The legal regulation established several types of local governments. A single-tier local government system operates in the territories of the two federal cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The system applies to the entire geographical area of the federal cities. According to the law, the territories that make up a federal city are called the intra-city territory of the federal city (Rus. внутригородская территория города федерального значения, vnutrigorodskaja territorija goroda federalnovo značenija). In the last two decades, the names ‘okrug’ (Eng. municipal district) or rayon (Eng. administrative district) have become common in federal cities. The capital is divided into districts, and the other federal city is divided into districts. Moscow is divided into 125 districts (Rus. район, rayon), and Saint Petersburg is divided into 111 districts (Rus. округ, okrug). The other state-forming factors, i.e. ‘subjects’ of the Russian Federation (republics, border regions, territories, autonomous regions and autonomous okrugs), except for their most sparsely populated areas, are divided into municipalities (Rus. поселение, poselenie). There are two types of municipalities. The most common are urban municipalities (Rus. городское поселение, gorodskoe poselenie) and rural municipalities (Rus. сельское поселение, sel’skoe poselenie). Municipalities consist of one or more territorially connected settlements. The territorial division of the subjects of the federation was determined by January 1, 2006. This was not done only in the case of the Chechen Republic and the Ingush Republic. Nearly 20 thousand rural municipalities, about 1800 urban municipalities, approximately 1800 municipal districts and more than 500 urban districts were created in the territory of the Russian Federation. When forming most of the municipal territorial units, the previous administrative-territorial division was taken into account. In those settlements where local-settlement governments operated before the 2003 Law on Local Self-Government, the previous title of settlement type was retained. However, the term ‘urban district’ may be misleading in this context, as it does not solely denote an urban-type settlementsthat stand out due to their size and significance, but also all single-level local governments that simultaneously perform municipal and district functions as urban districts. In sparsely populated areas, small villages are scattered at great distances from each other. In such cases, it is impossible to divide the villages into districts. A typical case is the Novaya Zemlya urban district (Rus. городской округ Новая Земля, gorodskoj okrug Novaya Zemlya). Its population totals approximately 2,700. This small population is practically located in a single settlement. The area belonging to this village, Belusya Guba, which means “beluga whale coast,” founded in 1897 (Novaya Zemlya itself), is almost the same as the area of Austria (83,000 km2), with a population of 1,972 in 2020. The area of the village is only 3 km2. The second case is the issue of agglomeration areas. In many places, the district area and the metropolitan area serving as the centre have been combined. The local-territorial self-government established in this way may bear the former name of the area and the type designation according to the 2003 law (such as the urban district of Ochinsky District (Rus. городской округ Охинский район, gorodskij okrug, Ochinskij rajon). The third special type of urban district is related to the circle of closed administrative-territorial units (Rus. закрытое административно-территориальное образование, zakrytoe administrativno-territorialnoe obrazovanie, abbr. ЗАТО). Here, it is worth mentioning the so-called closed cities of the Soviet Union, which were not allowed to be visited by foreign citizens, or even Soviet citizens, except with special permission. Closed administrative-territorial units are settlements engaged in military, military-industrial, or nuclear energy activities, which can only be visited under various restrictive measures. The 2003 law ordered the local government of these settlements to be automatically established as urban districts.3

The amendments of the 1993 Russian Constitution were adopted in January 2020 and were ratified by referendum in July 2020. These amendments also included some provisions for local governments. Regarding local-territorial governments, consolidation (unification) efforts were observed, modifying the local government system in the direction of a simple public law authority. In March 2021, the Venice Commission report confirmed that the legal status of the state-forming factors of the constitution, i.e. its subjects, geographical units, and local government bodies, was weakened by the constitutional amendment.4