Since 2024, branches of the Russia National Center have been opening across the country's regions on Putin's orders. According to the authorities, these venues are intended to promote the country's achievements and strengthen national identity. Instead, they take away spaces that local residents value and drain regional budgets of money that could otherwise be spent on solving local problems. The authorities have already spent at least 5.4 billion rubles on the construction and opening of four regional centers, according to 7x7 calculations.
A gift from VDNKh
On National Unity Day, November 4, 2023, the “Exhibition of Russia's Achievements” opened at VDNKh in Moscow by decree of Vladimir Putin. Eighty-nine territories, including annexed ones, as well as federal agencies and corporations, including Rosneft, Sber, Yandex, and VKontakte, presented their exhibits.
The regional stands looked sophisticated, featuring colorful costumes, designer merchandise, touchscreens, VR headsets, and robots. The authorities in Karelia enlisted 30 developers to create an AI avatar, Aino, a talking young woman based on a character from the Karelian-Finnish epic.
According to Sirena, the regions, government agencies, and the federal government spent 5.1 billion rubles on the exhibition. For example, Voronezh Oblast's participation cost 127 million rubles, while Tuva allocated 14 million rubles, more than the republic spent on building a cultural center in Kyzyl.
Putin visited the exhibition four times. A week before it ended, he ordered the creation of the Russia National Center in Moscow, followed by branches in every region of the country. Putin appointed Sergey Kirienko, first deputy chief of staff of the Presidential Administration, as head of the Russia National Center's organizing committee. Natalia Virtuozova, a former United Russia press secretary and vice governor of Moscow Oblast, was appointed CEO of its management company, the autonomous nonprofit organization Directorate of the Exhibition of Achievements “Russia.”
1. Russia – My History parks. Their creators describe them as the largest exhibition complex in the country. The network is run by the nonprofit Humanitarian Projects Foundation, headed by government official Ivan Esin. At the time of publication, the project had branches in 24 cities: Vladivostok, Pyatigorsk, Volgograd, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnodar, Makhachkala, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Perm, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, St. Petersburg, Saratov, Stavropol, Tyumen, Ufa, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Yakutsk, Chelyabinsk, Surgut, and Tver. According to Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov, the purpose of these multimedia history centers is to “create a unified worldview system throughout the country.” The parks’ content has repeatedly drawn criticism from historians and journalists.
2. Boiling Point is a network of coworking and training spaces launched by the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) and the National Technology Initiative (NTI). Since 2013, 180 Boiling Point spaces have opened across the country. They promote an image of a technologically sovereign and innovative Russia, linking young people’s career and entrepreneurial paths to state priorities. Through large-scale educational and networking events, Boiling Point spaces integrate participants into loyal professional communities and an ecosystem of government programs dominated by official rhetoric about patriotism, service to the Motherland, and support for the war in Ukraine.
According to Putin's vision, the Russia National Center is intended to preserve the country's heritage, showcase Russia's achievements, strengthen national identity, foster a sense of pride in the country, and develop professional skills among children and young people.
In practice, the National Center serves as a venue for officials, where regional heads deliver holiday addresses and meetings on cultural issues, lectures, forums, and educational events are held. The centers already operating in Primorsky Krai, Krasnoyarsk Krai, and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug host pro-government lecturers from the Russian Knowledge Society, performers from Moscow, and participants in the war in Ukraine.
The “Wedding Festival” and the “Family Values Lab,” a hub for media and cultural projects devoted to the family, are responsible for promoting so-called “traditional values” at the Russia National Center.
A separate section of the center's website is devoted to the multimedia project “What Does the Motherland Begin With?” The page features video and text responses from people answering the question in the project's title. At the bottom of the page, users can submit their own answers, which the organizers may then publish as part of the collection.
“The network of Russia centers addresses a task that is difficult to put directly on the agenda: replacing a lack of shared political identity with an abundance of shared aesthetic identity,” political scientist Dmitry Loboyko says. “When the federal structure has effectively been dismantled and regional political agency has been reduced to an administrative function, the question ‘What unites us?’ can no longer be addressed in substantive terms and instead demands a scenographic response. The center uses design to answer a question that the system can no longer address politically.”
“Another purpose [of opening the centers] is to standardize the narrative in the most literal sense. Using the same presentation format from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad turns regional history into a federal template. This is a logical continuation of what I call ‘Nomenklatura 2.0’: if a governor is no longer a political actor but an administrator tasked with meeting KPIs, then a region is not supposed to have a political voice of its own either, only an approved version of its culture,” Loboyko suggested.
