Lawmakers are ‘watching with popcorn’ as a turf war erupts in Russia’s parliament. Leonid Slutsky lost his committee chairmanship — but refuses to vacate his office.

Russia’s new State Duma is facing its first internal power struggle, a standoff between LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky and United Russia’s Pyotr Tolstoy. Meduza learned of the standoff from a source close to the Duma administration’s leadership and from an LDPR member. A political strategist who works with the Presidential Administration’s political bloc and with Russia’s systemic parties confirmed the account.The dispute arose because Slutsky wanted to keep his post as head of the international affairs committee, but at the Kremlin’s initiative, lawmakers named Tolstoy the Duma’s top “international affairs” official.A source close to the Duma administration’s leadership told Meduza that Slutsky has refused to vacate the office in the Troekurov Chambers reserved for the committee chairman. His reception office will also remain in the same building.The chambers, a 17th-century architectural landmark, sit in the Duma’s inner courtyard on Georgievsky Lane. The building was constructed as the estate of the boyars, the princes Troekurov, and later housed a rental apartment building and a hotel. During the Soviet era, the chambers held the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture. Renovation began on the building in the 1980s but halted due to the collapse of the USSR, leaving the chambers in disrepair.Throughout that period, the building remained on the books of the Presidential Property Management Department. In the 2010s, authorities transferred the architectural landmark to the Duma, and it was finally restored in 2019. The new restoration phase envisioned housing the international affairs and CIS affairs committees in the chambers from the outset. The chambers were specifically outfitted with rooms for receiving international delegations visiting the Duma.By refusing to vacate the Troekurov Chambers, Slutsky wants to “complicate life” for the committee’s new chairman, United Russia’s Pyotr Tolstoy, according to Meduza’s sources.As compensation, Tolstoy received offices in the Duma’s main building that previously belonged to LDPR’s deputy speakers. Those posts were once held by Igor Lebedev, the son of party founder Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Boris Chernyshov, deputy speaker of the previous session.A former LDPR member told Meduza that the office and surrounding rooms were “luxurious,” citing the quality of the renovation. He said LDPR faction meetings used to be held there.However, a source in the administration said the offices have a “serious drawback” for Tolstoy:They’re located in the Duma’s main building. That means that to take part in committee events, Tolstoy would have to move to another building or push to get the committee space closer to himself. But that’s practically impossible.Slutsky’s attachment to the office in the Troekurov Chambers has another reason: Vladimir Resin, the former deputy mayor of Moscow for construction and the Duma’s oldest lawmaker, headed the working group during the 2019 restoration.Meduza previously reported that rumors have long circulated in the Duma that Slutsky is Resin’s illegitimate son and calls him “dad.” When the authors of that article asked Slutsky in 2019 whether he was really Resin’s son, he said that Resin was “like a father” to him.A source close to the Duma administration’s leadership said Pyotr Tolstoy is unhappy with Slutsky’s conduct, “especially since until recently they had an almost friendly relationship.” The Russian investigative outlet Proekt has reported that Slutsky, Tolstoy, and members of their families often fly together on business jets.But Tolstoy cannot simply “kick out” the LDPR leader from the chambers either. “Vacating the office was part of the unwritten etiquette, but there was essentially no precedent for a situation like this,” the same source said.Slutsky headed the international affairs committee for two parliamentary sessions, or 10 years. “Lenya positions himself specifically as an international lobbyist. The post of committee chair allowed him to travel [around the world], meet with high-status people, carry out various missions, and maintain ties with security officials and the intelligence services. The party is a nice bonus. And now that pillar [in the form of the committee] has been pulled out from under him, even though he tried to the very end to hold onto it,” a political strategist who works with the Presidential Administration’s political bloc told Meduza.Proekt previously reported that during meetings with French parliamentarians in Paris, Slutsky asked colleagues not to mention that he’s an LDPR deputy: “They really don’t need to know that I’m specifically from LDPR. I always introduce myself simply as a Duma deputy,” one delegation member recounted Slutsky’s words to journalists. He explained that he “ended up in LDPR simply because he needed a seat in the Duma,” the outlet said.During the 2026 election campaign, Slutsky clashed with the Presidential Administration’s political bloc, Meduza previously reported. The leader of the Liberal Democrats tried to position LDPR as “the party of the security bloc.” The political strategist describes the loss of the leadership post on the international affairs committee as a natural “consequence of his combativeness.”He and a source close to the Duma leadership said the LDPR leader is trying to retain control over the committee’s staff while Dmitry Pchelyakov, who worked under Slutsky, remains acting head of it.“Under the rules, the chairman [of the committee] determines the head of the committee’s staff and its employees, but that requires coordination. Slutsky has lobbying resources that can slow this process down,” a source close to the parliament’s leadership explained. Slutsky himself also remained on the committee as an ordinary member.As part of Duma etiquette, the LDPR leader congratulated Pyotr Tolstoy on his appointment. However, most of the message focused on Slutsky’s own accomplishments and reflections on his work as committee chairman:Ten years as head of the international affairs committee have been invaluable experience for me. There’s also a substantial portfolio of ratifications, hundreds of meetings with foreign politicians (sometimes involving quite difficult discussions), the development of new formats for the Duma’s international cooperation, and the fight for national interests at interparliamentary venues, where the voices of Russian deputies and senators could not be silenced by illegal sanctions or Russophobic discrimination.Slutsky’s congratulatory message also included, for some reason, a video clip from a meeting between Vladimir Putin and the leaders of the parties that won seats in parliament, in which Slutsky himself promises the president to “continue engaging in parliamentary diplomacy.”According to a source close to the Duma leadership, such a “mocking congratulatory message would not have been published on the committee’s website if Slutsky did not have influence over its staff.”He called the outcome of the conflict unpredictable, since both lawmakers have their own lobbying connections and resources. For now, “the whole Duma is watching the standoff with popcorn,” he said.Leonid Slutsky and Pyotr Tolstoy had not responded to Meduza’s questions at the time this article was published.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.Andrey Pertsev, with the participation of Yulia Leonkina