Russia’s Economy isn’t Growing Much Outside Military Industry Sector, Aleksashenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 20 – Sergey Aleksashenko, an economist who helped prepare Russian budgets in the 1990s, says that despite the Russian government’s failure to discuss this openly, Moscow has provided enough data to conclude that the Russian economy is not growing very much outside of the military industry sector.

            On the one hand, that is not surprising given that Russia is at war in Ukraine; but on the other, it means that the growth in the military sector is not trickling down into the civilian sector but if anything is doing so less and less with each passing month (hronika.substack.com/p/400 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/est-li-v-rossii-rost-nevoennoj-ekonomiki).

            And that in turn means that military spending is doing ever less to help other branches of the economy and the standard of living of the Russian people than many now think, something that his analysis suggests will be increasingly true as Putin’s war in Ukraine and potentially elsewhere drags on.

            Aleksashenko provides a detailed discussion of the methodology he employs to exploit what data have been released to reach his conclusion that military spending is not boosting overall GDP by anything like the amount the Kremlin claims and that many still uncritically accept.

Kadyrov Says He’ll Send Chechens Convicted of Administrative Law Violations to Fight in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 20 – In a declaration of loyalty to the Kremlin and possibly a harbinger of what will soon happen across the Russian Federation as a whole, Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov has declared that he will send Chechens convicted of administrative law violations to fight in Putin’s war in Ukraine.

            Kadyrov’s latest statement (kavkazr.com/a/glava-chechni-prizval-otpravlyatj-na-voynu-veduschih-prazdnyy-obraz-zhizni-zhiteley-respubliki-/33153341.html) is not so much an innovation as a reaffirmation of an approach he has been using, as the Kavkazr portal points out (kavkazr.com/a/otpravyat-po-prikazu-v-chechne-na-voynu-protiv-ukrainy-posylayut-provinivshihsya-silovikov/33163400.html).

            But the prominence he has given to such a practice now both highlights his need to show loyalty to Putin who is desperate to find as many new sources of replacement troops as possible and show that Kadyrov himself views such a policy as a means to combat resentment of his rule inside Chechnya itself. 

Ukrainians Should Focus on the Choice They Made in the Revolution of Dignity Rather than on Control of Territory Alone, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 20 – Ukraine’s revolution of dignity was not about decolonization and control over territory but about an alternative civilizational choice that sought to make Ukraine a European rather than a Eurasian country, a choice that many Ukrainians although far from all support to this day, Vladimir Pastukhov says.

            Thus, that revolution, the London-based Russian analyst says, was far more than about territory and security, something many in Ukraine and the West have now forgotten but something that is why Putin has reacted in the way he has and why territorial concessions to him won’t guarantee Ukraine’s future (echofm.online/opinions/ukrainskaya-vandeya).

            That can be achieved “only by clear and forceful countermeasures that will convincingly demonstrate to Putin that his achievement of his initial goals in this war is unrealistic” now and will remain unrealistic in the future, Pastukhov argues. “Anyone who thinks otherwise is a naïve romantic.”

            “In 2014,” he continues, he “published a book entitled The Ukrainian Revolution and the Russian Counter-Revolution about the challenges Ukraine faced. One of its central ideas was that “attempts to hold the Donbass by force would inevitably come into direct conflict with the goals of the revolution of dignity.”

            At that time, Pastukhov says, he argued that such attempts would lead to a full-scale war and that “war is not the best time for realizing the ideals of freedom and democracy.” Now a decade later, he offers an additional one: “the revolution of dignity … was not about decolonization but about the European choice of the Ukrainian people.”

            Had it been only about decolonizing, control of territory would have been everything because that could have been achieved without fundamental changes in Ukraine. But most Ukrainians understood their choice differently, “as one in favor of other values and principles” than those Moscow had insisted on.

            However, “even if this was the choice of the majority, Pastukhov says, it clearly was not then and is not now the choice of everybody” in Ukraine. In fact, “a sizeable part of the Ukrainian people wanted to return to the comfortable USSR,” and that was the basis of the split between those who supported the revolution of dignity and those who did not.

            And this was and is the real dividing line in Ukraine, the London-based Russian analyst says. And consequently, “the problem is not that ‘Russians’ lived in Crimea or the Donbass but that the majority of those living there were people who wanted to return to the traditional Soviet past.”

            Prior to the revolution of dignity, he says, Russia was apparently committed to a European course while Ukraine was not and those in Ukraine who did not want to follow that course were quite happy to remain in Ukraine. “But when the roles were reversed,” such people “suddenly began to yearn for their ‘historical homeland.’”

            Consequently, he continues, “the southeast of Ukraine is the Ukrainian Vendée. And even if, at the cost of incredible efforts and sacrifices, Ukraine recovers control over these territories, it will also get back all the old problems that will push back for decades the implementation of the choice made by the Ukrainian people in favor of the European path of development.”

            The majority of Ukrainians who continue to favor the goals of the revolution of dignity should be focusing on that rather than expending lives and treasure on recovering something that will only compromise their ability to achieve what they really want, the London-based analyst concludes.

Russian Courts Convicting Record Numbers for Treason, Espionage, and Crimes by Military Personnel, ‘Important Stories’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has released data on convictions during the first six months of 2024. They show that courts there sentenced record numbers of people for treason, espionage, and crimes committed by military personnel, the Important Stories portal says.

            In the first half of this year, according to the portal’s journalists, “52 people were convicted of treason, 3.5 times more than in the same period a year earlier and more than have been convicted in any whole year since 2015” (istories.media/tanews/2024/10/18/gosizmenniki-shpioni-terroristi/).

