Russian Houses Now in 72 Countries Spread Kremlin Propaganda about Ukraine and Seek to Normalize War, ‘Point Media’ Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 17 – During the Cold War, many in the West said that “we send diplomats to Moscow and the Soviets treat them as spies while the Soviets send spies to Western capitals and we treat them like diplomats.” Tragically, and despite expectations, that pattern continues to hold.

            The way in which the Putin regime mistreats Western officials who come to Russia is legendary, but less well known is that his government has found it even easier to send its agents to the West to conduct propaganda and even espionage now given that many in Western governments have convinced themselves that the world has changed.

            That makes a new article by Aleksey Blokhin, a journalist for the PointMedia portal, in about the 87 Russian Houses that Moscow currently maintains in 72 countries around the world especially important, given that many governments against whom these institutions are working are doing nothing about them (pointmedia.io/story/6942adc8e657f59b666dce8d).

            “Officially,” he writes, “’Russian Houses work to promote Russian culture abroad,” and “in reality, if one looks at the calendars of the activities of any of them, the majority of events are exclusively cultural.”  But “beneath this cultural cover” is their real purpose: forming an information milieu in which Kremlin policies appear normal, justified or inevitable.”

            He gives numerous heavily footnoted examples to support that conclusion, including courses for journalists, propaganda exhibits, lectures by visiting Russian experts, programs for young people including tours and study in the Russian Federation, and even attraction of foreigners to come to Russia and then fight in Ukraine.

            According to Blokhin, “foreign governments recognize this but few are reacting.” Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, some have been closed but mostly only in eastern and southern Europe. Elsewhere, they continue to operate and to undermine the host governments and societies.

Many Russian Governors View Their Posts as Temporary Assignments and Their Populations as ‘Aboriginals,’ Krichevsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 18 – Most governors of Russia’s federal subjects are “people pulled from comfortable positions in Moscow and dispatched to the regions,” an assignment they view “not so much as exile but as a temporary business trip,” according to Nikita Krichevsky, a senior Russian economist who has specialized on regional affairs.

            As a result, he says, such people “view the local residents as if they were aborigines” and avoid establishing “any contacts” with them or with local elites, something that inevitably lands them in difficulties that they assume they can always solve by asking Moscow for help (club-rf.ru/detail/7836).

            According to Krichevsky, these attitudes reflect a problem with deeper roots in their biographies: “many of the current governors, born in the 1970s and 80s, are children of the "single-parent" generation, where mothers and grandmothers were responsible for their upbringing … with such an upbringing, there can be no talk of responsibility.”

Generational Shifts in the Workforce Adding to the Problems of the Russian Economy, Tushaliyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 18 – The Russian economy faces a number of serious challenges, but one of these that so far has received little attention is the generational one, the fact that in a single workspace there are currently representatives of three distinct generations and what works with one doesn’t necessarily work with the others, according to Aleksandr Tushaliyev.

            The editor of the Russian journal, A Sovereign Economy, and a frequent commentator for the Readovka portal says that if the two oldest groups, those born between 1965 and 1980 and between 1981 and 1996 are somewhat similar, those born between 1997 and 2010, “the zoomers,” are fundamentally different (readovka.news/news/235526/).

            If the first two most highly value stability, status and respect for the collective, he says, the third gives priority to flexibility, comfort and their own mental health. This difference has led to the dismissal of many zoomers, but those companies who have adapted to them have been able to take advantage of their special psychology, Tushaliyev says.

            Because managers typically come from the older age groups, he continues, they often adopt strategies that work for people like them but don’t work with younger people who are less concerned with the things the managers value and more concerned with maximizing their own values.

            This has led to rapid turnover among the young many of whom don’t find it easy or even acceptable to conform to the business habits of older generations, and that in turn is creating problems not only with staffing but with production, thereby adding to all the other problems of the Russian economy.

West Paralyzed by Fear of Russia’s Strategic Defeat, League of Free Nations Activist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 16 – Just as was the case before 1991 when some in the West suggested that the disintegration of the USSR would lead to “a Yugoslavia with nukes,” so now again many in the West now openly express the view that the strategic defeat of Russia and the coming apart of Moscow’s empire is more dangerous than the Kremlin is now, Kamil Sagaev says.

            The League of Free Nations activist who was trained in China and Great Britain notes that while most observers agree that “Russia has been a threat for centuries,” they continue to insist that “her defeat is ‘unacceptable’” and argue that “Russia must not lose or new state will take its place and could start wars with each other” (region.expert/west-afraid/).

            Driven by the belief that the world will have to continue to contend with “a single aggressive empire” or “the possibility of chaos” from the appearance of new states, the West is “taking the side of the empire” and “offered the people of Russia the role of ‘hostages for rent’” whose “freedom would be dangerous to the convenience” of the West.

            It is both reasonable and logical to ask, Sagaev says, “how is such thinking different from Russian imperial doctrine? The answer is an unpleasant one: “In no way” because “it is the same fear of the freedom of peoples just under a different flag,” even though those in the West promoting this notion are themselves the result of the demise of empires.

            And this question leads to another one that no one wants to have posed: “why did you [in the West] yourselves descendants of collapsed empires, appoint the peoples of Russia the role of eternal subjects?”

            “If Russia inevitably collapses economically in the coming years, what are you going to do? Pour money into her until the end? Frozen reserves to give away? Issue new loans from European banks to prolong the life of a dying empire?” the League of Free Nations activist asks rhetorically.

