By the end of March, Yakutia’s parliament, the Il Tumen, is expected to decide whether to strip 45-year-old lawmaker Aleksandr Ivanov of his seat. The trigger was his inclusion in the “foreign agents” register on February 27, 2026. Ivanov is also being accused of sympathizing with Yakutia’s separation from Russia, although he previously said he had not called for separatism.
Attention to his remarks first arose after an interview recorded in 2024 with blogger Dzhem Kyran. In that conversation, Ivanov reflected on the freedom of peoples and said the Sakha people had not yet “matured” for such a future. In August 2025, the interview drew notice from Russian political Telegram channels. Ivanov said the main point of the discussion was that there was no separatism in Yakutia.
Ivanov was elected to the Il Tumen from the New People party and had previously served as mayor of Nyurba. After the scandal, he was expelled from the party faction but kept his parliamentary seat. He was publicly condemned by both party leader Alexey Nechayev and Sardana Avksentyeva.
A second wave of accusations began in February 2026, when Ivanov posted a video from Kazakhstan filmed near the Independence Monument. In it, he spoke about language, history, and the right to control the lands of one’s ancestors. After that, lawmakers from United Russia and A Just Russia asked the Interior Ministry, prosecutors, and the Justice Ministry to review his statements.
According to activist Vilyuya Choynova, the “foreign agent” designation was a form of pressure over Ivanov’s public comments on the rights of the Sakha people, the status of the language, and the future of the republic, and his trip to Kazakhstan and international contacts may have accelerated the decision.
In Almaty, Ivanov took part in a seminar on the Turkic world at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and met with university officials. His case unfolded amid an ongoing dispute over amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Sakha adopted in October 2025. Those changes reduced the powers of local self-government and weakened the republic’s control over diamond extraction. Ivanov opposed the amendments and filed a complaint with prosecutors over alleged procedural violations.
According to the newspaper’s sources, pressure has also affected other critics of the reform: lawmaker Vladimir Poskachin was sentenced in an ammunition case, while a schoolteacher and blogger Afanasy Maksimov were fined for posts against the constitutional changes. Experts interviewed by Novaya Gazeta Europe say the case reflects a broader process of curbing regional autonomy in Russia.