The Russian government official sounded concerned in comments to Sergei Furgal, the governor of a province in Russia’s Far East: “Your rating is going up, and the president’s is falling.” The official was Putin’s envoy to the Far East, Yuri Trutnev, according to an independent online news outlet, DVHAB, the first to publish the secret recording of Furgal’s dressing down in November in the Khabarovsk province, bordering China in Russia’s southeast corner.

Being more popular than President Vladimir Putin is not a recipe for political longevity. Furgal was arrested last month, flown to Moscow and charged in connected with four murders in 2004 and 2005 — allegations that Putin’s opponents decry as a sham. Furgal denies the charges.

Since early July, thousands of protesters in Khabarovsk have joined daily, leaderless marches supporting the now-fired Furgal and calling for Putin to go — the sharpest regional challenge to Putin’s 20-year rule as president and prime minister.

Khabarovsk has been a thorn in Putin’s side before. It was the only region where his United Russia party lost its dominance in regional elections in September, winning just two seats in the local legislature. Then, in a nationwide vote last month on constitutional amendments that paved the way for Putin to govern until 2036, Khabarovsk had one of the lowest turnouts in the nation, just 44 percent compared with the national average of 68 percent.

Russia’s political game

The Khabarovsk crisis also reveals some of the cracks in Russia’s tightly managed authoritarian state, where co-opted opposition parties buy into the system by providing a veneer of pluralistic politics but generally support the Kremlin.