Putin has Given Assad Asylum But is Unlikely to Allow Syria’s Circassians to Return Home

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – Moscow has given overthrown Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad political asylum, but it seems unlikely that the Russian government will allow more of Syria’s estimated 50,000 Circassians to return to their homeland in the North Caucasus, despite the opportunities Assad’s ouster has given them for leaving.
    Prior to 2011, Syria had an estimated 200,000 Circassians; but during the civil war there, roughly half of them fled abroad. But of those, only around 2,000 were able to return to their homelands in the North Caucasus from which their ancestors were deported by the Russian Empire in an act of genocide.
    Given the uncertainties and instability following the departure of Assad, many  more will want to leave; but they are likely to be blocked by Moscow’s increasingly hostile attitude toward the return of compatriots abroad like the Circassians who do not speak Russian (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/moscows-compatriots-program-allowing.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/moscow-tightening-screws-on-circassians.html).
    Nonetheless, many are likely to try and both Circassian organizaations and the governments of the three Circassian republics – Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabadino-Balkaria and Adygeya – may very well help them given labor shortages and a history of allowing more Circassians in thanMoscow likes (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/06/circassians-appear-to-be-returning-to.html).
    That could easily create a new conflict situation in the North Caucasus and help mobilize the seven million Circassians against Moscow which seems always ready to help the enemies and oppressors of that nation but not members of a group that the Russian government itself has been fighting for three centuries.
    Two years ago, Memorial released a report on the Circassians of Syria and their plight. For the report, see memohrc.org/ru/announcements/desyat-strashnyh-let-narusheniya-prav-cheloveka-i-gumanitarnogo-prava-vo-vremya-voyny. For a discussion of that study, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/04/allowing-circassians-to-return-from.html.

‘Putin doesn’t want a Truce in Ukraine But Might Agree to One for Three Reasons,’ Shelin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 6 – Putin has enough resources to continue his war in Ukraine for a long time and certainly doesn’t want a truce with Kyiv, Sergey Shelin says; “but he might agree to one” because the war is costing more than he expected, his imperialism is increasingly at odds with the nationalism of the Russian people, and the population itself is tired of war.
    But any agreement the Kremlin leader might make about Ukraine would be no more than a breathing space, allowing him time to gather his forces, and likely guaranteeing that he would restart the conflict when he felt he was in a better position to win it as quickly as he expected in 2022 (moscowtimes.ru/2024/12/06/putin-peremiriya-ne-hochet-no-poiti-na-nego-mozhet-tri-prichini-a149786).
    The costs, human and financial, of the war in Ukraine have been far greater than Putin expected or than the Russian people are comfortable with. Moreover, his imperialist approach is increasingly at odds with the nationalism of the Russian people who want to see investments in themselves and with the attitudes of the population that is increasingly tired of the conflict.
    Consequently, Putin, who doesn’t want to have to work hard to continue his current policy, is “now quite capable of searching for a middle ground between war and peace and could, as a last resort, even sign some kind of agreement to restore his strength and sometime, if everything works out, start again doing” what it might appear he has promised not do.
    In short, Putin might agree to a truce, Shelin concludes; but there is no possibility that he will agree to anything like a peace.  

Peace in Eurasia Possible Only if Russia is Dismantled Because Otherwise It will Sooner or Later Seek as a Prison House of Peopless to Reconstitute the Empire, Panich Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 5 – Unless Russia is decolonized, Moscow will sooner or later seek to reconstitute its empire, Aleksey Panich says, because liberal democracy is impossible in the prison house of peoples which Russia will otherwise remain and thus will follow the imperial revaunchist policies of its predecessors.
    Unfortunately, the cultural historian says, these interconnections are not understood or accepted by the Russian opposition  and the West, because if they did, they would understand that no armistice between Russia and Ukraine will last unless Russia is dismantled (moscowtimes.ru/2024/12/05/buduschee-rossii-kak-otdelit-vozmozhnoe-ot-nevozmozhnogo-a149725).
    Given the history of Russia’s borders which have ebbed and flowed and allowed the center to assume that anything it has lost can be recovered, Panich continues, “any new attempt at the liberalization of Russian economic or political life … after Putin will inevitably lead to a new crisis of administration.”
    And in that crisis, he says, Russian leaders will face a fateful choice: “either to agree to a new collapse of this colonial empire or to space the integrity of the country by means of the latest restoration of militant authoritarianism.”
    “Both of these scenarios are real, although the second for obvious reasons is undesirable both for the neighbors of Russia and for the entire global community.” But what is “unrealistic” is the rise of “a successful liberalization of the Russian Federation as a single whole with the preservation of its current internationally recognized borders.”
    That can’t and won’t happen in the future, just as it couldn’t and didn’t in the past, Panich argues. Both the Russian opposition and the West must recognize that “a Free Russia is a Russia without colonies.” To think otherwise is to ignore history and deceive only oneself – and to face more Russian attacks sooner or later on its neighbors new or old.

