Russian and Turkish Cultures have Much in Common, Not Least in How They View the West and How the West has Worked to Keep Them in One Piece, Kerimoglu Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 29 – Russians and Turks are “remarkably close to one another in their historical memory, mentality, worldview and attitudes toward the West.”, Cemil Kerimoglu says. More than that, this similarity extends “into the trajectories of their histories” and the ways in which the West has responded to them.
    Both the Russian and the Ottoman empires “began as weak, inconsequential statelets” “on the margins of vast fragmented realms,” the Turkish blogger and commentator says; and their ascents to great power was “shaped by a fortuitous combination” of “their strategic geographic positions,” the acumen of their leaders and the attitude of the Western powers (radicaldose.com/turkey-as-mini-russsia/).
    But perhaps most striking is the similarity between the two in “the way their long drawn-out declines were accompanied by the unwillingness of Western powers to hasten their collapse,” Kerimoglu says. “Instead, Western nations often sought to delay or prevent their disintegration” something that allowed the Ottoman Empire two centuries ago and Russia since to survive.
Through “repeated cycles of decline, near-collapse, and (partial) revival, the trajectories of the Ottoman and Russian states have revealed a striking paradox,” the blogger says. “ Both empires owed their survival at critical junctures to the very Western powers they resented and competed against.”
Indeed, and this is the real irony in both cases, “the assistance they received enabled them to rebuild and prepare for future aggression.” But despite that, “both Russians and Turks persistently imagine the West as a malevolent force, eternally conspiring against them. This paradox is at the heart of their historical consciousness.”
According to Kerimoglu, “this belief manifests itself most vividly in the accusations of “colonialism” and “imperialism” thrown against the West that are so commonplace both in Russia and Turkey today. Such charges are, to put it mildly, ironic, given the brutal histories of imperial expansion, conquest, and suppression of other peoples that both nations share.”
In both Russia and Turkey,” he continues, “then, there is a deep disconnect between historical reality and the narratives that shape their national identity. While both peoples accuse the West of imperialist designs, their own histories are built upon imperial conquest and domination.”
Moreover, “although Western powers have, on numerous occasions, acted as their saviors, this reality is completely ignored and has been eclipsed by a deeply ingrained resentment of the West – a resentment that continues to shape their self-image and their relationship with the world today.”
The major difference between the two – and is “stark,” the blogger says – is that “despite sharing a similar imperial past and a history of aggressive expansion, Russia has yet to endure the same prolonged series of catastrophic defeats that reshaped Turkey. Russia has not (yet) faced its equivalent of Vienna in 1683 or Karlowitz in 1699.”  
    But Kerimoglu says, “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – and specifically the failed Siege of Kyiv – has the potential to become its Vienna 1683 moment.” Like Vienna for the Ottomans, Kyiv could prove a “turning point, a final, ill-fated thrust of imperial ambition that marks the beginning of irreversible decline.”
    Should that prove to be the case, the blogger suggests, “it would be a huge win for humanity if Russians, through repeated defeats and humiliations, turn to something similar to present-day Turks in the future, because, at the end of the day, petty merchants are much preferable to genocidal maniacs.”

In Putin’s Russia, Conditions Exist for a Coup but Not Yet a Revolution, El Murid Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 27 – Russia is not on the brink of revolution but all the conditions exist for a coup which might prove to be the precursor of a revolution, setting the stage for a course of development paralleling what Russian went through in 1917, according to Anatoly Nesmiyan, who blogs under the screen name El Murid.
    A coup of course like the February 1917 events will be the action of one part of the elite against another and that wants to push the latter out of the way to gain access to what are the decreasing resources available to those at the top (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/22634 reposted at charter97.org/ru/news/2024/12/29/624338/).
`    Such an action will change the cast of characters at the top but will not “help in any way” to address the fundamental problems of the country, El Murid says. But this threat of “a new February” is forcing the incumbent regime to engage in anti-crisis management because “it is no longer able to manage the processes” occurring throughout the elite.
    Thus, he says, the Putin regime “needs permanent crises as sources for such control; but those crises in turn continue to generate new contradictions and conflicts in the ruling elite and aggravate existing ones. After all, the tighter a spring is compressed, the greater is its tendency to decompress.”
    The plot of a new February, El Murid continues, may result only in a coup or become the trigger for a civil conflict, with portions of the elite drawing in larger groups to press their cases. And these possibilities may last for some time rather than being any instant solution to the problems Russia faces.
    But one thing is clear and must be kept in mind, he says. “In such plots, no ‘popular leaders’ will arise: they simply won’t have time to create their own independent organizational structures.” Any one that does appear to have arisen will only be a proxy for others at least initially rather than an independent actor in his or her own right.

Putin’s Favorite Orthodox Hierarch Says Russian Empire was Going in Right Direction but was Brought Down in 1917 by Dissatisfied Elites

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 29 – Metropolitan Tikhon, the Orthodox hierarch Putin has long been closest to, says in his candidate dissertation that the Russian Empire was going in the right directions up to the time of the 1917 revolution but was brought down by the actions of dissatisfied elites who stirred up the population.
    Tikhon defended his thesis, “The Collapse of the Russian Empire: Factors of the Interrelationship of Power and Population,” at Moscow State University’s faculty of state administration (mk.ru/social/2024/12/29/imperiya-kotoruyu-my-poteryali-mitropolit-tikhon-nashel-prichiny-ee-krusheniya.html).
    In a critical review of Tikhon’s position, Moskovsky Komsomolets journalist Kirill Ivanov says that the Orthodox prelate argues that neither in the economy nor in the social sphere were there any serious problems in Russia in the years before 2017, although he admits there were some “temporary difficulties.”
    In brief, Tikhon suggests that the revolution was not inevitable but rather the work of the country’s political elites who split during the war and encouraged various groups in the population to think that their lives could be made even better if the tsarist system were to be overturned.
    Tikhon’s argument fits neatly into Vladimir Putin’s single stream approach to Russian history and undoubtedly has influenced the Kremlin leader’s thinking not only about why revolutions happened in the past but also how they can with wise leadership be avoided in the future.

Lines, Not Meetings, Symbol of Protest in Russia in 2024, ‘Novaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 29 – Russians over the course of the last 12 months showed their civic solidarity and opposition to Kremlin policies not by taking part in mass demonstrations – doing that has become increasingly dangerous – but by standing in lines for the nomination of Boris Nadezhdin as president, to say good bye to Aleksey Navalny, and to vote against Putin.
    These three actions often are not counted as a form of protest, but they became the symbol of the Russian people’s willingness and ability to engage in protest even when the regime’s repression increases. As such, they deserve to be remembered and become a model for the future (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/12/29/ocheredi-protesta).
    Repressive governments like Putin’s and those who want to protest against these regimes are like the offense and defense on the battlefield. Each advance by the one leads to a response. And that means that repression seldom gains any final victories however intimidating it may appear.  