The federal leadership of the Russia centers gave regional authorities one year to open the first five venues. According to Loboyko, the choice of pilot regions was pragmatic: the organizers looked at which regions had the necessary connections and infrastructure for such a facility.
The rush sparked disputes between activists and residents in some cities and local authorities. People questioned both the choice of locations and whether spending public money on a propaganda project was justified.
Vladivostok: propaganda replaces a beloved place from childhood
The first regional branch of the Russia National Center opened in Vladivostok. To make way for it, the authorities took over the building of the city's oceanarium, which had operated for 35 years. It was home to fish from the Pacific Ocean and waters of the Russian Far East, as well as reptiles and tropical butterflies.
The oceanarium administration notified employees of the closure and layoffs just a few days in advance. Those who lost their jobs gathered outside the building on January 30, 2025, hoping to record an appeal to local residents and officials. Security forces stopped the protest before it even began: police, Rosgvardia, and emergency services arrived at the oceanarium. Police issued the facility's administrator a formal warning against violating the law on public gatherings. Thirteen specialists lost their jobs as a result of the layoffs.
“Are we supposed to just release the fish into the river?” oceanarium employees said, worried about what would happen to the animals. A relocation plan emerged at the last minute: municipal authorities ordered the aquatic animals to be transferred to the Primorsky Oceanarium on Russky Island, 30 kilometers from Vladivostok. A sturgeon that had lived at the city oceanarium for 34 years was temporarily relocated to a fish farm.
Vladivostok residents questioned why the oceanarium had to be closed and whether spending 458.5 million rubles from the regional budget on renovating the building was justified.
“As a child, I loved the oceanarium and the animal exhibition, and my young daughter loves it too, even more than the one on Russky Island. Young children get really tired at that [island oceanarium], while this one was perfect for just dropping in for a little while to look at the fish. It's such a shame,” a local resident wrote in the comments under a VL.ru post about the oceanarium's closure.
Alexander Lebedev, a participant in the war in Ukraine, recorded a video appeal to Primorsky Krai Governor Oleg Kozhemyako opposing the closure of the oceanarium. “Let's remember the volunteers who, at the cost of their own health, rushed to clean up the fuel spill on the Azov coast. I'm sure they grew up visiting places similar [to the old oceanarium], or even smaller ones, such as little nature centers,” he said.
The authorities ignored Vladivostok residents, and the Russia center opened in the capital of Primorsky Krai on September 7, 2025.
Krasnoyarsk: patriotism instead of clean air
The Krasnoyarsk administration chose Galereya Enisey, an exhibition center on the city's embankment, to house the National Center. Part of the complex was purchased from the International Financial Club bank for 900 million rubles. Journalists noted that the property had previously been listed for 760 million rubles. Ultimately, opening the Russia National Center, including the purchase of the building, cost the Krasnoyarsk regional budget at least 1.6 billion rubles.
“This money could have been spent on our environment. We constantly have this ‘black sky,’ which is why I'm very worried about the people who live here and my children's future,” local resident and miner Sergey Pankratov told TVK.
By “black sky,” Pankratov was referring to dense smog in which harmful substances accumulate in the air and adversely affect people's health. Since 2012, the phenomenon has been most closely associated with Krasnoyarsk, where authorities declare periods of adverse weather conditions throughout the year, even in summer.
In August 2026, the Krasnoyarsk branch of the Russia National Center hosted the International Forum of Indigenous Peoples, held as part of the Year of the Peoples of Russia. Political scientist Dmitry Loboyko noted that there is a political logic behind the National Center's interest in ethnic cultures: “The less real political agency the regions retain, the more loudly the state speaks about their ethnocultural diversity.”
According to Loboyko, “museumified ethnicity” becomes a form of remembrance of diversity in a system where genuine diversity is no longer permitted.
Ryazan: ideology instead of a forest
The Ryazan Oblast authorities allocated part of the city's forest park for the construction of the Russia National Center. According to the local branch of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments (VOOPIiK), the new building cost the regional budget 1.3 billion rubles.
“This forest park is very dear to me. My parents and the parents of people my age planted trees here. For me, and many others, this is a sacred place! There was a field where model airplanes were flown and a soccer field where schools held competitions. That scoundrel [Governor Pavel] Malkov destroyed all of it!” activist Mikhail Shestakov told 7x7.
