Moscow’s Use of Convicts to Fight in Ukraine Allows Russia to Cut Number Still Incarcerated

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 4 – The Russian media is celebrating government reports that the number of convicts behind bars has fallen to “an historical minimum” (tass.ru/proisshestviya/26640335); but to the extent that has happened, it is the product not so much of a real decline in crime or a new more lenient approach by Russian courts.

            Instead, it reflects the Kremlin’s release of many convicts to fight in Ukraine as well as the removal from the streets of so many other young Russians, an age group most likely to commit crimes, as a result of the expansion of the Russian army in the course of that war (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/03/04/chislo-zaklyuchennih-vrossii-upalo-doistoricheskogo-minimuma-a188762).

            The number of convicts incarcerated in prisons and camps began to fall sharply after Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022. On January 1 of that year, there were 466,000 people in the camps; two years later, that number had fallen to 313,000, a decline that reflects the recruitment of so many of them to fight in the Russian military in Ukraine.

            Of those who have done so, the Moscow paper reports, a minimum of 21,400 have been killed. The problem, of course, is that many of these released prisoner-soldiers are now coming home as veterans; and all available evidence suggests that many of them are going to return to lives of crime and that the country will have to jail many more if it is to keep domestic peace.

History has Replaced Ideology as Chief Political Argument in Russia, Erlikh Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar.  1 – In recent decades around the world and especially in the Russian Federation, ideologies have discredited themselves by their failures, Sergey Erlikh says; and so they have been replaced by references to history as the chief political argument leaders use to justify their actions and attract support.

            The editor of Historical Expertise, a journal based in Moldova devoted to tracking this development, has demonstrated this by pointing to how history has replaced ideology in the Putin regime in particular when it comes to Putin’s justification of the war in Ukraine (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/01/istoricheskaia-propaganda-v-rossii-shizofrenichna).

            According to Erlikh, Putin sees himself as a great historical actor and like many officers of Andropov’s KGB, he manifests a genuine “nostalgia” not for the Soviet Union but rather for the Russian Empire. Thus, he is “more a White Guard” thana neo-Soviet; and it is no accident that in his office hangs a portrait of Nicholas I.

            To function as a politician, the historian continues, a leader has to base himself on a common identity and such an identity must in the view of Putin and those like him be based on a common past – an approach that works more easily for such leaders than the construction of identity based on the pursuit of a common future, as the Bolsheviks initially tried to do.

            In his pursuit of this common past, however, Putin and his regime suffer from a certain “schizophrenia.” They are most interested in the tsarist past while the population is more responsive to memories of World War II. That leads the current Kremlin leader to push one identity in order to promote another, even though this creates problems, Erlikh says.

            This schizophrenia is also reflected in the inability of the Putin regime to finally make a choice between “the image of empire and the image of a Russian nation state,” the historical says. That has been easier for the Kremlin because “a modern state-nation” was never developed in tsarist or Soviet times.

            Indeed, he continues, those who are called ethnic Russians are “the most non-ethnic people and are above all an imperial people.” That people, as the American psychologist James Wertsch has shown (istorex.org/post/джеймс-верч-извне-национального-сообщества-легче-увидеть-иные-моменты-плохо-заметные-изнутри), views its existence as a peaceful people who have constantly had to repel alien enemies who seek to destroy it. 

            Today, in Russia in particular but also in other countries including the US, “the powers are losing the state nation. They cannot solve contemporary challenges like the environmental catastrophe and the growth of social inequality. Therefore politicians use these threats which create in society a similar atmosphere.”

And he concludes: “If we do not oppose this insane reaction, however, then, will die not tens of thousands but tens of millions.”

International Movement to Save the Caspian Sea Outlines Its Three Goals for the Future

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 5 – Fourteen months after activists launched the International Movement to Save the Caspian Sea (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/save-caspian-sea-organization-holds.html), participants in the group from various countries have come together to outline their goals.

            Their goals, members of the group say, are to counter the three most serious problems the Caspian faces: falling water levels in the Caspian, the absence of transparency in deals between littoral states and oil companies about drilling, and the increasing pollution of that inland sea (ulysmedia.kz/analitika/69201-more-problem-kakie-shagi-delaet-save-the-caspian-sea-chtoby-spasti-kaspii/).