New Russian Countr-Extremism Strategy Document Focuses on Ukraine, the West, Younger Russians, and Activists But Offers Little New Otherwise

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 28 – Vladimir Putin has issued a new Strategy for Countering Extremism (static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/ru/wrfx0TxRABr2gXaBbzJ6ShAZ5Na8CDWp.pdf) which updates with a listing of new threats rather than completely revises the one that had been in force since 2020 (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/putin-significantly-and-dangerously.html).
    Among the new threats enumerated are those the document says originate in Ukraine, the West, immigrant groups, and young Russians, including activists working in various spheres including many nominally far from politics but having the potential to spark larger political demonstrations.
    But other than that, the new document, in sharp contrast to the 2020 declaration, contains relatively little that is new beyond its references to Ukraine and migrants, two hot button issues in Russia at present. As such, it suggests that it will justify the continuing growth in repression along current lines rather than a radical departure from what is taking place now.

Ending War in Ukraine May Generate ‘Almost as Big a Crisis for the Kremlin as Its Beginning,’ Pertsev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 27 – For three reasons, the end of the war in Ukraine could quickly become “almost as big a crisis for the Kremlin” as the beginning of that conflict, Andrey Pertsev says. Russian elites will want the Kremlin to resume its role as regulator and the Russian people will want to know what to expect next, but Vladimir Putin won’t be able to provide either.
    The past year, the Riddle Russia commentator says, major conflicts have arisen among elite groups in Moscow, with one of the most powerful, that of Sergey Shoygu being destroyed, and gunfire being heard in the streets of the Russian capital for the first time since the 1990s (ridl.io/ru/god-bolshogo-razloma/).
    This has occurred, Pertsev argues, because “Putin’s age and passion for war have effectively removed him from arbitration” of disputes among the clans,” the dwindling resources in the country mean that the struggle for control of what’s left has intensified, and Putin’s reluctance to change people around him means that those who seek change there must attack.
    The situation has deteriorated to the point, he continues, that one is forced to conclude that “Russia’s elites are entering the new year in a state of all-our war  [and] the struggle among clans and groups is becoming part of the power vertical’s pre-programmed software,” the norm rather than the exception.
    That change in the elites took place even as a more fundamental change took place in Putin himself: He has become the opposite of what he sought to present himself as being up until now. “Instead of a macho man, arbiter and guarantor, he showed himself to be a verbose, talkative pensioner” who simply could not keep a secret or avoid appointing relatives.
    According to Pertsev, “this combination of personal qualities will be Putin’s main problem in the year ahead. His age has been one of the main grievances Russians have against him to judge from the polls, and there are more and more  details about him that throw that into high ,.
    Related to both of these and making the entire situation less stable is the fact that the Kremlin “has yet to give Russians some clear and comprehensive reason for the launch of the war and the reasons for its continuation.” Putin and his team talk about these things in words without any clear meaning.
    “As a result,” Pertsev says, “society isn’t fully involved with the war; and those who volunteer to fight at the front are doing so for the hefty paychecks they have been promised” rather than out of any specific loyalty to Putin and his regime. Ending the war won’t end this problem. Indeed, the commentator suggests, it could bring everything to a head.
    That may be yet another major reason why Putin shows so little sign of really seeking an end to the conflict.

Now Russian Families with Two Incomes and Two Children Can Afford a Mortgage in Only Two Federal Subjects, a Decline from in 30 a Year Ago

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 29 – A year ago, Russian families with two incomes and two families could afford mortgages in just over a third (30) of all federal subjects could afford to take out a mortgage. Now that figure has fallen to only two, the petroleum-rich Khantsy-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous districts, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions says.
    This decline has two important consequences. On the one hand, it means that many families now feel they have fallen out of the middle class, whatever the Kremlin says about economic growth (nemoskva.net/2024/12/29/v-98-regionov-rossii-semya-iz-dvuh-rabotayushhih-vzroslyh-i-dvuh-detej-ne-mozhet-sebe-pozvolit-ipoteku-po-rynochnoj-stavke/).
    And on the other, it means that families with two incomes but only one child are now having to choose between having a second child, which is what Moscow wants them to do, and getting a home of their own, which many view as the mark of success. Not surprisingly, many are choosing the latter and depressing the birthrate still further.

Following Shoot Down of Azerbaijani Plane, More Foreign Carriers Exit Russian Market

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 27 – Many international air carriers cancelled flights to and from Russian destinations after Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine. Now, in the wake of the Russian shooting down of the Azerbaijani passenger plane, even more are doing so, including in particular carriers from neighboring countries where passenger volume is greatest.
    This has complicated the travel plans of Russians hoping to go abroad, led to price rises, and forced Russians who want to travel further afield to purchase two tickets for flights in each direction, one with a carrier still servicing Russian fields and a second  for onward flights to final destinations (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/12/27/problemu-ne-spriachesh).
    In the short term, this is causing problems for Russian carriers as well, putting additional strains on an already overburdened system and making accidents more likely; but in the longer term, it may lead to the complete domination of the Russian market by Russian carriers and the re-consolidation of Russian carriers into a single Aeroflot company as in Soviet times.

Unless Ukraine Receives Serious Security Guarantees, Many Ukrainians Now Abroad May Not Return Home, Further Compromising that Country’s Demographic Future

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 25 – The Russian invasion of Ukraine has inflicted serious demographic losses on Ukraine. Not only has that country lost many men in combat and many civilians from Russian attacks, but the birthrate has plummeted to well-below replacement levels and emigration has increased.
    Ukraine’s future prospects depend now to an important degree on the nature of any agreement ending the war, Ukrainian demographers say. If such an accord does not provide genuine security guarantees, the birthrate won’t rise and most of those now abroad won’t return. But if there are real security guarantees, the situation would be very different.
    Many of the estimate 7.7 million Ukrainians now abroad would return, the Kyiv demographers says; and births would likely increase relative to deaths as well. At present, Ukrainian women are giving birth to only 100 babies for every 286 Ukrainians who are dying (ng.ru/cis/2024-12-26/5_9165_ukraine.html).
    Ukraine’s population under the control of Kyiv has fallen from 52 million in 1991 to only 29 million now and likely will fall still further unless Ukraine can win the war and/or achieve genuine security guarantees. If it can’t get them, any accord will ultimately be a Russian victory because it will put Ukraine into a steep demographic decline it may not be able to escape.

