Russia has 'Every Right' to Expand Its Position on Svalbard if US Does the Same in Greenland, Moscow Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 20 –Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that Crimea is “no less important for the security of Russia than Greenland is for the US” (meduza.io/news/2026/01/20/lavrov-krym-ne-menee-vazhen-dlya-bezopasnosti-rossii-chem-grenlandiya-dlya-ssha), a comment that suggests Moscow believes Donald Trump will now be more supportive of Russia’s claims there.

            Lavrov’s words have attracted attention around the world as talk about the possibility of a change in the status of Denmark’s Greenland, but relatively little attention is being devoted to a Moscow commentator who argues that “if the world allows the US to change Greenland’s status, Russia has the complete moral and historical right to revise the status” of Norway’s Svalbard.

            Indeed, Nikolay Ilyasov says, Russia would simply be restoring the rights it has under a 1920 treaty that gave it the right to operate in Svalbard (Spitzbergen) at a time when Norway is turning the archipelago into an anti-Russian outpost (asia24.media/news/shpitsbergen-ne-grenlandiya-esli-ssha-mogut-peresmatrivat-pravila-radi-grenlandii-pochemu-rossii-nel/). 

            Because this commentator’s words appear to express the thinking of many in Moscow, they are worth quoting at some length.” Ilyasov says that “When we talk about ‘the Russian footprint’ in the Arctic, most people only imagine polar stations, icebreakers, and bears. But there is a place where this footprint is not just historical – it is legal, economic, and geopolitical.”

“What we are talking about in this case is “Svalbard – an archipelago that Russia knows as Grumant, and which Norway stubbornly calls Svalbard, as if renaming it could erase centuries of Russian presence from memory,” which reflects the fact that Russian Pomors visited the archipelago long before Norway became a country.

“If tomorrow Moscow declares: "Svalbard is our ancestral land, and we demand a revision of the 1920 agreement," the entire West will roar about "Russian expansion." But where is the logic? If international law is not just a convenient screen for the powerful, then Russia has far more grounds …

“Today, about 500 Russians live on the archipelago – mainly employees of the Arctikugol trust in the settlement of Barentsburg. There were once twice as many of them as Norwegians. Now Oslo is doing everything to oust the Russian presence. How? Under the guise of ‘environmental regulations,’ ‘fisheries protection,’ and ‘national security.’

“Svalbard is a strategic key to the Arctic. Its waters are transit corridors for the future Northern Sea Route. Its islands are ideal observation points for air and sea traffic. And what is Norway doing? Turning the archipelago into a forward NATO base. That is, the demilitarized zone, guaranteed by the 1920 Treaty, is now becoming a military outpost against Russia.

“At the same time, the Norwegians are installing surveillance antennas on the islands, receiving coast guard ships, and conducting exercises with the alliance. Where are the protests from the ‘international community’? Where are the defenders of ‘rules’? The irony is that Russia is the only country, besides Norway, that maintains a permanent presence in Svalbard.

“That is because for Russians, it is part of their history and identity. So, if the world allows the US to revise the status of Greenland, then Russia has every moral and historical right to revise the status of Svalbard. After all, Grumant is not Svalbard but a land where Russians lived, worked, and built long before Norwegian officials began to dream of "national Arctic greatness."

              For background on Russia’s focus on and actions in and around Svalbard, see forskning.no/arktis-gronland-kina/kommer-usa-eller-russland-til-a-prove-a-ta-svalbard-med-trump-vet-man-selvfolgelig-aldri/2603879; Kari Aga Myklebost et al., “Hybrid threats in high latitudes: Facing Russia on Svalbard,” Hybrid CoE Paper, December 26, 2025 at hybridcoe.fi/publications/hybrid-threats-in-high-latitudes-facing-russia-on-svalbard/; jamestown.org/moscow-using-svalbard-to-test-natos-readiness-and-resolve/;  jamestown.org/moscow-focusing-on-gotland-and-other-baltic-sea-islands-as-potential-targets/; and jamestown.org/moscows-first-move-against-nato-could-take-place-in-norways-svalbard-archipelago/.   

Harbingers of Russia’s Loss of Freedom Now Appeared a Decade Ago, Editors of ‘Horizontal Russia’ Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 20 – Russian social networks have been publishing articles about the differences in that country between 2016 and 2026. The editors of Horizontal Russia, a portal that keeps track of developments outside of the Moscow agglomeration, has now added a contribution to these discussions.

            They focus on three developments in 2016 they say are defining the Russian situation now – the Yanovaya Law on tightening control over the Internet, the use of attacks on people identified as foreign agents to suppress opposition, and the dispatch of far more outsiders to rule the regions (semnasem.org/articles/2026/01/20/sobytiya-2016-opredelili-2026).

