Three Siberian regions vote to reunite

Residents of three sparsely populated Siberian regions have voted to reunite in a resource-rich territory that will be larger than Western Europe, Russian media reported today, extending the trend to increased Kremlin control over the country’s far-flung provinces.

The Izvestia daily predicted that yesterday’s referendum on reunification of the Krasnoyarsk region with the Evenki and Taimyr autonomous districts would pave the way for a series of similar plebiscites aimed at bringing the number of Russian regions down from the current 89 to 35-40.