Russia’s Federal Subjects Expand Use of Bounty Hunters to Meet Military’s Manpower Needs, ‘Moscow Times’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 7 – In the past year, the number of Russia’s federal subjects using bounty hunters to sign up contract soldiers for Putin’s war in Ukraine has almost doubled from a year ago to 56 now and the amount these bounty hunters are paid had increased by as much a 1000 percent, The Moscow Times reports.

            Of those regions and republics employing this method of boosting recruitment, the paper says, 38 are doing so by the actions of  government agencies, while in the 18 others, these payments are handled privately through recruitment agencies” (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/08/07/esli-verbovka-ne-srabotaet-budet-mobilizatsiya-dve-treti-rossiiskih-regionov-nachali-platit-ohotnikam-za-kontraktnikami-a202907).

            This system allows the governors to say that there is no federal money being spent and that even the amount of regional money is relatively small; but there is no question that the federal subjects are under enormous pressure to spend it even if they have to cut other spending and that the leaders of these subjects are now pressuring businesses to bear some of the burden.

            This system varies from one region to another, the paper continues. “Some offer a reward to anyone who brings in a contract soldier while others do so only if public sector employees are involved” – and in some places such rewards go only to employees of the siloviki.

            On the one hand, The Moscow Times suggests, this effort highlights the Kremlin’s increasing difficulty the government is having in raising enough men to replace the thinning ranks of Russian forces in Ukraine and the ways the regions have been roped in to ensuring that the flow of men continues.

            But on the other, despite the enormous amount of money sometimes mentioned, experts with whom the newspaper spoke say that even the hard-pressed regions have enough money to continue this arrangement for some time, even to the point of increasing rewards to bounty hunters and the soldiers themselves. 

Interests of Kazakhstan’s Regions Likely to Be Underrepresented in New Parliament Filled by Party List Voting Alone, Kazakh Political Scientist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 6 -- A potentially serious problem some Kazakhstan analysts raised during the discussion of the ratification of the new constitution which replaced the bicameral legislature with a unicameral one appears to be coming true, Kazakhstan political scientist Bauryzhan Makhanov says.

            Because the reform eliminated the upper house which allocated seats on the basis of the regions and because the government has decided to conduct elections on a party-list basis rather than in single-member constituencies, he says, ever more of the deputies are likely to be from the capital than the regions, even though the voters are in that latter (spik.kz/2675-vybry-v-kurlut-golosuet-to-provinci-a-deputatami-stantic-stolichnye.htm).

            The new arrangements thus exacerbate a problem that has been growing in Kazakhstan as in many other post-Soviet states: most of the voters are in the regions rather than major cities because people in the regions vote in far higher percentages but most of the party-list candidates come from major cities and especially from the capital.

            According to Makhanov, “there is good reason to assume that on August 23 when the elections to the Kurultai take place, turnout in the capitals will be even lower than it was three years ago” when there was at least some local interest in the single-mandate constituencies where there was real competition among individuals known to city residents.

            Indeed, he continues, it “would not be surprising” if the level of participation in the voting in cities reaches its lowest level yet and that, as a result, voters in the regions will play an even larger role in the election of deputies, even though they will be choosing by party list and thus electing people who are more likely to be from the capital than ever before.

            Some on the party lists, even though they come from the cities, claim that they can represent the interests of the regions; but they won’t be doing so on the basis of personal experience and so the regions will be less well represented than they would be if it were the case that people from there were to be serving in the parliament.

            A unicameral legislature and party list voting have much to recommend them; but if they lead to a decline in the attention the government gives to the regions, there could be serious problems ahead – and the possibility that this is going to be so should be recognized and steps taken to ensure more people from the regions are in the parliament. 

Putin’s Healthcare Cuts Now to Hit St. Petersburg

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 6 – Putin’s cutting of government spending on healthcare, something he undertook to find more money for his war in Ukraine and has justified by pointing to how few people many medical points in rural areas serve, has now come to St. Petersburg, yet another sign his efforts to isolate the capitals from such policies is failing.

