Opposition to Subsidizing Teenage Pregnancy Grows and Russian Regions Cut It Back

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 10 – Yet another program, promoted by the Putin regime, is being scaled back and may end entirely because of popular opposition. That involves paying subsidies to ever-younger teenage girls who give birth, something many object to because at least some of the young women are now having children to get government money rather than to start families.

            For background on this program, which Moscow has operated through the regions, and the opposition it faced from the start by some demographers and hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/rf-regions-promoting-teenage.html and jamestown.org/program/many-russians-outraged-by-government-promotion-of-underage-pregnancy-to-boost-birthrate/.

            In the last few weeks, officials in some reasons have been cutting back this program and some appear to be on the brink of cancelling it altogether given this opposition (nemoskva.net/2025/06/09/galya-u-nas-otmena-vlasti-regionov-kotorye-obeshhali-platit-beremennym-shkolniczam-i-studentkam-zadumalis-nad-sokrashheniem-spiskov/).

            Officials in Omsk Oblast have placed restrictions on just who can get the money including that the young women involved must live and study in that region to get money from it, an indication that some of the young women may be going from one region to another in the hopes of getting more funds.

            In St. Petersburg, a member of the legislative assembly called for ending the program for any minor lest the government create even more problems for children and itself by encouraging young women to have children long before they are in a position to take care of them (t.me/shtannikovazaks/299).

            And the authorities in Altai Kray said that they would give priority to university-level students rather than anyone still a pupil in schools because in their view, such aid must help “young student families” rather than just produce more babies, some of which may end up as orphans (asfera.info/news/129354-stali-izvestny-priciny-po-kotorym-nacali-vyplacivat-posobia-beremennym-ucasimsa?utm_source=chatgpt.com).

Failure of Russian Employers to Pay in Timely Fashion Rises to Worst Level Since 2021

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 10 -- A problem many associate with the 1990s has now returned to the Russian Federation with a vengeance -- the failure of companies to pay wages and salaries on time. Such indebtedness of companies to their employees has risen to nearly 1.5 billion rubles (15 million US dollars), 3.4 times more than was the case in 2021 and affection 7200 workers.

            Those are the official figures released by the Russian government’s statistical arm, Rosstat (ehorussia.com/new/node/32807). The real numbers are almost certainly greater all the more so because Rosstat does not accurately report on the situation in smaller firms (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/06/biggest-problem-with-rosstat-economic.html).

            Construction firms are the most often guilty of failing to pay workers and contractors, according to labor union experts. And what makes that especially dangerous is that it can create a cascading and expanding problem: when a large firm doesn’t pay on time, its contractors are often forced into bankruptcy and forced to lay off their workers. 

Three Factors Explain Why There are Environmental Protests in Some Russian Regions but Not in Others, HSE Study Concludes

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 10 – On the basis of an analysis of 1896 environmental protests in the Russian Federation between 2007 and 2021, researchers at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics say that three factors determine which regions protest and which ones don’t and help explain why regions that may appear quite similar behave so differently.

            First of all, they say, regions are more likely to respond to a specific action rather than to a problem that has been growing over time. Such events act as “triggers” and send people into the streets. Second, some governors are more ready to use repression than others; and those that do face fewer protests (kedr.media/explain/soprotivlenie-mozhet-uvenchatsya-uspehom/).

            And third, the HSE investigators conclude, poorer regions who are asked to help solve the problems of wealthier ones are especially likely to go into the streets to protest. Thus, plans to establish dumps in the Russian north for trash from Moscow have been especially powerful in generating protests.

            The study says that indigenous numerically small peoples are at the very top of this list because “their way of live is closely connected with the environment. Their main types of economic activity to the present remain fishing, hunting and reindeer herding. Moreover, their faiths and folklore” is based on the links between nature and people.

            But ethnicity is not the only such force. Strong regional or other communal identities can also play this role. The scholars give as an example protests in Voronezh Oblast against nickel mining. There, Cossacks played a key role streeting the links between the world around them and Cossack national traditions.

            The HSE researchers also suggested that the theories of American sociologist Sidney Tarrow on the cyclicity of protest are relevant in Russia and point to the ways in which protests have ebbed and flowed across all categories.  And they end by concluding that the war in Ukraine is giving rise to “a new form of ecological protest.”

            This involves videos by Russian soldiers in Ukraine highlighting environmental problems in their home areas that they send to officials and fellow citizens even while remaining on the front lines. (For background on the trend of which this is a part, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/06/soldiers-in-russian-army-in-ukraine.html.)

            The HSE study said that many of the protests succeeded in whole or in part, with one of the authors suggesting that is only one case where environmental protests cannot hope to succeed: in those cases, where what the protesters want stopped or done instead touch on the interests of Putin or his friends. 

Even the Furniture Circassians Use Contributes to Their Longer Life Expectancy, KBR Researchers Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 10 – New research by scholars at the Kabardino-Balkaria State University finds that the cultural code of the Circassians – the Adyge Khaze – the clothes they wear, and even the furniture they have traditionally used contributes to longer life expectancy -- including an unusual number of centenarians among them.

            The North Caucasus is famous for the number of people who live to great age, and many have offered their theories as to why that is so. (My personal favorite is a cartoon showing an older North Caucasian in traditional dress who, when asked how he has lived so long, replies that it is because he has never criticized the state.)

            But now scholars at the KBR University have offered a more scientifically-based explanation. They say that “an enormous role” is played by their cultural traditions, which include behavior, dress and even furniture (kbsu.ru/podrazdelenija/fakultety/meditsinskij-fakultet/news/uchenyj-kbgu-vyvel-formulu-dolgoletija-iz-tradicionnogo-byta-adygov/).

