Ice Will Remain a Problem on Northern Sea Route for at Least 25 More Years, NSR Administrator Tells Putin

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Global warming isn’t having a uniform impact; and in the Arctic north of Russia, there is a clear divide between the western portions of the Northern Sea Route which are now mostly ice free and the eastern ones where ice cover has if anything increased (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/western-sections-of-northern-sea-route.html).
    That pattern is a major reason why the NSR carried less than half of the cargo Putin had called for this year, and it is one that is likely to persist for at least 25 years, NSR Administrator Sergey Zybko told Putin at a meeting in Murmansk at the end of last week (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/76558).
    In making this projection, Zybko called for the construction of even more icebreakers and ice-capable ships than the Kremlin has so far and said that he favored the rapid development of a Russian satellite system to monitor ice patterns in the Arctic so that ships could avoid the most serious bottlenecks (thebarentsobserver.com/news/icebreaker-operator-we-are-seeing-a-more-complicated-situation-with-sea-ice/427599)..
    Officials are now exploring another way around the ice problems in the eastern NSR: the possibility that China will construct a trade corridor on land north from Yekaterinburg to the Yamal peninsula where cargo can then be loaded on ships in a portion of that sea route (sever-press.ru/news/transport/kitajtsam-predstavili-proekt-transportnogo-koridora-ot-ekaterinburga-do-jamala/).
    But the costs of such a project, China’s desire not to be caught up in any sanctions regime, the concerns of some Russians about Chinese involvement of that kind in Russia, and the difficulties Russian shippers have had with intermodal transportation make the achievement of such a plan unlikely anytime soon.

Nearly 90 Percent of Russians Say They’ve Been Affected by the Growing Shortage of Doctors in Their Country

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – A recent poll found that 86 percent of Russian say they’ve felt the impact of the growing shortage of doctors, which the health ministry says now amounts to more than 23,000. Some Russians say they can no longer find any doctor nearby but many more say they cannot get to a needed specialist.
    A major reason for these shortcomings in Russian healthcare is Vladimir Putin’s “optimization” program which has shuttered medical facilities in many parts of the country and concentrated specialists in only a few places in order to save money so that it can be spent on his war in Ukraine (svpressa.ru/blogs/article/457799/).
    But that is not the only reason for this humanitarian disaster. In just over half of the federal subjects of the Russian Federation, more doctors have left in recent years than arrived; and more than a third of the graduates of Russian medical schools are not prepared to work in government medical institutions, largely because of low pay and long hours.
    And yet another cause is what was supposed to be a solution: the use of the Internet to allow for diagnoses and treatments  from a distance. Many doctors dislike that system because it reduces them to technicians and forces them to accept blame for what the machines do, something that makes everyone unhappy.
    So far Russian politicians have come up with no better idea than to force graduates of medical schools to work as doctors where the government assigns them for a number of years after graduation. That system, which would restore one from the Soviet era, is deeply unpopular and might have the effect of reducing the number of those seeking to become doctors further.

Indigenous Peoples of Russian North the Canaries of Global Warming

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Historically, coal miners kept canaries in their workplaces to warn them when poisonous gases were reaching levels at which the miners would die because the canaries would die first. Now, the numerically small nations of the Russian North are playing much the same role with regard to the impact of global warming on human populations.
    Because these peoples from time immemorial have lived in the closest relationship with the surrounding environment, the changes global warming are producing on their world are recognizable earlier than elsewhere and cannot be dismissed as easily as they often are by people living in cities farther south.
    The Arctida portal says that because of the interrelationship of these peoples with the natural world, they are not only losing their food supplies but suffering from changes in their cultures and languages and thus put at risk of extinction (arctida.io/ru/projects/climate-crisis-and-indigenous-peoples).
    These changes have been compounded, the portal says, by the impact of those who as a result of global warming are now able to come into the historical territories of the northern peoples to extract the immense natural resources of that area, often in ways that further degrade the environment of the northern peoples.
    While the Kremlin has largely ignored the problems of the northern peoples and tried to prevent them from telling the world about their problems, scholars at Tomsk State University have recognized that the northern peoples provide an early warning of what global warming will be doing to others in the coming decads.
    In 2023, the Tomsk scholars signed an agreement with indigenous peoples of the Yamalo-Nenets AD to track how climate change was affecting their lives, an accord that has led to an expanded understanding of the process, regardless of what Moscow officials do (tass.ru/arktika-segodnya/18264263).
    But according to Ardtida, this kind of cooperative research needs to be dramatically expanded so that the practical knowledge the peoples of the north have about how global warming is changing their lives will become the basis for changing the lives of others before it is too late to save either.