            The movement, created by a Kazakhstan ecologist, is modeled on the anti-nuclear Nevada-Semipalatinsk group and on various groups that have tried, without much success, to save the Aral Sea in Central Asia and is claiming success in attracting international attention to the fate of a body of water so large its disappearance strikes many as an impossibility.

            Its most significant action so far was the holding of a Save the Caspian Week in August 2025 which released a program of “ten steps for the saving of the Caspian Sea.” The new three point program suggests that the movement is seeking to expand its influence by focusing on what it sees as the most critical issues so far. 

Residents of Cities in Russian North Feel Increasingly Insecure Because of Shortage of Policemen

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 2 – The shortage of policemen across the Russian Federation has hit residents of cities in the northern portions of that country especially hard and they say they no longer feel secure because there is little chance any police will show up if they call to report crimes, Denis Zagorye of The Barents Observer says.

            Most of the northern regions are suffering from even greater shortages of police than the national average, the journalist reports, citing both regional media (nord-news.ru/news/2026/03/02/?newsid=211461) and interviews with local people (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/zarezut-prihodite-na-severe-rossii-ne-hvataet-policejskih/446058).

            The situation is deteriorating in most of them, but the regional governments lack the funds to do anything about it. Instead, Zagorye says, they are relying on Moscow to provide such moneys – but as of now, the central Russian government hasn’t, and people in the north are increasingly alarmed. 

            It may very well be that the specter of “a police state without enough police” (jamestown.org/war-against-ukraine-leaving-russian-police-state-without-enough-police/)  will occur in the northern cities of Russia, places where private citizens disproportionately have their own weapons and may use them if they can no longer count on officials to protect them.

Traditional Methods of Holding Russian Federation Together Becoming ‘Ever Less Effective,’ Observers in the Urals Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 4 – For the first 20 years of his reign, Putin relied on a social contract in which the people were to remain loyal “in exchange for relative economic stability and the distribution of rents from the sale of raw materials abroad.” But that is no longer possible, according to a homemaker in the Urals writing anonymously.

            Now, the regime is offering the population something far more honest but also more brutal and less attractive, she says, and that is “austerity in exchange for survival,” a deal that “sets in motion processes which make the decolonization of the Russian empire as currently configured inevitable” (region.expert/contract/).

            According to her, “the economic basis of the old contract has disappeared. The share of oil and gas revenues in the budget has fallen below 20%, hydrocarbon revenues in January fell to half of what they had been, and the overall deficit for the first month has reached almost half of the annual plan.”

            Moscow is compounding this problem by taxing many who weren’t taxed before and by the redistribution of money to support the war in Ukraine, two thing s which have “hit the middle class and skilled workers in the regions harder than Moscow expected” – and that is provoking anger and a greater willingness to protest, according to polls taken by officials.

            That is leading to discussions not only among the populations of the federal subjects but among the leaders of these oblasts, krays and republics over how much they are giving to the center and how much they are receiving back. When the answer becomes obvious, people and officials are talking about a revision of federal relations or even complete independence.

            The Urals homemaker says that “the Russian Empire and the USSR maintained a multinational space through the centralized redistribution of resources;” but when that became impossible, the result was the same: “national and regional elites bean to reassess the benefits of remaining part” of those states and those states collapsed.

            The situation in the Russian Federation today differs not only in scale but in the speed with which it is happening, she continues. “The war in Ukraine is accelerating the depletion of resources while sanctions and declining revenues from exports are making the restoration of the old model impossible.”

            “The Kremlin is attempting to compensate for the economic deficit with ideological and repressive measures: the narrative of ‘patience for the sake of the front,’ the strengthening of the church's role in promoting ‘humility,’ and harsh signals to governors about the need to maintain a "manageable background," the homemaker says.

            “But in regions with a strong identity and resource base, this narrative is causing open irritation. In Tatarstan and Sakha, for example, voices are already being heard calling for the need to protect their interests from a centralized ‘common good,’ which increasingly looks like a unilateral expropriation.”

