Karelia is a forestry-rich region on Russia’s Northwestern frontier. This article shows how institutional arrangements for local government were a product of contending efforts of Western donors and other transnational actors, the federal and regional governments, as well as municipalities. Russia’s federal recentralizing reforms and broader authoritarian context notwithstanding, Karelia illustrates how the choice of local institutions, as well as ideas about representation and citizenship are increasingly shaped by actors beyond the central state. Borrowing insights from Joel Migdal and Jesse Ribot, it argues that the result is shifting cognitive boundaries and ‘fragmented belonging’ (Ribot 2007) or multiple reference points of local citizens in a dynamic process of contestation and re-contestation of citizenship.