            Perhaps more significantly, the court figures show that during the first half of 2024, Russian courts found 6,000 Russian soldiers guilty of various crimes, three times more than in the same period in 2023 and 7.5 times more than for that period in the years preceding Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine.

            The crimes for which Russian servicemen were convicted are increasingly serious and the percentage being sentenced to prison is now 4.5 times greater than was the case in pre-war years (istories.media/en/news/2024/10/15/russian-soldiers-have-become-more-likely-to-receive-real-sentences-as-punishment/).

            Russian courts also sentenced more Russian civilians for terrorism and extremism during the first half of 2024. According to Important Stories, 366 were sentenced for terrorism; and 340 were convicted of extremism, both up by double digits from 2023 and even more when compared with earlier years.

Minnikhanov Visits Memorial to Ivan Grozny’s Soldiers who Died Attacking Kazan Khanate in 1552 Having Earlier Banned Meeting to Remember Its Defenders

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – The Kremlin’s efforts to rein in Tatarstan have just taken another step forward, one certain to undermine its authority among Tatars: Republic head Rustam Minnikhanov has visited a memorial to Russian troops who died during the sacking of the Kazan khanate in 1552 after having earlier banned a meeting of Tatars to remember its defenders.

            Between 1989 and 2021, Tatars assembled every year on October to remember those who died in Kazan fighting the Russian advance. At first, only a few hundred did so and then tens of thousands in the 1990s. But as Putin increasingly moved against the republic, Kazan officials were forced to restrict the size and location of such meetings and then in 2022 to ban them.

            (For this history, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/10/kazan-refuses-to-authorize-meeting-on.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/this-year-tatars-wont-mark-anniversary.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/latest-ban-on-tatarstan-memorial-day.html.)

            Over the last decade, the Russian Orthodox Church and Moscow officials have devoted more attention to marking the 1552 battle at a monument built two centuries ago in tsarist times to those Russian soldiers who lost their lives in the course of their conquest of Kazan (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/muscovite-plans-to-memorialize-russians.html).

            And earlier this year, the government of Tatarstan announced that it had allocated 300 million rubles (three million US dollars) to refurbish the Russian monument (m.business-gazeta.ru/news/628522), but few Tatars thought that their own leaders would go there, especially on such a sensitive anniversary.

            Now, however, that has happened, sparking anger among Tatars not only at Minnikhanov who has shown himself increasingly deaf to the demands of the Tatars but at Moscow for its increasingly hostile attitude (idelreal.org/a/dlya-chego-publichno-sech-sebya-ruslan-aysin-o-poseschenii-minnihanovym-hrama-voinam-pogibshim-pri-vzyatii-kazani/33163431.html).

            Minnikhanov’s visit to a Russian shrine may seem a small thing to many outside observers, but it is likely to prove anything but, given that it shows there are apparently no limits to what the Moscow-imposed head of Tatarstan is prepared to do to satisfy the wishes of the Kremlin at the expense of his own nation. 

Putin to Bring Back Stalin-Era Sports Parades in Red Square

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 19 – Vladimir Putin is justly criticized for his Stalinist approach to rule; but in most cases, his approach is analogous to the late Soviet dictator. However, there are exceptions in which the current Kremlin ruler is reviving activities that almost precisely those that Stalin promoted and even subsequent Soviet leaders dropped after his death.

            One of those involves the parades of athletes through Red Square, a practice started in 1919 under Lenin but became annual in 1931 after Stalin had consolidated power and then was immediately dropped in 1953 after he died (moscowtimes.ru/2024/10/19/v-rossii-vozrodyat-stalinskie-sportivnie-paradi-a145389).

            In October 2023, Putin said he favors such celebrations because they can help make sports “a norm of life” for three out of every four residents of the Russian Federation. Now, now he has directed the sports ministry to organize the first of these revivals of a Stalin practice in 2025.

            Such Soviet sports marches in Stalin’s time resembled similar marches in Hitler’s Germany, and this parallel contributed mightily to the conclusion that the two regimes, despite their hostility at one level, were manifestations of the same totalitarian approach. Putin’s revival of these celebrations will likely lead many to draw comparisons with fascist regimes. 

By Denying Russia is Now China’s Junior Partner, Putin Only Calls Attention to that New Reality, ‘Moscow Times’ Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 18 – Sometimes a denial has the effect of calling attention to something than silence would have. Such appears to be the case with Vladimir Putin’s insistence that there is no basis for suggesting that Russia is becoming “the junior partner” of China, to judge from a new article in The Moscow Times.  

            Asked at a press conference at the BRIKS conference in Kazan whether he now considers Moscow to be “the junior partner” of Beijing, Putin said there was no basis for such suggestions because the two countries deal with each other as equals (moscowtimes.ru/2024/10/18/putin-otkazalsya-schitat-rossiyu-mladshim-partnerom-kitaya-a145379).

            The Kremlin leader’s words will disturb both those Russians who have long been accustomed to viewing Russia as the “senior” partner in this relationship and others who will see the statistics the newspaper offers that show both China’s role in Russia and Russia’s dependence on China growing.

            Among the figures The Moscow Times offers are the following:

·       The Russian economy is more dependent on China than that of any other country except for North Korea.

 

·       China is rapidly increasing its presence in the Russian economy, with Chinese firms now accounting for more than a third of all new businesses registered in Russia this year.

 

·       Moscow continues to sell gas to China at discount prices far below what it might be able to get from other countries.

 

·       China now dominates the new car market in Russia but shows no interest in building plants in Russia to manufacture them that might employ Russians.