To Be Recognized as a Compatriot, One Should have to Know Only One Republic Language but Be Ready to Study Russian on Return, Khatazhukov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin is again pushing draft legislation that would require anyone seeking status as a compatriot to know Russian well before returning, a violation of the Russian constitution and a standard few non-Russians seeking to return are likely to meet, Valery Khatazhukhov says.
    The president of the Kabardino-Balkar Regional Human Rights Center says that it is clear that Zatulin wants to block the return to Russia of groups like the Circassians by insisting that they must be fluent in Russian before they can return (zapravakbr.ru/index.php/30-uncategorised/1962-yazykovoj-paradoks-repatriatsii-problemy-realizatsii-zakonoproekta-gospodina-zatulina).
    The Duma deputy first sought this change in Russian law three years ago, but his proposal was voted down, at least in part because other deputies recognized that it would violate the constitution which gives equal rights to speakers of Russian and those who know one of the official languages of the non-Russian republics.
    And others were persuaded to oppose Zatulin’s proposal then because of the success that Circassians returning from Kosovo in 1998 and from Syria in 2011 who quickly learned Russian in special courses set up for them at that time and now have fully integrated into Russian society as a result.
    Khatazhukhov stresses that he favors such Russian-language courses for any Circassians who do return but insists they should not be blocked from returning to one of the three non-Russian republics where they speak one of the state languages if they are then willing to learn Russian.
    How much support Zatulin gets, the Kabardino-Balkar rights activist says, will be a measure of just how far the Kremlin has tilted toward Russian nationalists like Zatulin and against its own constitution and the rights of groups like the Circassians who want to return but don’t know Russian now although they are willing to learn that language once they are back.  

Like Its Tsarist and Soviet Predecessors, Russian Federation has had a Hard Time Creating a Structure to Oversee Ethnic Issues

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Like its tsarist and Soviet predecessors, the government of the Russian Federation has had a hard time creating an institutional structure to oversee ethnic issues. The reason has remained the same: Any structure powerful enough to direct these issues would threaten other agencies; and any not powerful enough to do that would become marginalized.
    This week, as the Russian authorities mark the 10th anniversary of the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (FADN), this challenge remains unresolved, a fact of life highlighted by the Nazaccent portal which recounts the evolution of institutions overseeing ethnic issues in the Russian Federation since the end of Soviet times.
    The chronology it provides of the changes in government structures overseeing ethnic issues makes that clear and is especially useful because comparisons with today’s FADN and earlier bodies are often confusing given that the FADN is far more limited in power than they were (nazaccent.ru/content/43753-ot-upravleniya-duhovnyh-del-do-federalnogo-agentstva/).
    Below is the chronology it provides:
1989 – the State Committee of the RSFSR for Nationality Questions is created.
1990 – it is renamed the State Committee of the RSFSR for Nationality Affairs.
1991 – it is transformed into the State Committee of the RSFSR for Nationality Policy.
1993 -- it is renamed the State Committee for the Affairs of the Federation and Nationalities.
1994 – a Ministry of the Russian Federation for Natinlaity Affairs and Regional Policy is established.
1996 – it is reorganized into the ministry for nationality affairs and federative relations.
1998 – it is renamed the ministry for regional and nationality policy.
1998 – it is divided into the ministry for nationality policy and the ministry for regional policy.
1999 – the ministry of nationality policy is transformed into the ministry for the affairs of the federation and nationalities.
2000 – it is transformed into the ministry for the affairs of the federation and nationality and migration policy.
2001 – this ministry is abolished.
Between 2001 and 2015 when the FADN was created, the Putin regime managed nationality issues in its own way. Between 2001 and 2004, it assigned Vladimir Zorin as the minister without portfolio to supervise work in this area. And between 2004 and 2014, nationality issues were handled by the Russian Federation’s ministry of regional development.  