            That doesn’t mean that the Russian Federation is about to disintegrate in the immediate future. “Decolonization here,” she says, “does not immediately mean disintegration in the classical sense. It can manifest itself in milder forms from de facto increased autonomy” to “demands for a revision of tax arrangements” and a refusal to send taxes revenues to Moscow.

            “But even these "mild" scenarios undermine the imperial vertical: the metropolis-center loses control over resources and loyalty. By 2026, the Muscovite princes themselves have destroyed the main glue that held the system together—the illusion of a mutually beneficial agreement,” she continues.

            And she concludes that the center’s new offer – “quiet survival in exchange for increasing austerity” – “isn’t sustainable” in the long run in a multi-national country. As more and more people in the federal subjects recognize what is going on, they will be less and less willing to have it continue.

Ever Fewer Russians Attending Universities, Closing Off that Social Escalator and Leaving Russia Further Behind Advanced Countries, Kulbaka Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 3 – Since Putin became Kremlin leader, the share of secondary school graduates going on to the universities and the number of university students have both fallen, effectively closing off that important social escalator and leaving Russia ever further behind advanced countries, Nikolay Kulbaka says.

            In Soviet times, officials twice worked to reduce these numbers out of concern that the USSR needed more workers and peasants rather than members of the intelligentsia, but this time around, the Moscow economist says, it isn’t certain whether this is the result of a conscious policy or a reflection of a lack of funds (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/rossia-vse-bolshe-otstaet-po-urovnju-obrazovania-ot-razvityh-stran-eto-sluchainost-ili-sistemnaja-politika).

            On the one hand, the costs of going on to higher education have risen astronomically in recent years, putting such schooling beyond the reach of many; but on the other, the government has reduced the number and amount of scholarship support that could compensate for these price increases.

            But as is most likely, the decline in the number of university students in Russia from seven million in 2010 to four million in 2020 and in the share of secondary school graduates going on to university from86 percent in 2019 to 60 percent in 2024 is the product of both factors, Kulbaka suggests.

            These declines mean, he continues, that there will be fewer opportunities for young Russians to improve their social and economic standing by means of education and Russia itself will increasingly suffer as it faces a growing shortage of educated people and falls ever further behind other advanced countries in that regard.

            If this trend continues for even five more years, Kulbaka says, this will lead to a situation in which Russia will be “fatally” behind these countries as far as the development of technology is concerned, a development which he describes as something “very sad.”

Anger about Putin’s Closing of Village Schools So Intense and Widespread Moscow has Decided Not to Shutter Any More Before Duma Elections

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 3 – When Vladimir Putin came to power, there were more than 45,000 village schools. Now, there are fewer than half that number, the result of his “optimization” program that has accelerated as the Kremlin ruler searches for places to take money to pay for his expanded war in Ukraine.

            But many in Russia’s villages are angry because the program has been carried out with little regard to local interests or even demography – in some places schools have been shut down even though there are many young families present – and villagers have protested against the program.

            (On this rising tide of protest beyond the ring road and outside of even smaller cities and only rarely being reported in Moscow, see tribuna.nad.ru/uroki-optimizacii-kak-v-komi-razrushayut-selskoe-obrazovanie, rtvi.com/stories/inache-my-vymrem-reforma-shkol-privela-k-ih-likvidaczii/, sreda42.pro/articles/tpost/x6yiijnb11-zakritie-shkol-v-kuzbasse-masshtabnaya-o and deita.ru/article/573872).  

            Now, in a concession to the power of rural anger about this program, the Russian government has decided to suspend the closure of any additional village schools until after the Duma elections lest villagers among Putin’s most loyal supporters vote against his United Russia Party (zebra-tv.ru/novosti/vlast/vo-vladimire-na-god-priostanovyat-obedinenie-shkol/ and svpressa.ru/politic/article/505379/).

            That may not be enough because many rural Russians are suspicious about why Moscow is closing their schools and about what it will do next. One retired teacher in a village near Arkhangelsk recalled the words of a local priest: village schools weren’t closed “even in the Great Fatherland War, so what is happening now that makes this necessary?” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/02/28/urok-muzhestva).