed on Friday, following earlier reporting of Gladkov’s resignation on May 13, alongside Bryansk governor Alexander Bogomaz, with Putin naming Major General Alexander Shuvaev as acting governor of Belgorod and Yegor Kovalchuk to lead Bryansk. Both governors received the Order of Alexander Nevsky shortly after leaving office.

“He is the kind of person who could not just hand over the region and walk away – he carries things through to the end,” Astra reported, citing BBC Russian service’s sources close to Gladkov, noting that the former governor had shown no intention of stepping down and was still preparing for a future election campaign as of late March.

Shuvaev’s record in Ukraine

Shauvaev, now running the Belgorod region, led the 1st Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade of the 1st Donetsk Army Corps during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a unit that drew significant scrutiny when his appointment was announced.

After speaking with former members of the unit alongside their families, Astra reported that the brigade ran an unlawful detention site inside a shuttered factory in Makiivka, where servicemen were physically abused and had weights fastened to their legs.

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Russian-installed authorities are now granted the power to restrict freedom of movement, halt the operations of enterprises, and carry out forced evacuations.

Reportedly, wounded troops and others who had left their posts were forced back into combat regardless of their condition. Soldiers from Irkutsk Oblast described being treated as disposable, and those who filed complaints about mistreatment within military unit 41680 were handcuffed for days before being sent to the front.

Family members of soldiers who served there called it the “Bermuda Triangle” – a reference to how many soldiers went in and never returned.

For his command of the brigade, Shuvaev was named a Hero of Russia and received three Orders of Courage. Before taking the Belgorod post, he joined the Kremlin’s “Time of Heroes” program in 2025.

Gladkov reportedly did not want to resign

Gladkov maintained strong approval numbers throughout his tenure, despite a string of public setbacks, according to Astra citing Nikita Parmenov, editor-in-chief of Russian outlet Pepel, who described him as a rare regional official who residents felt was genuinely accessible.

He held regular social media live streams, showed up personally at utility emergencies and was a familiar face in local public spaces.

Astra reported his relationship with the Defense Ministry as consistently strained, with BBC Russian Service’s sources saying Gladkov challenged military officials directly at internal meetings, arguing the region had been abandoned without adequate air defenses.

“We are here on our own,” he reportedly told military officials – and those confrontations, sources note, occasionally produced results.

Belgorod: a region Putin has left behind

Belgorod, a Russian city roughly 25 miles from the Ukrainian border, has lived under near-constant drone and missile attacks for years while the rest of Russia carried on largely undisturbed.

Residents describe the sound of drones as the permanent backdrop to daily life, with fatal strikes on civilian infrastructure and residential areas reported on almost a weekly basis, with the regional budget collapsing under the strain of war, leaving social payments delayed and many businesses shut.

According to Meduza in January, Ukrainian strikes knocked out power for around 600,000 residents of the Belgorod region, causing what Gladkov described as a “catastrophic” energy crisis. While the city was without power or water, local media had reportedly been instructed not to cover the blackout at all, leaving residents to rely only on uncensored outlets for information.

By September 2025, the regional budget had just 200 million rubles (approximately $2.5 million) left to cover the rest of the year, amounting to roughly 0.1 percent of its annual budget.

“We have periods of calm, then periods of escalation,” Andrei, a resident of Belgorod city who works in construction, told Kyiv Post. “But the settlements that are right on the border… there it’s every day and doesn’t stop,” he said. 

Ukraine expands long-range drone campaign

The bigger shock than Belgorod, however, remains Moscow: the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, claimed June 18 that air defenses shot down just under 200 drones overnight. 

Russia said its air defenses intercepted 660 Ukrainian drones overnight into Friday in one of the largest drone attacks on the capital since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine,

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, drones were shot down over more than a dozen regions, including Moscow, occupied Crimea, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Azov, with at least 47 drones heading toward Moscow reportedly intercepted.