Duma Members Increasingly Support Introduction of Food Stamps Everywhere in Russia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 25 – Despite Putin’s constant claims that life is getting better for Russians, statistics show that the percentage of Russians who have trouble paying for basic needs has risen from 35 percent in 2020 to 48 percent this year, a trend that has prompted some Duma members to call for the introduction of food stamps for the poor across the country.
    Anatoly Aksakov, head of the Duma committee on financial markets, is among those doing so. He says that proposals for food stamps have “a sound basis” and should be extended throughout Russia so that ‘people in need’ will ‘under all circumstances know they will be provided with basic products and goods” (ehorussia.com/new/node/32006).
    The idea has gained support following the announcement by Kalinigrad governor Aleksey Bezprozvannykh that he was introducing food stamps in that Russian exclave, a place where transportation difficulties have sent prices up particularly fast and left many without the possibility of buying even basic foodstuffs.

Pro-Kremlin Telegram Channels Feature Clip showing Russian Air Defense Shooting Down Santa Claus and His Sleigh

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 26 – Pro-Kremlin telegram channels featured a video clip showing Russian air defense forces shooting down Santa Claus and his sleigh because he was supposedly carrying NATO rockets. In response, Father Frost, the Russian counterpart to Santa Claus, says “Good! We don’t need any kind of foreign stuff flying above our heads.”
    The clip (t.me/dimsmirnov175/87047 described at themoscowtimes.com/2024/12/27/pro-kremlin-media-share-video-showing-russian-missile-shooting-down-santas-sleigh-a87472) was especially in appropriate because it came on the heels of the Russian shooting down of an Azerbaijani airliner.
    But what has become the eternal conflict of the Western Santa Claus and the Russian Father Frost was larger than that this year in Russia. Kirill Kabanov, a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council, lashed out at Moscow Mufti Ildar Alyautdinov for calling on children to pray to God for their needs rather than to invented characters like Father Frost (sova-center.ru/religion/news/amusing-incidents/2024/12/d50856/).
    And in Irbit in Sverdlovsk Oblast, local communists complained when the authorities there dressed up a Lenin statue to look like Father Frost. The authorities immediately said they hadn’t wanted to offend anyone but then quickly took down the costume. Presumably the communists are pleased.
    While the SOVA monitoring center reported these cases under the rubric of “amusing incidents,” which from one perspective of course they were, they are an indication of just how sensitive Russians are about such things and how even what might appear to most as a small thing can cause real problems for the authorities.  

A Russian Victory in Ukraine will Usher In a New Age of Empires that will Soon Collide with One Another, Surkov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 25 – Vladislav Surkov, a Kremlin advisor sometimes referred to as Putin’s brain and thus worth listening to fir insights into the latter’s thinking, says that a Russian victory in Ukraine will lead Russia to turn toward the West and usher in a new age of empires that will inevitably collide with one another.
    The first of these consequences, he says, won’t involve “the restoration of vulgar Westernism but only be about a reasonable reduction in the current Asian bias” and will mean that having defeated Ukraine, Russia will have “cut through another window on Europe” (actualcomment.ru/parad-imperializmov-2412271244.html).
    The other major consequence of a Russian victory, Surkov continues, is that it will usher in a new era of imperialism as more and more leaders and peoples seek to acquire imperial possessions. That means that “bipolar disorder in international relations … is being replaced by multi-polar disorder, sometimes for some reason mistaken for recovery.”
    At present, “imperialism is an indecent, almost obscene term in the modern political lexicon.” And undoubtedly many will not call this new impulse imperialism. But using a different term does not change the essence of the situation: “empires are being revived, and empires will collide.”

Medvedev Says Ethnic Enclaves in Russian Cities ‘Breeding Grounds’ for Extremism

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 25 – Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and now deputy had of the Russian Security Council, says that “ethnic enclaves” now emerging in Russian cities can become “breeding grounds for extremism,” impose “a very serious burden” on Russia’s social sphere, and “in some cases can become a cause of inter-ethnic tensions.”
    “Ethnic enclaves” is the term Russian officials use for “ghettos,” a phenomenon that they insist does not exist in their country (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/there-are-no-ghettos-in-russia-moscow.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/08/ethnic-enclaves-becoming-reality-in.html).
    But the utility of ethnic enclaves as a euphemism for ghettos is wearing thin, and Medvedev’s remarks (nazaccent.ru/content/43334-dmitrij-medvedev-etnicheskie-anklavy-v-rossii-mogut-stat-rassadnikami-ekstremizma/) seem certain to prompt more Russians to think about and even speak of ghettos in their country.
    In the currently overheated environment about immigrants and their families, that could lead to new moves against migrant workers. But it could also lead to moves against any concentration in residence patterns of non-Russians as has already happened with the Roma (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/after-korkino-pogrom-hostility-toward.html).
    And that in turn could spark conflicts between other larger indigenous nationalities and ethnic Russians, not only in the largest cities but in smaller ones as well, where some Russian research has suggested these minority ethnic enclaves are growing most rapidly (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/10/window-on-eurasia-ethnic-enclaves.html).

Polygamy Fetwa Case Misunderstood and Debate over that Practice Far from Over, Experts Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 25 – Both Russian and Western media have seriously misunderstood the conflict between the Muslim leadership of the Russian Federation and the Russian government over a fetwa about polygamy and assumed that the debate about it is over now that Moscow has forced Muslim religious leaders to withdraw it.
    According to what appears to be on its way to be conventional wisdom, the muftis issued a fetwa permitting polygamy among Russia’s Muslims on Dec. 19, Russian politicians and commentators reacted with fury, and Moscow forced the muftis to withdraw the fetwa, effectively banning polygamy in Russia for all time.
    But in fact, the fetwa did not extend the right of Muslims to polygamy as far as their faith is concerned or affect the state’s right to ban that practice as far as government-registered marriages are concerned. What it did was to establish certain rules about how such arrangements could take place. Thus, the withdrawal of the fetwa doesn’t affect the right of Muslims as such.  
    Damir Mukhetdinov, first deputy head of the Spiritual Administration of the Russian Federation, pointed this out to the Kavkaz-Uzel portal; and he was seconded by Leonid Syukayynen, a leading specialist on Islam at Moscow’s HSE, North Caucasus expert Yekaterina Sokyanskaya and Marem activist Katerina Neroznikova (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/406952).
    Mukhetdinov noted that the Council of Ulema of the Spiritual Administration “did not permit and could in no way have been able to permit polygamy because it was already legalized in the Koran” and that Moscow’s insistence on the withdrawal of the fetwa was an action taken by officials ill-disposed to Islam and who “did not understand” what the fetwa was about.   
    What this means is that Moscow has not achieved what it thinks it has but only has infuriated many traditional Muslims who are upset both about the central government’s intervention on religious issues it doesn’t understand and its attempt to alter Islamic precepts as laid on in the Koran.                                      Consequently, the debate of polygamy will continue in Russia, regardless of what Moscow thinks -- and Moscow may have less influence over its course precisely because of the clumsy way it intervened in this particular case.