            First, in 2016, the Duma passed legislation significantly increasing punishments for extremist and terrorist crimes and opening the way for the powers that be to punish people for what they posted on the internet and not just for specific real-world actions. Now, that approach has become the basis of Putin’s increasing authoritarianism.

            Second, also in 2016, the Russian government carried out the first persecution of those identified as foreign agents, initially directed at organizations receiving foreign funds but now expanded to include the targeting of individuals suspected of being influenced by hostile foreign governments and organizations.

            And third, in that year, Putin dramatically increased his insertion of outsiders as governors of the federal subjects and since then has increased their number and reduced the voice of regional elites in this selection process and thus has reduced these people from being political figures to being only managers who must carry out the Kremlin’s wishes.

            These three trends and the fact that they grew from small moves to large ones over the course of a decade characterize the nature of the Putin regime as they have made the political system in the Russian Federation ever more authoritarian, the editors of Horizontal Russia suggest.

            And by their arguments regarding these three steps and their introduction, they suggest the way in which Russians and outside observers should evaluate each new Kremlin step, not as an end point designed to deal with what the measure is nominally about but as the springboard for even more dramatic actions later. 

 

A Quarter Fewer Men from City of Moscow Went to Fight in Ukraine in 2025 than Did in 2024, ‘Vyorstka’ Investigation Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 20 – Despite the Kremlin’s push to recruit more men to go to Ukraine and fill the depleted ranks of its army there, the city of Moscow, which has never sent a share equal to its percentage of the population sent a quarter fewer men to Ukraine in 2025 than it did a year earlier; and they were of significantly lower quality, a Vyortska investigation finds.

            Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin has disproportionately drawn men from impoverished ethnic Russian oblasts and krays and the poor non-Russian republics rather than from the cities where losses among such men might be expected to spark protests.

            Given how hard Moscow has been working over the last two years to fill the ranks, it might have been expected that the Russian defense ministry would begin to focus on where the men it might transform into soldiers actually live – large and predominantly ethnic Russian cities like Moscow in the first instance.

            But according to Vyorstka, that has not happened. Instead, the trend seems to be going in the other direction with even fewer Muscovites being recruited and dispatched to fight and thus even more from poorer federal subjects beyond the ring road (verstka.media/kogo-rossiya-nabrala-na-vojnu-v-2025-godu).

            According to the independent news agency, 24,469 men from Moscow were sent to fight in the war, 25 percent less than in 2024. Worse, many of those who did agree to go were older than those the military wanted or had physical and mental problems that would normally be disqualifying but that in the current environment are not.

            Given that the Kremlin regularly claims that it is recruiting ever more men now than in the past, that means that the federal subjects outside the capital must be sending even more, possibly in response to the bonuses their governments are again offering and boosting, a confirmation that the divide between Moscow and the rest of Russia is deepening and widening.

Russian Nationalist Consensus Today Holds that the Civic Russian Nation is ‘a Poly-Ethnic System Headed by Russians,’ Verkhovsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 21 – A consensus has emerged among those who consider themselves to be Russian nationalists both among the political elite and the population of the Russian Federation that “the civic Russian [rossiysky] nation is ‘a poly-ethnic system headed by ethnic Russians [russkiye]. According to Aleksandr Verkhovsky, head of the SOVA Research Center.

            That understanding, he says, has emerged after intensive debate in the first two decades of post-Soviet Russia, debates that led to a downgrading of the primordialist understanding of nationality that the Soviet government supported and toward the rise of the more inclusive psychological one Putin has promoted (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/01/21/russkii-natsionalisticheskii-konsensus).

            In a lengthy article, Verkhovsky traces the evolution of Russian nationalist activists and the Russian government from the 1990s to the mid-2010s before offering his conclusions as to where Russian nationalists and the Kremlin now stand on what has long been the sensitive issue of the relationship between civic and ethnic nationhood.

            As he shows, these debates were intense largely because the Russian government did not get involved. “But in 2011-2013,” he writes, in opposition to various ethno-nationalisms, including the ethnic Russian, the conception of Russia as ‘a nation-civilization’ consisting of many peoples among whom the ethnic Russians were the system-forming was formulated.”

            The need for clarity on this point was also intensified by developments in Ukraine from the Maidan to 2014 and then even more by Putin’s launch of his expanded war there in 2022. And thus unlike in the Russian population where primordial understandings continued, the Russian authorities and Russian nationalists with few exceptions now define it culturally.”

            There remain, of course, differences “on the degree of inclusiveness of the Russian community,” but these appear to be less the product of theoretical discussions than about the practical issues of how easy it should be for those not born of two ethnic Russian parents to become Russians.

In RF Population Centers of Under 200 People, Ethnic Russians Form Either Huge Majorities or are Completely Absent, Census Data Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 22 – One of the reasons villages continue to be a major force in the development of nationalities in the Russian Federation is that population centers there with 200 or fewer people are dominated by a single nationality, ethnic Russian in most cases but non-Russian in the remainder, according to census data analyzed by the To Be Precise portal.