The developer, EcoTech LLC, cut down some of the trees at the construction site. Members of VOOPIiK's Ryazan branch reported this to the prosecutor's office, which suggested that both the construction itself and the tree felling may have been illegal. A few months later, EcoTech director Stanislav Bezruchko became a suspect in a criminal case involving especially large-scale fraud.
In July 2026, Ivan Kadtsyn, the architect behind the Russia National Center project in Ryazan and director of the Novosibirsk Research Institute SPC, submitted a complaint to the Federal Security Service (FSB) over violations in the center's construction. According to Kadtsyn, the contractor drove fewer foundation piles than required, improperly assembled the floor structures, and failed to apply a fire-protective coating to the structural steel supports.
“Officials are deliberately turning a blind eye to the most serious violations, allowing a facility designed to accommodate large numbers of people to be built without as-built documentation or construction oversight. This is no longer negligence or even connivance. It is official misconduct that poses a real threat to people's lives and health,” Kadtsyn wrote to the authorities.
Construction of the Russia National Center in Ryazan. Photo: VOOPIiK Ryazan / VK
Shestakov drew attention to Kadtsyn's complaint and staged a solo picket in the forest park on August 26, holding a sign that read, “Building at Risk of Collapse!” He believes the building should be declared an unauthorized construction and demolished, those responsible should be made to reimburse the construction costs, and the future of the site should then be decided publicly. In his view, the green space should instead have sports facilities for people of different ages.
Despite the protests and the postponement of the opening date, the federal Russia National Center announced that it would hold in-person events in Ryazan in November 2026.
Kaliningrad: spending the budget instead of preserving architecture
Kaliningrad authorities allocated the site of the unfinished House of Soviets for the construction of the Russia National Center. The modernist project had been abandoned because of the economic crisis that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reconstructing it would have been expensive, so since 2020, local authorities had been gradually preparing residents for the building's demolition.
In 2023, Kaliningrad heritage activists Sergey Pozdnyakov, Alexander Fedorov, and Evgeny Mosinenko launched a petition calling for the preservation of this example of modernist architecture. The activists collected 1,000 signatures. Despite their efforts, officials ordered the building demolished in 2024.
Governor Aleksey Besprozvannykh had suggested that a park and “small-scale development” could replace the House of Soviets. However, in March 2026, the authorities made the final decision to build the Russia National Center on the site.
Speaking at a meeting of the Council for Culture in April, Vyacheslav Genne, a member of the Kaliningrad Union of Architects, urged the authorities to consider other sites for the center and hold an architectural design competition.
“As far as I know, Kaliningrad's Land Use and Development Rules require a competition to be held. Decisions concerning the central part of the city are made following an architectural competition. Accordingly, the first step should be to analyze the transport situation, then develop an architectural concept, formalize it in the site planning documentation, make any necessary changes to the urban development plan and the Land Use and Development Rules, and so on,” he noted.
According to journalists at Novy Kaliningrad, the regional leadership was unhappy with the architect's remarks because complying with these requirements would extend the project's timeline and reduce the chances of securing federal funding.
Expropriation of the future
The Russia National Center is integrated into a broader system of indoctrinating children. They visit the Moscow branch to attend the Young Tour Guide School and the Young Journalist School, or take part in these programs online. In 2025, journalism lectures were given by the project's director, Natalia Virtuozova, Channel One presenter Ekaterina Andreeva, and pro-war correspondent Alexander Sladkov.
The National Center has a TikTok account. Videos about Russia's landmarks receive no more than 2,000 views. In the comments under the few videos featuring schoolchildren who have visited the National Centers, users criticize the visiting arrangements: admission requires advance registration, and tickets cannot be obtained on site.
“The oceanarium and terrarium that used to be there were still better than whatever this is now,” a TikTok user wrote under a video about the center in Vladivostok.
In terms of format, the Russia National Center is well designed, political scientist Dmitry Loboyko believes. Its speakers, interactive elements, and presentation methods reflect how young audiences consume content. But the infrastructure itself caters only to an already loyal audience and is unlikely to attract skeptics.
“The center does not so much create new supporters as retain those who were never inclined to ask questions in the first place,” Loboyko concluded. “The paradox is that the larger and more technologically advanced this kind of infrastructure becomes, the more obvious its function is. And an obvious function is difficult to reconcile with the organic trust that indoctrination is designed to foster. It works as a system for maintaining loyalty, not a system of persuasion.”