Leaders of the healthcare committee of the city’s parliament say hospitals there must cut their budgets by 15 percent before the end of 2026, a move that means the pain and suffering Putin’s healthcare “optimization” plan has already inflicted on rural Russians will now their fellow citizens in a major urban area (fontanka.ru/2026/08/06/76574835/ and kasparovru.com/material.php?id=6A7572ED370BD&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook).

Putin has generally been able to keep the two Russian capitals quiet since he launched his expanded war in Ukraine in February 2022 by recruiting soldiers from beyond their borders and cutting spending in the regions more than in the capital. But this announcement is a clear sign that the Kremlin leader’s efforts to keep the big cities isolated in this way are no longer working.

And that in turn means that residents of these two large cities may protest the cuts inflicted on them and, connecting the dots, on the leader and his policies that have made those draconian budgetary moves necessary. The first such protest in fact may come soon, at the ballot box in September’s Duma elections. 

De-Imperialization and De-Colonization of Russia Absolutely Necessary but Disintegration of That Country Not Currently Possible, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 6 – Vadim Shtepa, one of the leading theorists of regionalism in the the Russian Federation, argues that the de-imperialization and de-colonization of the Russian Federation are absolutely necessary for that country to progress but that conditions do not currently exist for disintegration to be the path toward those goals.

            Not only are most Russians horrified by the idea of disintegration and ready to back those like Putin who say they are committed to defending the territorial integrity of the country , the editor of the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal says (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/pochemu-raspad-rossii-segodnja-vygljadit-nevozmozhnym and region.expert/raspad-2/).

            But the federal subjects, both predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays and non-Russian republics and other autonomies do not have the active political parties and genuine legislatures that these places did in the late 1980s which calls for self-determination possible if not ultimately successful.

            All the current governors are appointees of the Kremlin, something very different from the conditions of 1991, and all the regional parliaments are “dominated” by the ruling and pro-Kremlin United Russia, given that regional parties have been banned in the Russian Federation since 2001.

            Moreover, unlike at the end of Soviet times when the non-Russians formed nearly half of the population, today, the non-Russians form only half that share at best; and they have not shown themselves willing to adopt radical positions. Only those in emigration are able to do so; and they have far less influence than media coverage, Shtepa suggests.

            What that means is this, he continues. Residents of Russia’s federal subjects should be working to promote regionalism and democracy rather than thinking they can achieve their goals via independence. That won’t happen without these intermediate steps; and those are why people beyond the ring road should be focusing on.

            Until that shift takes place, all the talk about disintegration of the Russian Federation will remain at best wishful thinking that is unlikely to have any serious impact on life in the Russian Federation beyond leading Russians to rally around the Kremlin and opening the way to more repression against them and the non-Russians alike. 

Cyrillic Dot.RF Domain Now Allows 18 Non-Russian Languages to Register with It Using Some of the 25 Additional Letters They Have

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 6 – After refusing since its launch last year to register sites in anything but a Russian language format, the .RF domain has now opened registration to 18 non-Russian languages which use Cyrillic alphabets and allows them to use one or more of the 25 additional letters they use to capture the sounds of their languages.

            One the one hand, this might appear to be a concession to the non-Russians; but on the other, it may set the stage for an internet world in the Russian Federation in which only .rf addresses are allowed, something that would work powerfully against these very same peoples (75.ru/news/452209 reposted at asiarussia.ru/news/51865/).

            But even if things do not reach such a pass, this action adds to the pressures Moscow has placed on non-Russian languages not written in Cyrillic, including most prominently Karelian, which is the only titular nationality of a non-Russian republic that is not a state language within its territory.

Moscow’s Failure to Give Kazakhstan Union Republic Status Until 1936 Raises Questions Now Far Beyond that Country’s Borders

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 6 – When the Bolsheviks began the dividing up of Central Asia in the 1920s, they gave union republic status to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan but not to Kazakhstan despite the fact that the Kazakhstan autonomy met all the formal qualifications of having such a status, Bakhyt Khanabergen says.

            The Kazakh territory bordered a foreign country, its population was more than a million, and its titular nationality formed a majority of the population, the Kazakh historian says. But in 1936, when no longer met the third of these requirements because of the terror famine in the early 1930s, Stalin nonetheless made it a union republic.