Putin's Russia ‘a Mutation of Soviet Communism’ and Sovietology Needs to Be Restored If It is To Be Understood, Savvin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 25 – Putin’s Russia is “not just a dictatorship” like so many others, Dimitry Savvin says. It is “a mutation of Soviet communism.” Many in the West do not understand that, believing instead that while Putin “may not be a nice guy … Russia isn’t the Soviet Union” but “a normal state” and that the West should take his views into account.
    What is needed, the Riga-based conservative Russian nationalist writer says is the development or better recovery of a Sovietology that will recognize the way in which Russia has descended from the Soviet system, an origin that makes it fundamentally different from other dictatorships (europeanconservative.com/articles/interviews/interview-with-dmitriy-savvin/).
    To promote such a development, Savvin has just published in Latvian a novel entitled P.U.T.I.N. The Blue-Green Empire, a book whose titular reference to the Kremlin leader is the Russian acronym for a new Moscow computer system called “the Promising Installation of Tactical and Institutional Configuration.”
    “This idea of creating a perfect machine,” Savvin continues, “is very Marxist. In the Soviet Union, every idea, no matter how absurd was presented as ‘scientific’ and thus because its ‘science,’ it can’t be denied, a hybrid notion that typifies not only the Soviet past but the Russian present.
    The roots of the myths Putin invokes have their origins in the Soviet period and in Marxist thought; and “if we do not understand that Castro’s Cuba, Communist China and neo-Soviet Russia are all part of the same axis, we have a serious problem,” the Russian conservative writer says.
    “We must understand [as well] that the origin of Sovietism or communism is not Rusisan or Chinese.” Instead, “the historical home of this spiritual disease is in Germany and in Central Europe and that it is a threat to all humanity … They are our enemies,” and this is something we must use Sovietological methods to understand.  

With Trump Again Talking about Greenland, Moscow Focusing on Faeroe Islands and Their Possible Independence

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 23 – Two Danish possessions in the north Atlantic, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, are attracting increasing attention in Washington, where President-elect Donald Trump has again suggested that he would like the US to acquire the former, and in Moscow, where a well-connected commentator suggests the Kremlin is now focusing on the Faeroes.  
    During his earlier term in office, Trump said he would like to acquire Greenland from Denmark. Although Copenhagen rejected the idea, Moscow focused on it as a potential threat to Russian interests (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/us-wants-greenland-as-second-alaska.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/moscow-sees-greenlands-moves-toward.html, jamestown.org/program/greenland-set-to-become-cockpit-of-controversy-between-east-and-west/ and jamestown.org/program/russia-expects-growing-conflict-with-us-over-greenland/).
    Until Trump was again elected and again spoke about acquiring Greenland, Moscow focused more on other islands in the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea as places of Russian interest (jamestown.org/program/moscow-focusing-on-gotland-and-other-baltic-sea-islands-as-potential-targets/, jamestown.org/program/spitzbergen-a-new-hotspot-in-the-cold-north-between-russia-and-the-west/ and jamestown.org/program/moscows-first-move-against-nato-could-take-place-in-norways-svalbard-archipelago/).
    While Spitzbergen, Gotland, and the Aaland Islams received more Russian attention, Moscow occasionally focused on the Faroes, an autonomous Danish possession between Scandinavia and Iceland that has been more willing to continue to cooperate with (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-faroe-islands-autonomous-part-of.html).
    In a new article, Moscow security commentator Aleksey Chichkin says that Russia is interested in continuing its close cooperation with the autonomous Faroes because the autonomous region of 1400 square kilometers and 53,000 people wants to do so as well (stoletie.ru/rossiya_i_mir/farery_poshhochina_jes_702.htm).
    Because it is autonomous, the Faroe Islands are not part of the EU and have not gone along with the EU and Denmark in imposing sanctions on Russia after the Anschluss of Crimea and Putin’s launch of the expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Instead, they have worked to expand trade and fishing rights with Russia.
    Some in Denmark, the Faroes and Russia see this as presaging an eventual move toward independence by the Faroe Islands and suggest that events during World War II set the stage for that. Not only did the two Danish territories refuse to surrender to Germany after the latter’s occupation of Denmark, but Iceland moved to acquire independence from Copenhagen.    
    Chichkin suggests that the Faroes could follow the same course now, a possibility that would likely increase if Russian assistance to the Faroes fishing industry expands and American interest in Greenland does as well. Were that to happen, it would likely give Russia expanded leverage over the North Atlantic as well as the entrance to the Northern Sea Route.
    Consequently, a place few in most of the countries of the West have ever heard of except for its salmon may now be on its way to becoming a cockpit of conflict between Russia, on the one hand, and the West, on the other, especially given the Kremlin’s current interest in expanding its position in these and other islands in the region.   

Moscow’s Repression Became Systemic in 2024, with Number of Cases Stabilizing but Punishments Meted Out Increasingly Harsh, ‘Re-Russia’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 23 – Over the past 12 months, the Kremlin’s repressive system became systemic with the number of cases stabilizing but the punishments meted out for violations of ever more stringent laws becoming increasingly harsh, according to an investigation by the Re-Russia portal.
    In 2024, the portal says, the number of political cases remained at the same level with approximately 60 prosecutions each month; but the share of those resulting in incarceration rose from 35 percent to 70 percent and with these terms being increasingly long as well (re-russia.net/analytics/0227/).
    In the two previous years, most of the cases appear to have been reactive, Re-Russia says, with the authorities responding to protests. Now, however, the Kremlin has appeared to put in place a system which will punish whole classes of people as foreign agents or undesirables, a development that suggests the future will be even more repressive than the past.

Global Warming More than War in Ukraine Behind Record Number of Disasters in Russia in 2024, ‘Novaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 23 – During 2024, Russia suffered from a minimum of 59 major natural disasters in 2024, fifty percent more than a yea earlier and affecting more than half of the country’s federal subjects That represents a record number of such crises at least since 2009 when the emergency services ministry was created and in fact for a much longer period as well, Novaya Gazeta says.
     Many commentators have blamed this trend on Putin’s war in Ukraine, the paper says; but in fact, it has been global warming that has been responsible for far more of these disasters, 38 to 16,  although the impact has been affected by the war given Moscow’s attention to it above everything else (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/12/23/ogon-voda-i-bespilotnye-apparaty).
    Moscow has taken one step that will likely mean fewer major catastrophes in 2025: The Moscow authorities have raised the amount of property damage involved for any incident to be classified as a major crisis by 50 percent. That will likely allow the Kremlin the opportunity to speak about “progress” in this next year even though there is unlikely to be any.