One in Four Recent Graduates of an Russian Officer Training School Died in Ukraine Fighting

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 5 – At least 17 of the 74 newly-minted lieutenants from an officer training academy in Donetsk have died in Ukraine, an indication of the way in which Russian commanders are sacrificing junior officers to gain territory in Ukraine and a poor advertisement for the Putin regime which wants to recruit more men to go and fight there.
    The Important Stories portal which documented this also pointed to other signs that the Russian military is desperate to get more junior officers to fill the ranks. On the one hand, those being trained were assigned to units even before graduation; and on the other, whole classes have had their training shortened (istories.media/stories/2024/12/05/pochti-kazhdii-chetvertii/).
    Moreover, the portal continued, of those who managed to avoid being killed in combat, almost 100 percent were seriously wounded, placing additional burdens on the Russian military and making it an even less attractive option for Russian men who might be inclined to sign up because of increasingly large bonuses being offered for them to do so.  

Identifying Corpses Not a High Priority for Russian Police, ‘To Be Precise’ Portal Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 5 – Russian officials identify only half as many of bodies found without IDs as do American ones and only one-eighth as many as British officials do, and the real differences may be far greater because Russian police often do not report about such deaths or include them in statistical compilations.
    There are many reasons for that, the To Be Precise portal says; but among the most important is that Russian police do not make the identification of bodies a high priority given the other demands on their time (tochno.st/materials/v-rossii-pocti-12-tysiac-tel-neopoznannyx-umersix-rasskazyvaem-kto-popadaet-v-etu-statistiku).
    That means of course that families often never find out what happened to their loved ones and that criminals can expect that the bodies of their victims won’t be identified and so no cases will be brought against the guilty parties, yet another way the Russian militia tilt the balance against the innocent and toward the criminals.

In Stalin’s Time, Russians Denounced Others to Get Apartments; Now, in Putin’s, They Do So to Get Medical Care They Want

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 5 – The ways in which Stalinism is returning to Russia  are truly insidious. Among the worst is this: In Stalin’s time, Russians denounced others to get their apartments ns joba; now, in Putin’s, they claim doctors have said something against the war in Ukraine if they want them fired and replaced with someone who’ll give them the care they want.
    This type of behavior has been documented by Novaya Gazeta, which observes that “the scariest part” of such actions is that “the state encourages such behavior,” leading patients to record medical appointments or make up charges that have no basis in reality if they don’t like the medical care they are receiving (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/12/04/ia-prosto-molchu).
    What is especially disturbing is that this tactic has now led doctors to avoid giving their opinions even among themselves, a pattern that suggests denunciations used to achieve personal goals not just in medicine but in other spheres as well have again become commonplace in Russia today.  

Since 2022, Russian Culture Ministry has Approved 145 Erotic and Pornographic Films for Public Showing Online

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 5 – Despite the Kremlin’s much ballyhooed effort to show itself a defender of what it calls Russian traditional values, its culture ministry over the last three years has approved for the public online showing of 145 erotic and pornographic films, 21 in 2022, 97 in 2023, and 48 so far this year.
    But there are limits: the ministry’s censors have required cuts of scenes involving homosexual behavior from a series of movies imported from the West lest those involved run afoul of Russian laws banning LGBT “propaganda” (severreal.org/a/minkult-rossii-vydal-145-litsenziy-eroticheskim-filmam-s-2022-goda/33227937.html).
    What makes this report of interest is not so much the way it highlights prurient issues in Russia but rather how it shows that Moscow’s efforts to present its “traditionalist” position apparently sometimes collapse, especially in the face of popular demand and the money some can make by producing things one might assume the Kremlin would ban.