            The researchers say that perhaps the most important of these factors is the cultural code of the Circassians, which urges harmonious relations among people, respect for the elderly, patience and even minimalism in behavior. But other factors are at work including clothing that leaves much of the body free and furniture.

            According to these medical investigators, the stools and low tables Circassians traditionally use discourage people from sitting too long at meals and thus helps them avoid obesity and other diseases. The experts said that they recommend that members of other nations follow these same traditions. 

Central Asia has Just 250 Think Tanks, Most of Which are Small and Don’t Issue Many Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 9 – The five countries of post-Soviet Central Asia have a total of approximately 250 think tanks, they are small, averaging no more than 12 people each, prepare only about 17 reports a year, and only one of them, KISI.kz, is in the top ranks of the Global Go-To Think Tank listing.

            That means, the Stanradar.Com portal says, that most Central Asians who want analysis have to turn either to think tanks abroad, few of which cover their region adequately, or to Central Asia media. Often such people have to rely on often problematic social media alone (stanradar.com/news/full/57582-stanradarcom-sozdaet-smysly-dlja-tsentralnoj-azii.html).

            This is a serious problem not only for experts and officials in these countries but for experts elsewhere who seek to understand what is taking place in these five increasingly important countries at the crossroads of east-west and north-south trade and communication corridors. 

Moscow Must Do More to Save Company Towns Because They’re Where Many Defense Plants are Located, ‘Profile’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 9 – As Russian has shifted to a war economy, the country’s monogorods as cities built around a single major industry are known have become more important because they are where a large share of Russia’s military industry plants are located. To attract enough workers, these plants want to save the company towns despite Moscow having largely given up.

            The factories are opening schools, medical points, and other infrastructure that had disappeared over the last several decades in order to try to keep younger residents from fleeing to the cities. That has helped some, Pyotr Sergeyev says, but there are some things only the government can do (profile.ru/dk/ugmk/prityazhenie-maloj-rodiny-kak-promyshlennye-predpriyatiya-borjutsya-s-ottokom-trudovyh-resursov-iz-monogorodov-1713742/).

            And he warns that unless Moscow changes course and begins to pay more attention to the problems of company towns and invests more money in infrastructure there, either the plants in these cities will have to recruit more workers from abroad or go under, either of which could make it impossible to meet military industry goals.

            The Putin regime has assumed that if it gives these companies more contracts, they will be able to raise wages enough to hold local Russians and attract more to these towns. But studies have shown, Sergeyev continues, that such an approach won’t work: Unless the company towns develop infrastructure and comfortable housing, young people will continue to flee.

            Failure to make such investments, Sergeyev says, will make it impossible to meet defense industry goals. Indeed, that sector may soon collapse unless the Kremlin recognizes that higher pay will not solve the problem and that it must devote more resources to infrastructure -- or revive the hated Soviet system of assigning graduates to their first work places.

Soldiers in Russian Army in Ukraine Involved in Protests at Home Even Before Demobilizing – and Some are Sparking Ethnic Conflicts in the Ranks

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 9 – Russian commanders have tried without success to confiscate smartphones from their subordinates because the latter are not only getting news from home but sending video clips back home not only to keep their families up to date but also to put take pressure on officials at all levels.

            The soldiers protest about all the issues that agitate their families and friends at home and often appear in military fatigues with guns, implicitly or not so implicitly threatening to use force on their return to force officials to act. Because they are soldiers, commanders are reluctant to punish them; and officials at home are more likely to make concessions to them.

            Aleksandr Leonidovich, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta, says that such protests by soldiers in Putin’s invasion force are one of the last places where Russians can protest with the expectation that they won’t be punished for their effort and may even succeed in achieving their goals (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/06/07/urbanisty-s-avtomatami).

            He provides numerous examples of what the soldiers have protested, where they are from, and how successful they have been. But one event he recounts should shake the Kremlin even if it does not appear to have succeed, given that a Bashkortostan protest by soldiers from there generated a counterprotest by other soldiers.  

            The full text of Leonidov’s coverage of this event is below:

“In Bashkortostan, environmental protests are closely intertwined with national ones. In January 2024, clashes between citizens and the police occurred in the region, caused by the trial of local oppositionist and environmentalist Fail Alsynov. The "Baimak case" appeared, under which 82 people were subjected to criminal prosecution.

“On January 17, the second day of protests in the Bashkir city of Baymak, a video appeared on YouTube: a group of masked men with machine guns, the letter "Z" carved into the butt of one of them, read a text in Bashkir in support of Alsynov. (youtube.com/watch?v=dvR_hLPFQ3M&t=9s).

“The video is preceded by a threat in Russian: ‘if you do not stop going against our people, our fathers and mothers, we are leaving our positions and coming to you. If you want war, you will get it!"

“On the same day, an alternative video appeared online. A large group of armed people calling themselves "SVO" fighters from Bashkortostan fires machine guns into the air and delivers a speech condemning "extremists from banned organizations who are intoxicating, deceiving our residents and trying to get them to rally" in support of Alsynov. The armed men offer to send Bashkir nationalists to their unit so that they can "re-educate them and teach them to love their homeland."

“The head of the Committee of the Bashkir National Movement Abroad, Ruslan Gabbasov, told Novaya Gazeta Evropa that the Bashkortostan authorities are not panicking from the demands and even threats of armed men. On the contrary, in some cases they are being forced to publicly apologize.

“’Just recently there was a similar story. Now in the Abzelilovsky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan there are unrests of local residents regarding the upcoming development of the Kyrktytau ridge and the construction of a mining and processing plant there. Fighters from this district, fighting in the "SVO", recorded a video message asking not to touch Kyrktytau. A few days passed and a new video message appeared where they apologized and said that they were misled” (https://t.me/rg_bashkort/7256).