Merzyan Ethnic Activism Making Major Contribution to Russian Civil Society, Kikhlanki Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 23 – One of the biggest mistakes many have made in studying post-Soviet Russian society is to view ethnic activism and civil society activism as completely separate and at odds with one another, with the growth of one leading to the decline of the other rather than the two being mutually re-enforcing.
    But a new study of the neo-Merzyan movement in Central Russia avoids that mistake and argues that this ethnic movement “makes a useful contribution to post-Soviet Russian society” (merjamaa.ru/index/in_search_of_merjamaa_aapo_kihlanki/0-43 and merjamaa.ru/news/aapo_kikhlanki_v_poiskakh_merjamaa_vi_chast_merjanstvo_i_grazhdanskoe_obshhestvo/2024-12-17-1612).
    Prepared by Aapo Kikhlyanki, a student at the University of Kent, the study documents how those involved in the ethnic movement and those in the civil society gain skills that re-enforce one another and that this has meant that the two re-enforce one another rather than compete.
    This pattern is likely more typical of smaller ethnic movements and earlier civil society activism than may be the case when either grows beyond a certain point, but this observation is an important reminder that the two are closely interlinked, something that should be included in discussions of ethnicity and civil society more generally.
    For background on Marjamaa activism, a Finno-Ugric movement in Central Russia near Moscow, why the Kremlin opposes it, and how this ethnic revival is promoting civil society, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/03/peoples-russians-assimilated-in-past.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/11/window-on-eurasia-local-studies.html.  

Kremlin Now Moving to Censor Books But Lacks the Ideology and Bureaucracy Needed to Do So Effectively, Kharitonov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 23 – The Putin regime took control of Russian radio and television to build its power and worked to shutter the country’s more independent print media outlets but until recently it largely ignored book publishing where there was less money involved and whose impact was thought to be less.
    Now, however, the Kremlin is working to take control of that sector, Vladimir Kharitonov, director of Freedom Letters who writes for the Word and Money telegram channel, but it faces real problems because it lacks both the ideology and censorship bureaucracy of Soviet times (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/12/23/ostorozhno-tsenzuroi-nakryvaetsia)
    As a result, the powers that be depend on denunciations and on their own occasional reading, an approach that makes the Kremlin’s effort to control what appears in books haphazard and often ineffective. Unless it formalizes ideology and builds a censorship bureaucracy, that is likely to remain the case for some time to come.

Like Hitler with German Culture, Putin Using Admiration for Russian Culture to Disorder West and Generate Domestic Support for His Wars, Lea and Taskin Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 23 – In the 1930s, many outside of Germany refused to believe the truth about Hitler because of their admiration for German high culture; and many Germans accepted his claim of a special German role in history for the same reason. Today, Putin is using similar admiration for Russian culture in the same way, Aaron Leya and Borukh Taskin say.
    As was the case with Hitler’s Germany almost a century ago, many in the West are unwilling to face up to what Putin is doing having convinced themselves that a country that has produced such great literature and art can’t possibly be doing what others charge it with doing  (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=67694E8A8FFB1).
    And many Russians, constantly hearing from the Kremlin about the special and superior nation of Russian culture have convinced themselves that the role for their country now being advanced by war and corruption is justified and that any criticism is motivated by envy and is thus unjustified.
    Even when the most extreme form of this invocation of culture as a form of denial of the truth does not take place, the Kremlin’s use of the undoubted cultural achievements of Russia has the effect of undercutting criticism abroad and thus slowing reaction and leading many Russians to give Putin the benefit of a doubt he does not deserve.
    And that in turn makes more Russian-initiated wars likely both because the West will remain off balance given the Russian-centric training of most Western specialists on Eurasia and the Moscow-centric vision of most Russians as well. And it is why both shortcomings must not only be criticized but clearly defeated if successors to Putin are to cease being a threat.

Majority of Protests in Russian Federal Subjects in 2024 were about Local or Regional Issues, Sorokina Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 23 – Protests beyond Moscow’s ring road seldom get much attention in the central media be it government or independent. A happy exception is the coverage the 7x7 telegram channel Horizontal Russia provides. Now using its reports, journalist Yanina Sorokina provides a picture of protests outside of Moscow in Russia’s federal subjects in 2024.
    The channel reported on more than 300 protest actions in the regions and republics, she says. Of these, the largest number, affecting more than 40 federal subjects, concerned local issues, including maintenance of roads, standard of living, construction of new buildings, and the fate of local and regional officials (semnasem.org/articles/2024/12/23/o-chem-i-kak-regiony-rossii-protestovali-v-2024-godu).
    The most popular form of protest was not public meetings but the circulation of petitions to the authorities, Sorokina says. There were 152 such protests that Horizontal Russia reported on. The popularity of this kind of protest is that those who took part were rarely subject to administrative or criminal sanctions and that sometimes these petitions achieved their goals.
    Residents of the regions and republics did join some all-Russian actions. People in 55 regions protested the treatment of Aleksey Navalny and demanded that his body be handed over to his relatives. And residents of 14 organized actions to express their support for the victims of the Crocus City Hall terrorist act.
    Regional residents also took part in protests on both sides of the dispute about how to handle homeless animals with some demanding that dogs and cats be provided with shelters and others calling for these creatures to be euthanized in the name of protecting Russians, an all-Russia issue that has divided the country for years.

Since Putin Began Expanded Invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has Radically Increased Repression in Russian Higher Educational Institutions

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 22 – Over the last decade but mostly in the almost three years since Putin began his expanded invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities have dramatically stepped up their repression in their country’s higher educational institutions, not only expelling 86 students and firing 92 instructors but changing rules to allow even  more repression in the future.
    Insider journalist Alyona Lobankova says that until the mid-2010s, expulsions and firings ere rare, both because protests were minimal and because university administrations, being elected rather than appointed, often believed in openness or shared the views of their students (https://theins.ru/obshestvo/277158).
    But after that time, the Putin regime moved to make the heads of these institutions appointed rather than elected, shortened the contracts teachers have and thus made their removal easier, and both tightened the rules governing student behavior and extended those rules to conduct outside of the precincts of the schools, a violation of Russian law but something the Kremlin has insisted on.
    The institutions hardest hit so far, Lobankova says, are the Islamic University in Grozny and St. Petersburg State University. But the repressions are spreading not only in the capitals and in hotspots like Chechnya but across the country, and more students and instructors are likely to suffer in the coming months and years.   

