In Kohtla-Järve, one of Estonia's largest cities, it is currently impossible to tell who is actually in power following the recent June upheaval. As if the political Brownian motion that has dragged on for months in the city council of the border city of Narva were not enough, Kohtla-Järve's city council also cooked up a political hodgepodge on the last day of June.

The results of votes held within the span of just one hour in the 25-member city council vividly illustrate the confusion. First, Mayor Max Kaur was removed from office with 14 votes in favor. Then Evelyn Danilov was elected the new mayor with the support of 18 council members. However, only 12 council members voted in favor of the city government she proposed.

This effectively amounted to a minority administration backed by a politically diverse group. Among them was the previously opposition election alliance Restart Kohtla-Järve, whose city council members include representatives of both the Reform Party and Isamaa. The administration also received support from the council's only Social Democrat and from two council members who had left the Center Party group earlier that same day, causing the Center Party to lose its long-held sole control of the Kohtla-Järve City Council. That is what happens when a party's electoral list is filled with people attracted by the party's brand rather than by party membership. The two additional votes needed came from the Koos party, including one from Margus Liiva, a member of the party's executive board.

Kohtla-Järve is the only municipality in Estonia where Koos candidates won seats in the council in the most recent local elections. Following the recent June upheaval, they have now managed, in cooperation with municipal politicians from Estonia's major parties, to enter government in one of the country's largest cities.

Given how awkward this alliance appears, to put it mildly, no official coalition has been announced in Kohtla-Järve so far. That has not stopped Koos politicians from jubilantly proclaiming on social media that they were the ones who orchestrated the change of power in Kohtla-Järve.

Imagine what Kristen Michal, Urmas Reinsalu or Lauri Läänemets would think about the fact that, in the current security environment, the parties they lead have formed a governing alliance in Kohtla-Järve with a party better known to the broader public for its pro-Kremlin rather than pro-Estonian views and whose spiritual leader, Aivo Peterson, has been convicted of treason by both Harju District Court and the Tallinn Circuit Court. Or how would such an alliance affect those parties' popularity just nine months before the next parliamentary elections?

To make the political hodgepodge cooked up in Kohtla-Järve at the end of June even more striking, it is important to know that the new mayor, Evelyn Danilov, was previously closely associated with the notorious local oligarch Nikolai Ossipenko who died two years ago. She held senior positions in his companies and managed the election campaigns of political alliances linked to him. People directly or indirectly connected to Ossipenko also sit on the city council.

All four members of the new city government were suspects in the major corruption scandal that erupted in Kohtla-Järve in 2022. Proceedings against three of them have since been dropped because no criminal offense was found. The investigation involving Deputy Mayor Deniss Veršinin is still ongoing.

Meanwhile, final court rulings in cases involving other individuals describe in detail how Ossipenko wove political intrigues and influenced members of the Kohtla-Järve City Council and even a member of the city government to make decisions favorable to his companies. An even earlier final court ruling found former Mayor Jevgeni Solovjov guilty and sentenced him to a five-year suspended prison term for helping Ossipenko's companies earn €1 million in criminal proceeds at the expense of the city of Kohtla-Järve.

It is also well known how Ossipenko managed to gain effective control of the Jõhvi Municipal Council for several years, leading to prolonged chaos, frequent no-confidence votes and political turmoil in the administrative center of Ida-Viru County. There, too, the typical pattern was that no official coalition was formed and key decisions were made not in the council chamber but at semi-secret meetings among a select group of council members influenced by the local oligarch.

Ossipenko has been dead for more than two years, but it is hard to believe that the people associated with him have forgotten the tricks and methods he used to intertwine local government with business interests. They learned from him. That likely explains why former Kohtla-Järve Mayor Max Kaur said immediately after the no-confidence vote that he felt as though Ossipenko's ghost had brought him down once again. The first time, it happened six years ago when he was mayor of Jõhvi.

Kohtla-Järve has now produced what is essentially a governing club made up of graduates of the "Nikolai Ossipenko School of Life," representatives of the Koos party, which until now has been considered beyond the pale in Estonian politics and politicians from the country's major parties.

Those involved say, almost unanimously, that their primary goal is to stand up for the interests and development of the city of Kohtla-Järve and its residents. At the same time, they should understand that even if those intentions are sincere, achieving those goals in this way will be extremely difficult. First, such an alliance further damages Kohtla-Järve's already poor reputation. If the governing coalition is tied to the Koos party, it will inevitably have a negative impact on opportunities for cooperation with the national government, other municipalities and a large share of the business community.

Just as in the Riigikogu, political clarity — not political randomness — is essential in a local council. The logical sequence is for a majority of council members to agree that they will work together. They put a detailed plan in writing and discuss and agree on who should serve in the city government to implement that plan. In Kohtla-Järve, everything was done in reverse. The new city government narrowly secured approval, but even a week after the change in power there is still no clear governing coalition, let alone a concrete action plan in the form of a coalition agreement.

They should try again from the beginning — and preferably without the Koos party.

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