And he points out that “this is not politics anymore. This is fear elevated to the rank of doctrine. Freedom cannot be canceled by external fear” because “empire always fall. History knows no exceptions but every time before a breakup, there is someone who demands that its people wait because ‘this is not the time.’”

But of course, Sagayev says, “the time is always the same: the time of freedom comes when people stop asking for permission.”

Russian Economy Now in Decline in All Sectors Except Military Ones, Academy of Sciences Institute Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 16 – In its latest quarterly assessment of the current situation of the Russian economy and its prospects, the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences says that the Russian economy is in decline in all sectors except the military industry one and that this negative trend will continue into 2026 and possibly beyond.

Overall, the institute says, economic growth in Russia ended more than a year ago in November 2024, although this was hidden from casual observers by military spending. But now there is no question that the Russian economy is in recession and will remain there for some time (ecfor.ru/publication/kvartalnyj-prognoz-vvp-vypusk-68/).

This trend reflects more than just the shift to military spending. “Unfavorable demographic trends are exacerbating labor shortages, the technological gap with developed countries and China is increasing, and revenues from hydrocarbon exports and resource rents” are also having an impact, the institute continues.

Moreover, high interest rates “are eating away at the main investment resource” companies have – their own funds. As a result, “corporate profits in real terms decreased by 15.6 percent in the first nine months of 2025 and the radio of interest payments to profits approached 60 percent.” In addition, “the debt burden rose significantly” across the board.

“In the third quarter,” the institute reports, “Rosstat reported a real decline in investments for the first time since 2022, by some 3.1 percent year on year,” with the greatest declines in capital expenditure being on infrastructure where spending fell one percent and equipment and machinery where it fell 15 percent.”

And the institute concludes: “this decline in investment activity will lead to an even greater decline in output, and that will be followed by a reduction in employment and consumer demand and an increase in past-due debt of the population and business. In the worst-case scenario, that will result in a crisis of non-payments.”

Putin Regime Not Only Russianizing Non-Russians but Russifying Non-Russian Languages

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 16 – Vladimir Putin has long sought to get non-Russians to use Russian instead of their native languages as their primary means of communication, an effort that has reduced the number of non-Russian speakers of those languages and one that has attracted enormous attention.

            But there is a second process going on that also has fateful consequences for non-Russians who continue to speak their native languages and that is the Russification of these languages among people who speak both and go back and forth between them, a process that has so far attracted little attention.

            That gap in the investigation of the language situation in the Russian Federation is about to be rectified at least in part in Tuva where scholars have launched research into the ways in which Russian is having an impact on the vocabulary and even the syntax of Tuvan (tuvaonline.ru/2025/12/14/uchenye-tigpi-vyigrali-grant-rossiyskogo-nauchnogo-fonda-na-izuchenie-tuvinsko-russkogo-bilingvizma.html).

              Scholars at the Tuvan Institute of Humanities and Applied Social Economic Research say that up to now, this impact, while noted by speakers, “has not become the subject of complex scientific analysis.” They say that they hope to correct that at least in part, an effort that may prompt researchers in other non-Russian republics to do the same.

            Their goal is “to conduct the first multi-faceted study of how the Russian language influences the speech of Tuvan bilinguals at all levels, from pronunciation to syntax,” a comprehensive approach that “will not only allow researchers to identify interference phenomena but also to understand the mechanisms underlying them.”

            And they argue that the results of their study “will have great practical significance,” helping to improve instruction in both languages and serving as “a serious scientific basis for a balanced and effective language policy aimed at maintaining balance and preserving the purity of the Tuvan language.”

Another Step away from Russian Scripts toward a Common Turkic One in Central Asia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 16 – On December 15, Turkic peoples and their friends celebrated the first World Day of Turkic Languages that UNESCO created. In honor of this day, Turkey released two books from Central Asia that have long appeared only in Russia’s Cyrillic alphabet in a common Turkic script based on the Latin one of the West.

            The four Turkic countries of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – have taken steps to develop and then introduce Latin-based scripts for their national languages which the Soviets insisted from the 1930s on use only Cyrillic ones. But the dream of many in the region and in Turkey is for them to have a common Turkic script.

            Were such a script to be introduced, it would function in much the same way as the Persido-Arabic script did in pre-Soviet times, making it possible for speakers in one country to read and otherwise interact with speakers in another without translation and thus promoting a new union and overcome the narrow nationalisms that arose after Soviet linguistic engineering.

            To demonstrate the possibilities that a common Turkic alphabet offers, Turkey and its allies in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan published two works, Kazakh enlightener Abai Qūnanbaiūly’s Words of Instruction and Kyrgyz novelist Chingiz Aitmatov’s The White Boat in the common Turkic alphabet Ankara has developed.

            While this is a small step, it follows on the heels of Turkey’s decision to refer to Central Asia from now on by its former name Turkistan, “the land of the Turks;” and many Russians are outraged by what this will mean as far as Russia’s influence in the region is concerned, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports (ng.ru/cis/2025-12-15/1_9401_alphabet.html).

Aleksandr Kobrinsky, the director of the Moscow Agency of Ethno-National Strategy, reflects such concerns when he argues that “it is obvious that the transition to a common Turkic alphabet is intended not only and not so much to simplify communication among Turkic peoples and strengthen cultural cooperation” as to split off Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan from Russia.”