Russians’ Renewed Focus on Victory and Need to Control Elites Most Important Factor Behind Their More Positive View of Stalin, Volkov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 23 – There is much talk now about the rehabilitation of Stalin, Denis Volkov says; but what is going on among Russians with regard to the Soviet dictator has less to do with any conscious effort to rehabilitate him than their increasing focus on conflicts with foreign countries and the need to control selfish elites.
    The director of the independent Levada Center polling agency says that both polls and focus groups suggest that Russians have always had a more complicated picture of Stalin than many have imagined (lenta.ru/articles/2024/12/18/stalin/ reposted at levada.ru/2024/12/23/mifologizirovannoe-predstavlenie-o-repressiyah/).
    Twenty years ago, even those who condemned Stalin for his repressions admitted that he had made a major contribution to the Soviet victory in World War II; but at that time, war and conflict with the West was not a central concern. Instead, Levada says, most but far from all focused on Stalin’s repressive actions at home.
    Now, however, Russians are again focusing on war and conflicts with the West and not surprisingly, their assessment of Stalin reflects that. They focus more on his contribution to victory and accept the idea, widespread in Khrushchev’s time, that Stalin’s repressions were focused on self-elites rather than directed against the Soviet people.
“It seems to me,” Levada argues, that the increasingly positive attitude toward Stalin among Russians is “not so much the result of a conscious rehabilitation” of the dictator but rather “a refusal to have a more balanced discussion of his figure. As a result, his negative qualities do not disappear but fade into the background.”
What this suggests is that as long as the dominant issues in Russian life are war and a conflict with the West, on the one hand, and belief among Russians that only a leader as strong as Stalin can keep greedy elites in line, on the other, popular attitudes among Russians about Stalin will continue to improve.

Kremlin Blames Russia’s Demographic Decline on the 20th Century, Doesn’t Understand Its Real Source, and has No Policy to Counter It, Chernyshov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 23 – Putin and his team have finally recognized that Russia is in increasingly serious demographic decline, but continues to blame the 20th century for that, fails to understand its real sources, and has no policies in place to counter it, according to Yevgeny Chernyshov.
    Indeed, the only positive thing one can report from the demographic front, the Nakanune news agency commentator says, is that Putin has finally recognized that there is a problem. Unfortunately, he doesn’t understand its nature and has been taking steps and making proposals which won’t help (nakanune.ru/articles/122981/).
    Putin and his team blame all the current problems on the continuing impact of events in the 20th century, pointing to wars that left a gender imbalance in the population. Those events do not have an impact in anyway comparable to developments taking place in Russia today, Chernyshov says.
    The reason that Russia is in the midst of a demographic catastrophe, he says, is that under Russians don’t want to have children. Instead of focusing on that, the Kremlin has substituted a social policy for a demographic one and provided assistance to poorer groups even though that does not address the overriding cause.
    According to Chernyshov, “the authorities should be thinking about how to help people want to have children.” But that isn’t what they are doing. Not only would that be difficult for any government but it may be beyond the capacity of one that has been promoting selfishness and consumerism.
    The Kremlin’s policies haven’t worked and in some cases make absolutely no sense. The regime wants people to have three or four children. But it gives parents far more money for the first, less for the second, and still less for the third, leading people to change when they have the first but not causing them to have a second or third.
    Chernyshov argues that it will be difficult for the Kremlin to reverse Russia’s demographic decline even if it does see the real reasons for it. But it will be impossible if Putin and his team refuse to recognize these realities and to exclude from planning those in the government who can’t or won’t recognize what is really going on.
    If that doesn’t happen and soon, then Russia will be in even more shape sooner than anyone might imagine.

Many Places North of Where Kazakhstan-Russian Border Now Is Once had Kazakh Majorities, but Orenburg Wasn’t One of Them, Kazakh Commentator Points Out.

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 21 – Even before the Soviet Union disintegrated, both Russians and Kazakhs suggested that the borders between the two republics should be changed, the former arguing that predominantly ethnic Russian areas in Kazakhstan should be part of Russia and the latter that formerly Kazakh-majority regions in Russia should become part of Kazakhstan.
    Such claims and counter-claims have only increased in number since 1991, but fortunately, Zhenis Baykhozha says, they have been advanced not by either of the two governments but by commentators, journalists and scholars (spik.kz/2101-kazahstan-i-rossija-zemelnye-spory-poslednee-delo.html).
    If one looks back to the period before 1917, the Kazakhs have the better claims, the Kazakh commentator says; but if one considers the period since that time, the Russians do, largely because Kazakhs have left Russian areas and Russians have moved into what are today Kazakh lands.
    One of the most interesting and sensitive issues concerns the land around Orenburg which between 1924 and 1925 was part of the Kazakh autonomy but which even then did not have a Kazakh majority. (For details, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/orenburg-corridor-arose-because-kazakhs.html.)
    The status of Orenburg has become the focus of particular attention in recent years both because it is the land bridge between Kazakhstan and the Muslim Turkic republics of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan and because it is part of the historically Ukrainian region known as the Blue Wedge in which Kyiv has an interest.
    On these sources of attention, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatars-and-bashkirs-must-recover.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/a-rare-report-from-blue-wedge-ukrainian.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/06/kyiv-seeking-to-use-ukrainian-blue.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/06/russian-census-results-reopening.html.
    In his article, Baykhozha suggests that such issues should be allowed to die out because any discussion of the ethnic mix of regions then or now will only spark more controversy and exacerbate problems in relations between Moscow and Astana. But he insists that if these issues are going to be discussed, those doing so should rely on accurate figures rather that imagined ones.  

More than Half of New HIV Cases in Russia East of the Urals where Infection Rates Rival or Even Exceed Those in Sub-Saharan Africa, ‘To Be Precise’ Portal Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 21 – At the end of 2023, approximately 1.2 million residents of the Russian Federation were infected with HIV. Half of the new infections were in regions east of the Urals where the rates of infection now rival or even exceed those in sub-Saharan African countries, according to new research by the To Be Precise portal.
    While the rate of HIV infections for Russia as a whole is 38 per 100,000, in Chukotka, it is 102 per 100,000, a figure that exceeds Zimbabwe’s 98 per 100,000, Uganda’s 86, and Tanzania’s 85, the portal’s Kensiya Babikhina says (tochno.st/materials/v-kakix-regionax-rossii-samaia-tiazelaia-situaciia-s-vic-reiting-esli-byt-tocnym).
    In some federal subjects, the situation regarding HIV infections and deaths have improved slightly, although this may reflect only a decline in testing rather than a real improvement, the journalist says; but in others, ever more people are infected, often in less high risk groups, and are dying, because of the unavailability of needed medications.

