Being a high-level official in Russia does not make you immune to criminal prosecution, but what are the factors that help Russian elites avoid getting arrested? This is the question that Michael Rochlitz and his co-authors Noah Buckley, Ora John Reuter and Anton Aisin try to answer in their new Bremen discussion paper "Staying Out of Trouble: Criminal Cases Against Russian Mayors". The paper uses an original dataset on the prosecution of mayors in 221 large Russian cities between 2002 and 2018. The authors find that mayors who won their elections by large margins are less likely to be prosecuted while opposition mayors are four times more likely to be arrested. The regime seems hesitant to attack prominent officials who enjoy wide local support as this can produce popular backlash. This is what is happening in the Russian region of Khabarovsk at the moment where the arrest of popular governor Sergey Furgal has led to the biggest public demonstration in the region's recent history.