    As an agency rather than a ministry, FADN has a much smaller remit and far less power to make policy on ethnic issues. And over the past decade, many have suggested that it should be elevated to ministerial status (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/moscow-set-to-re-establish.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/kremlin-said-planning-to-set-up.html and https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/moscow-to-recreate-nationalities.html).
    But Putin clearly prefers to prevent the rise of a ministry that someone might use to hallenge his power and thus appears set to keep the FADN in its reduced circumstances even though that means that there is no single structure in the Russian government with the power to coordinate what is going on regarding ethnic issues or even to define what these consist of.

Russia Now has Only 50,000 km of Fully-Maintained Internal Waterways, Far Less than when Putin came to Power

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Far more than almost any other country, Russia depends on its domestic waterways, including both rivers and canals, to carry cargo and people. It has 100,000 km of these waterways, but then only half are kept fully operational by increasingly frequent dredging in response to the impact of global warming and falling water levels.
    These figure is less than a third of the length of navigable waterways the Russian government claimed in 2000, the year Putin came to power, and means that getting cargo to many places is increasingly difficult (fedpress.ru/article/3372440 and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/03/length-of-russias-navigable-riverways.html).
    The problem is especially great in the basins of the major rivers of Siberia like the Lena and the Ob, where there are no economically viable alternatives – no highways or railways -- to rivers for moving most goods and even people around. Consequently, along many of those river routes deliveries are becoming less regular and prices rising.
    Those trends are adding to the problems that are driving ever more people to leave these regions and preventing others from moving there. Moscow is promising to dredge more rivers and canals and build some 2,000 more riverboats before the end of this decade; but it is unlikely to achieve the increases in the movement of cargo and passengers it is now promising.
    When analysts consider transportation problems in the Russian Federation, these river routes are often ignored. But given that country’s absence of roads and railways in many places, the problems of internal waterways are going to become ever more important, especially if Moscow fails to keep its promises about development.
    For background on Russia’s riverine network and its problems, see  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/08/russian-river-highways-east-of-urals.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/02/russias-failure-to-develop-its.html and windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2011/05/window-on-eurasia-russias-once-proud.html.  

Putin Putting Survival of Russian Federation at Risk by Exploitation of Regions, Kachalov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 1 – The Kremlin wants to rule an eternal empire and believes its control over the federal subjects is “unshakeable,” Konstantin Kachalov says; but in fact, the center is putting the survival of the Russian Federation at risk by its colonial policy of harsh exploitation of the regions and republics.
    According to the Russian analyst, Moscow views the federal subjects only as “a resource for its imperial ambitions.” Indeed, it has been guided by that vision to the point that the question now is only “how soon will they turn against the center” and seek independence (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=67EC0B1814472).
    As a result, Kachalov concludes, “the Kremlin itself is creating the conditions of its own” and the country’s “collapse,” outcomes that are increasingly likely in the next five to ten years unless the regime changes course, something under Putin at least, it gives absolutely no signs of doing.
    In 2023, Moscow took 70 percent of the tax revenues from the entire country, spending most of that on war but also on the city itself and leaving regions with less than a third of the taxes they had paid to spend on local needs. That left the governments of the federal subjects in deficit and meant that their GDPs dropped three to five percent, while Moscow grew 2.1 percent.
    People in the regions and republics are angry, and the governors “whose job is to serve the center not the residents” have used force to prevent protests. But, Kachalov continues, “this is not governance but a colonial policy with the regions turning into controlled territories without the right to protest.”
    Not surprisingly, “centrifugal forces are already gaining strength,” he says. Both in Moscow and in the federal subjects should recall what happened to the USSR in 1991, when the center lost the ability to support the periphery, and parts of the periphery then left. Unfortunately, the Kremlin is “ignoring” this precedent and believes “repression will save ‘the vertical.’”
    Kachalov is blunt: “Moscow is preparing its own end by building a system where the regions are just fuel for the imperial machine.” That is “unsustainable” because “economic plunder, political oppression and growing protests are opening fault lines that can no longer be repaired” by force alone.
    “In five to ten years, these forces could tear the Russian Federation apart unless the Kremlin changes course. But it won’t do that because it is incapable of operating in any other way,” Kalachev continues. And the regions, “from Sakha to Krasnodar are increasingly recognizing that their future is not with Moscow but outside of its control.”