Muftis have Come Out in Favor of Polygamy to Protect Widows of Those who have Died Fighting in Ukraine, Gaynutdin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 22 – Many have asked why the leading muftis of the Russian Federation have come out in support of polygamy for the faithful, but the answer is simple, Mufti Ravil Gaynutdin says. They want to ensure that the widows and children of those Muslims who have died fighting in Ukraine will have the support of two parents.
    The head of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of Russia says that many Muslims who have gone to fight in Ukraine are understandably worried about what will happen to their wives and children if they die in combat. Polygamy is one way to ensure that the Muslim community will protect them (t.me/DUM_RF/3539).
    In response to criticism from various non-Muslim Russian leaders, Gaynutdin says that what the muftis are supporting is religious and not civil marriage and therefore is exclusively “the internal affair” of the ummah, although many Russian officials and commentators see things very differently.
    Significantly, the mufti did not underscore the fact that polygamy has a long tradition in Islam and that it continues to be a feature of life in many Muslim communities, including those inside the current borders of the Russian Federation. Instead, he addressed the need for it now in terms of losses in Ukraine.
    Gaynutdin’s words more than almost anything else so far highlight just how large these losses have been and how concerned the leaders of that community are about those deaths even if they continue to speak out in favor of Putin’s policies. This new call for polygamy puts the Kremlin in a difficult position, one in which it will face opposition regardless of what it does.  

Putin has Gelded Regional Elites but Could Face Serious Challenges from Them in 2026-2028, Kynyev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 22 – Since coming to power, Vladimir Putin has transformed regional elites from being the competitors or even opponents of Moscow they were in the 1990a into executors of his will, gelding not only governors but lower-ranking officials and their business allies as well, Aleksandr Kynyev says.
    The Kremlin leader has appointed ever more outsiders to these positions, cut the time they are in office and thus limiting their ability to form groups loyal to themselves, and made them into what are now reliable implementors of his orders, the HSE scholar says (re-russia.net/expertise/0224/ reposted at region.expert/regional-elites/).
    Those who think otherwise and believe that regional elites can pose a threat to Putin and the Russian Federation in general continue to have an image of regional elites in Russia that is no longer true, Kynyev says, and believe that these regional elites will be able to take action against Moscow as their predecessors did in the 1990s.
    But that is unlikely to happen, he continues; and in succinct but comprehensive fashion, Kynyev documents the steps Putin has taken over the past two decades and why even a weakened Moscow may not face the kind of challenge from regional elites that many analysts still expect.
    That conclusion does not mean that Moscow doesn’t have a regional problem or that it may not be intensifying. Instead, the HSE analyst suggests, the actions of the regime itself may lead to a new set of regionalist challenges that Putin and his regime may have problems in coping with.
    Kynyev points to two near-term developments that could have that result: the 2026 Duma elections and the need for a major change in the composition of political and business leaders in 2027 and 2028 when many of those now in positions of power will have been there for ten years or more and can be expected to have formed their own clientelist alliances.
    Given Kremlin policy regarding political parties, the Duma elections are the less important of these; but if there are problems in some parts of the country, it is at least possible that some enterprising political and business leaders may be in a position to exploit them by presenting themselves as opponents of Moscow and seeing what they can get away with.
    The need for a wholesale replacement of gubernatorial and regional business elites in 2027 and 2028 is likely to be a far more significant source of problems for the Kremlin, Kynyev continues.  In those two years, Putin will have to choose between “preserving the system as it is or initiating a new wave of technocratic recruitment.”
    “The first scenario would mean a 'Brezhnevization' of the system, essentially returning to a structure of entrenched governors and their teams,” he suggests. “The second scenario would involve mass rotation and rejuvenation, steps that could prove quite contentious – not least including raising the question of what to do with such a large number of retired officials.”  
    Depending on which course Putin chooses or feels compelled to choose, this will have serious consequences for center-periphery relations, albeit for different age groups.  The first will hit those born in the 1980s who will see their upward mobility sharply decline, while the second will anger those born in the 1970s who will see their ouster as rank ingratitude.
    Either will be able to create serious problems for the Kremlin; and consequently, even though Putin has set up a system that for the time being is very stable, he may have unwittingly laid a delayed action mine within it that could blow the whole thing apart not because of exogenous factors but because of its own policies.   

Russian Government Agencies Stop Issuing 385 More Data Sets in 2024, Largest Cutback in Last Three Years, ‘To Be Exact’ Portal Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – Russian government agencies stopped issuing 385 data sets in the course of 2024, the largest cutback in the last three years, although one whose impact was less than might be expected since many of these data sets had not been updated for several years already, Boris Gi of the To Be Exact portal says.
    Sets involving data on especially sensitive issues, such as the state of the economy, crime, and demographic data which permitted analysts to draw conclusions on Russian losses in the Ukraine war, had already been dropped in 2022-2023 or had remained without updates, Gi says (tochno.st/materials/v-2024-godu-rossiiskie-vedomstva-skryli-385-datasetov-eto-rekord-za-poslednie-tri-goda-treker-otkrytyx-dannyx-ot-esli-byt-tocnym).
    Seventy percent of the 385 dropped this year were from only four agencies – the ministry of health, the ministry of industry and trade, the federal highway administration, and the ministry of energy – but other ministries and agencies either dropped whole sets or did not report statistical data in their annual summaries for the first time.
    Some of these cutbacks, however, are serious: Rosstat ended publication of data on production of gasoline and diesel fuel as well as on migration patterns and delays in the payment of workers, and Russian Aviation stopped issuing data on the size of Russian air fleets, while the emergency services ministry issued less data on accidents.
    For a complete list of what data sets have been eliminated over the last 12 months, see admin.tochno.st/static/files/static/tracker-2024-12-12_2024-12-18_14-49-29.xlsx.

