Federation Council

• 1. Introduction

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  The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation sits in a building on Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street in Moscow, once the home of the Soviet State Building Agency. It is Russia's upper house of parliament, and the chairman of that body holds the third-highest position in the entire country, behind only the president and prime minister. If both of those figures become incapacitated, the chairman becomes acting president.

  That institutional weight was not always there. The Council was born out of violence, drafted into existence after tanks bombarded the White House of Russia in October 1993. The questions that shaped it are still alive: Who should speak for Russia's vast, diverse territories? Can such a body be independent from the Kremlin? And what happens when a reform meant to modernize governance instead becomes a tool to consolidate power?

• 2. Born From Crisis

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  On the 21st of September 1993, President Boris Yeltsin issued Presidential Decree No. 1400, a document that effectively dissolved the Congress of People's Deputies and scrapped the constitutional reform process then underway. The Congress had grown deeply hostile to Yeltsin's economic policies and his plans to replace the Soviet-era 1978 Russian SFSR Constitution. Rather than negotiate, Yeltsin ordered the legislature disbanded.

  What followed was not a clean transfer of power. After days of escalating defiance from both sides, Yeltsin ordered the Russian army to bombard and storm the White House of Russia between the 2nd and the 4th of October 1993. The Congress was crushed. Yeltsin then drafted a new constitution that concentrated executive authority, giving the president broad powers over prime ministerial appointments, veto overrides, and an executive security council.

  The new constitution called for a bicameral Federal Assembly: a State Duma as the lower house, and a Federation Council as the upper. Yeltsin had briefly created a Federation Council in July 1993 to gather regional representatives behind an earlier constitutional draft, excluding Chechnya. That provisional body became the template for the permanent institution written into the new constitution.

• 3. The First Elections

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  Presidential Decree No. 1626, taking effect from the 11th of October 1993, laid out the procedure for electing the new Council through a majority system. A companion decree, No. 1846, issued the 6th of November 1993, refined the rules for those first elections.

  To run as a candidate, a person needed at least two percent of their region's population to sign in support, or a minimum of 25,000 signatures, whichever figure was higher. Yeltsin established this threshold through Decree No. 1628, also on the 11th of October, and it had a practical effect: it helped existing territorial elites keep their footing in national politics as the old structures collapsed around them.

  The first elections were held on the 12th of December 1993, running simultaneously with State Duma elections and the public referendum on the new constitution itself. Senators elected that day would serve a single term of two years before new elections in 1995. That first council, operating from 1994 to 1996, remains the only Federation Council ever directly elected by the Russian public.

• 4. Governors in the Chamber

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  When the first elected term expired in 1995, legislators used a gap in the constitution to transform how the Council was filled. The constitution did not specify that senators had to be elected. Regional executives took advantage of that silence, and by 1995 governors could sit in the Federation Council in an ex officio capacity, holding their regional posts at home while simultaneously occupying seats in Moscow.

  The arrangement turned the Council into a lobby for regional interests. While the State Duma conducted the more visible debates on national policy during this period, the Council became a venue for governors to compete for federal attention and resources. Parliamentary immunity was a significant perk: Article 98 of the constitution shields all Council members from arrest, detainment, and searches.

  Vladimir Shumeyko chaired the Council from the 13th of January 1994 through the 23rd of January 1996, when Yegor Stroyev took the position and held it until December 2001. Those years marked the era when the dual senator-governor arrangement was most deeply embedded in the Council's identity.

• 5. Putin's Restructuring

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  Vladimir Putin's resignation-prompted ascension to the presidency, following Yeltsin's departure on the 31st of December 1999, brought immediate pressure on the Council. Within his first months in office in 2000, Putin proposed legislation that would strip governors of their Council seats. Regional leaders could still designate councillors, but they could no longer sit in the chamber personally.

  The Council resisted fiercely. Senators understood that losing their Moscow presence meant losing parliamentary immunity, losing direct access to federal politics, and losing the comfortable life the capital offered. Putin pressed back hard. The State Duma threatened to override a Council veto, and Putin himself threatened to open federal criminal investigations against regional governors. Faced with those combined pressures, the Council backed down and supported the reform in July 2000.

  A wave of Kremlin-aligned senators filled the vacated seats with Putin's backing. The last of the dual senator-governors rotated out of office in early 2002. Then, following the Beslan school hostage crisis in September 2004, Putin went further, proposing that regional governors be appointed by the president rather than directly elected. Because laws tied the composition of the Council to the executives of regional governments, that change gave the executive branch another lever over who sat in the upper house.

• 6. Structure and Membership

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  As of the current composition, Russia's 89 federal subjects each send two senators to the Council, for a total of 178 senators. That count includes two territories annexed in 2014 and four more annexed in 2022, whose status is not recognized by the international community. The 89 subjects include 24 republics, 48 oblasts, nine krais, three federal cities, four autonomous okrugs, and one autonomous oblast.

  Beyond territorial representatives, the constitution allows for up to 30 additional senators from the Russian Federation at large, of whom up to seven may serve for life. Former presidents may also serve as life senators, though no such life senators currently hold seats.

  For a law to pass the Federation Council, more than half of the 178 senators must vote in favor. Federal constitutional laws require a three-fourths majority. When the Council vetoes a State Duma bill, both chambers must form a Conciliation Committee to draft a compromise. A two-thirds majority of Duma deputies can override a Council veto. In 2007, an amendment required that a senator must have lived in the territory they represent for at least ten years before taking a seat.

• 7. Powers and Committees

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  The Federation Council holds a distinctive set of powers that belong to it alone. Among them: approving presidential decrees on martial law and states of emergency, authorizing the use of Russian armed forces outside the country's borders, declaring presidential elections, and impeaching the president. The Council also confirms the president's nominations of judges to the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Arbitration Court, as well as the Prosecutor General.

  Sixteen committees and seven commissions carry out the legislative work. Their scope runs from foreign affairs and defence to food and agricultural policy, northern territories and indigenous minorities, and natural monopolies. Committee leadership is determined by the Council Chairman.

  Valentina Matviyenko has chaired the Council since the 21st of September 2011, becoming the first woman to hold the position. Before her, Sergey Mironov held the chairmanship from the 5th of December 2001 until the 18th of May 2011, and it was during Mironov's tenure, in 2002, that parliamentary groups were formally forbidden, ending formal party factionalism on the Council floor. Senators remain affiliated with political parties but are officially asked to leave that affiliation outside the chamber.