            There are 95,000 villages in the Russian Federation, the portal says. In these, the share of ethnic Russians exceeds 90 percent in two thirds and in more than half of those forms 99 percent. In 7800 of the country’s villages, the share of ethnic Russians does not exceed ten percent and, in 2700 of these, is under one percent (tochno.st/materials/sostavliaet-dolia-etniceskix-rnusskix-v-kazdom-sestom-naselennom-punkte).

            What this means is that despite all the shifts in population there over the last century and rapid urbanization, villages in the Russian Federation remain largely mono-ethnic and thus serve as a support for traditional values among Russians and the basis for the survival of national ones among the non-Russians.

            That is what makes developments in the villages so important, symbolically in the case of ethnic Russians and overwhelmingly practically in the case of non-Russians, and means that all of Moscow’s steps to urbanize the population and combine villages to save money have enormous consequences for the ethnic future of the Russian Federation. 

            To Be Precise acknowledges that census data on this issue as well as many others remains problematic, but it suggests that these numbers clearly indicate that the coming together of nationalities that the Kremlin talks so much about isn’t happening in the villages but rather they overwhelmingly remain in separate ethno-national worlds. 

Russian-Iranian ‘Weapons Corridor’ Means the Caspian is No Longer Safe for Shipping or for Littoral States, Baku Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 17 – The sinking of an Iranian ship in the Turkmenistan sector of the Caspian Sea may or may not have been the result of hostile action, Baku commentator Nurani says; but it has called attention to the fact that “the weapons corridor” Russia and Iran have established there means that the Caspian and its littoral are no longer safe.

            Both on the surface of the sea and in the air above it, Nurani says, Russia and Iran have established a weapons corridor first to deliver weapons to Armenia during the 44 Day War with Azerbaijan and now from Iran to Russia to attack Ukraine or from Russia via Iran to allies like Venezuela (minval.az/news/124511371).

            “Strictly speaking,” Nurani continues, “the use of the Caspian Sea in the Ukrainian war is not limited to this. From here, Russia launches Kalibr missiles at targets in Ukraine, and these are most often civilian targets. Even earlier, before the start of the Ukrainian war, targets in Syria were attacked from the Caspian Sea.”

            Moreover, “Ukraine is already openly striking Russian targets in the Caspian Sea. The base of the Red Banner Caspian Flotilla in Kaspiysk, Dagestan, was attacked by Ukrainian drones. Oil platforms in the Russian sector of the Caspian have repeatedly come under attack. Finally, there were also attacks on a Russian control ship in the Caspian.”

            And, he suggests, “it is even possible that tomorrow the US and its allies will enter the game. The issue of strikes on Iranian targets is on Washington's agenda” and “this means that the calls made in Aktau at the time of the signing of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea to ‘make the Caspian a sea of ​​peace and friendship’ have remained just calls.”

            Nurani concludes: “Russia, which is accustomed to considering the Caspian Sea almost its own internal body of water, like Ladoga or Baikal, openly uses the Caspian for military purposes. And this already seriously threatens the security of other Caspian states, with all the consequences that entails.”

            For background on the increasing military competition in the Caspian, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/07/three-distinct-blocs-among-caspian.html and the sources cited therein.

Putin's Russian World and Trump's MAGA Ideologies ‘Significantly Similar, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 18 – “Unfortunately,” Vladimir Pastukhov says, “we have reached the point where it is no longer possible to ignore the significant similarities between the political and philosophical foundations of the MAGA [Make America Great Again] ideology and the ideology of ‘the Russian World.”

            “Their general ideological principles coincide,” the Russian analyst based in London says. First, they “prioritize ‘national interests over ‘universal human values, in which they do not believe.” Second, both consider “ultra-conservative clerical principles as universal and the only acceptable ones” (t.me/v_pastukhov/1791 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/ideologii-maga-i-russkogo-mira-shodstvo-politiko-filosofskih-osnovanij).

            Moreover, third, “both view all other values as hostile and subject to eradication along with all media outlets which disseminate them.” Fourth, “both are inherently anti-democratic or rather democratic in the purely Leninist understanding of the world.” And fifth, “both are apologists for the right of force in both domestic and foreign policy.”

            According to Pastukhov, the Russian World and MAGA ideologies are aligned even more closely when it comes “to solving specific political problems” as the cases of Crimea and Greenland show. Both argue that they are faced with a problem created by others that they must solve. Both treat the territory in question as something artificial and hostile. And both see a military solution as justified historically and in terms of national interests.

            The Russian analyst says he wrote this to call attention to “the sad fact that the simultaneous dominance in both former superpowers of two ideologies with obviously similar nature can hardly be considered an historical accident,” that this situation isn’t going to “simply disappear” and that this is very much the case “when the sleep of reason produces monsters.”