            Kazakhs now should thus focus on the question why Stalin delayed taking this action regarding Kazakhstan in the mid-1920s but changed his mind in 1936, Khanabergen says, especially since Stalin’s 1936 decision allowed Kazakhstan to gain independence  in 1991 (spik.kz/2674-stal-by-kazahstan-nezavisimym-ne-bud-stalinskoj-konstitucii.html).

            According to the historian, this event, the 90^th anniversary of which comes this year, is important because had Stalin decided differently “perhaps today we would not be living in an independent Kazakhstan but in one of the autonomies of the Russian Federation – with all the ensuing consequences.

            Stalin acted as he did because in the 1920s, the elite in Kazakhstan remained deeply divided between those who were genuinely loyal to Moscow and those who weren’t and so he gave the Kazakhs union republic status only after he had renewed that elite by purges and the training in Moscow of a replacement elite.

            Those developments and Stalin’s role in them should force Kazakhs to see the Soviet dictator as something more than an unqualified enemy of their people. After all, with Stalin’s action in 1936, Kazakhstan would not be an independent country now and have all the advantages that confers.

            These questions are likely to spark discussions in the Russian Federation and especially in its non-Russian national republics whom Stalin and subsequent Soviet and Russian leaders did not give union republic status as well as in the West where many now view 1991 as a final act of national self-determination rather than an action dictated by Stalin from beyond the grave.

            That is why it happened that those peoples to whom the Soviet dictator gave union republic status were able to leave who didn’t have it or had been stripped of it, as Abkhazia and Karelo-Finnia were, have remained grouped with the autonomies of the Russian Federation and not allowed to work toward the realization of their right to self-determination.

            That means, of course, that the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 proceeded according to principles laid down by Stalin for his purposes in the 1920s and 1930s and did not represent the triumph of national self-determination. If the right of nations to self-determination is to be realized, the world thus needs to move beyond Stalinism.

            To pose the question in this way either by these non-Russians or in the West, is to challenge the very idea that the Russian Federation is the product of self-determination of peoples and to recognize that it and its relations both with the former union republics and current autonomous ones are based not on that principle but on a very different and more odious one. 

This Year, Some Russian Regions Flooding, Others Face Drought, and Still a Third Group has Water but It is Unsafe to Drink

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 5 – The Russian Federation is such an enormous country that it should not surprise anyone that when it suffers problems with water availability, these vary enormously with some regions experiencing extreme floods, others growing drought and still a third, overlapping but going beyond each of these, a shortage of water that is safe to drink.

            This year alone, Horizontal Russia documents, all three crises have hit Russia, something that might have been at least partially averted if either the federal subjects had more authority and resources to address them or Moscow was more interested in the welfare of the country than in going to war (semnasem.org/articles/2026/08/05/vodnyj-krizis).

            The most severe flooding this year came in the North Caucasus where thousands of people were flooded out of their homes, roads were blocked, and electricity and drinking water supplies cut off for weeks at a time. But other regions suffering severe flooding included Irkutsk, Chelyabinsky and Sverdlovsk oblasts.

            Those areas suffering water shortages were of two kinds, places in south Russia where global warming is spreading drought, and others across the country where aging infrastructure and the failure of the authorities to do anything about it meant people did not have clean and safe water to drink.

            Bodaibo in Irkutsk Oblast became a symbol of the latter when pipes froze and residents had neither heat nor water for more than a month.  Less widely covered disasters of this kind also hit a village in Karelia, one in Primorsky Kray, and thousands of residents in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the Russian Far East.

            But it is the third category, places where water is flowing but is no longer safe, that is perhaps the most disturbing because it includes places where the authorities could have prevented the problem but failed to do so because they lacked either the funds or the will to do so.

            Problems of this kind hit Russian cities and villages across the country, outraging residents but seldom getting the kind of coverage that other far less damaging developments do because they have not yet had the kind of political consequences or fit into the usual media matrix of what constitutes a problem as opposed to what is viewed as an act of God.