Russian TV Losing Its Audience and Public Trust Far More Rapidly than It is in Europe in Part Because of Moscow’s War Propaganda, ‘Re-Russia’ Says Surveys Show

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – A decade ago, television was the dominant source of information among Russians and most of them trusted what they saw and heard on it, but now, the share of Russians who rely on television and trust what it says has fallen significantly, far more so than in Europe, Re-Russia reports.  
    This has happened, the portal says, because of “the extremely conservative, pension-age style, and ideology of Russian television. Older people still listen to and rely on television but younger Russians do not – and the rate at which they have turned away from TV is much greater than is the case in Europe (re-russia.net/review/793/ and fom.ru/SMI-i-internet/15104).
    Given the role that television played in the rise and rule of Vladimir Putin during his first 15 years in office, this change constitutes an increasingly serious challenge to his information policy and political approach because while Moscow TV still attracts some, it alienates others and thus no longer represents the effective tool it was earlier.
    The decline in reliance on and trust in Russian television is especially great among Russians aged 18 to 30, a group only 21 percent of whom mentions television as a source, far less than the Internet. Older groups remain more television-centric, but they are declining in number and thus in the share of the population they constitute.
    Trust in television is also falling. In 2015, 63 percent of Russians said they trusted what they heard on Moscow television. In 2022, that figure had declined to 42 percent; and now it stands at only 39 percent.  Younger and better off Russians give far more trust to Internet sources than they do to television, leaving TV to the older and poorer segments of society.
    On the one hand, this trend is found in many societies and thus reflects a variety of developments in how people use television and the Internet; but on the other, Re-Russia says the Public Opinion Foundation data show that the extent to which Russian television has filled up with war propaganda is playing a major role shifting reliance and trust in TV among Russians.

Fertility Rates Falling across the World But Not in Post-Soviet Central Asia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – Over the last three years, fertility rates – the number of children per woman per lifetime – have fallen across the world from 2.23 in 2022 to 2.19 in 2024 and are now below replacement levels almost everywhere including in Russia. But there is one region that is an exception: the countries of post-Soviet Central Asia.
    There, according to Moscow observer Konstantin Dvinsky, statistics show they have risen in four of the give countries over the last 20 years and so the population there will continue to rise and at least for some time be a source of migrant labors for other countries, such as Russia (iarex.ru/articles/143234.html).
    Between 2003 and 2023, fertility rates rose from 2.07 to 3.01 in Kazakhstan, from 2.5 to 3.5 in Uzbekistan, from 3.42 o 3.5 in Tajikistan and from 2.59 to 3.5 in Kyrgyzstan, reversing earlier declines and making Central Asia an outlier as far as demographic behavior of the world’s regions is concerned.
    According to Dvinsky, this is good news for Russia because it means that the Russian Federation will be able to count on Central Asia as a source of immigrant labor well into the future.  

Russians Today Associate Stalin with Victory and Order and See Him as Model Russian Ruler, ‘Svobodnaya Pressa’ Informal Survey Finds

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – On the 145th anniversary of the birth of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Svobodnaya Pressa journalists conducted an informal survey of Russians on the streets of Moscow. They found that Russians today feel that Stalin is the embodiment of victory and order and thus is the model Russian ruler.  
    Although the survey was not conducted among anything resembling a representative sample and although those sharing their views may not have wanted to say anything to someone they did not know that might put them at odds with the Kremlin, the answers they did give suggest how successful Putin has been in getting Russians to look past Stalin’s crimes.
    (For the poll, see svpressa.ru/reports/sptv/442873/ and the attached video recording of Russians’ answers.)

Regionalist Movements Assume More Prominent Role at 14th Forum of Free States of Post-Russia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 19 – Representatives of regionalist movements have always had a difficult time when it comes to taking part in émigré meetings of the Russian opposition, even that part of the opposition that is open to cooperation with non-Russian groups committed to the pursuit of independence.
    At the just-completed 14th Forum of Free States of Post-Russia in Vilnius, representatives of regional movements from east of the Urals assumed a much higher profile than they have at earlier sessions (idelreal.org/a/buduschee-nado-gotovit-o-chem-dogovorilis-dekolonizatory-i-soratniki-ponomareva-na-forume-svobodnyh-gosudarstv-post-rossii/33243349.html).
    Their role raises the hope that Russian liberals and non-Russian nationalists may now be willing to cooperate with regionalist groups, some of which also are interested in greater autonomy but others of which are also seeking independence, and thus may form an alliance without which none of these three groups can hope to succeed.
    At the Vilnius meeting, three regionalist leaders spoke: Ivan Kulenko, a blogger from Chelyabinsk who supports the revival of the short-lived Urals Republic of 1993, Stanislav Suslov, vice president of the Committee for the Independent Confederacy of Siberia, and Anna Pryakhina from Tomsk who is a member of the Siberian independence movement.
    Instead of being sidelined as has happened at earlier meetings, the three were given prominent speaking roles and organizers said they and others like them would be welcome participants at future meetings and in a possible “Soviet of Nationalities” which would include both non-Russian and nominally ethnic Russian groups.
    If that proves to be the case, this Vilnius meeting could mark a turning point in the relationship between the liberal, nationalist and regionalist movements, one that would make them a far greater threat to the hyper-centralized authoritarian rule of Putin than any threat each might represent on its own.   

Angry at Chisinau and Encouraged by Moscow, Gagauz May Declare Independence from Moldova as Early as in February

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 19 – The relationship between the Moldovan central government and its Gagauz autonomy is increasingly fraught, and the Gagauz national movement is now holding meetings to discuss the possibility of declaring Gagauzia an independent republic, possibly as early as February.
    Activists say there is already overwhelming support for the idea that if the Gagauz do remain within Moldova, that will be possible only if Moldovan laws which contradict those of the republic are null and void on its territory. Moving toward a declaration of full independence would be a logical next step (ng.ru/cis/2024-12-19/5_9160_status.html).
    The Christian Turkic but largely Russian speaking region of approximately 100,000 people has increasingly been a thorn in the side of the current government in Chisinau, opposing the current president and her plans to integrate Moldova as a whole into the EU. The Gagauz remain pro-Moscow and anti-Europe and are a constrain on her plans.
    Moscow for its part has used the Gagauz along with Transnistria to undermine Chisinau; and this latest talk in Komrat about the Gagauz pursuing independence from Moldova almost certainly is the work of the Russian government and its pro-Moscow allies among the business elite in Moldova.  
    (For background on the complicated history of Gagauzia in independent Moldova and Moscow’s use of it, see https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/01/to-oppose-moldovas-rapprochement-with.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/08/chisinaus-policies-turning-gagauzia.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/07/russia-and-gagauz-expanding-ties-at.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/09/moscow-mulls-mobilizing-transdniestria.html.)  

Central Asians More Numerous, Younger and Living Longer than in 1991, New Moscow Study Finds

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 19 – Since becoming independent in 1991, the five Central Asian countries have seen their combined population grow from just over 50 million to more than 80 million, a development that means the region as a whole is as large as either Iran or Turkey, Moscow’ ACRA credit rating agency says.
    But the growth in numbers is not the only positive demographic development in the region, it continues. The population is now younger and living longer than was the case 35 years ago, a remarkable achievement given all the problems the region has experienced (acra-ratings.ru/research/2800/ and asiaplustj.info/ru/news/centralasia/20241219/demograficheskii-bum-tsentralnoi-azii-pomog-ekonomike).
    What this combination means, the Russian rating agency says, is that Central Asia is on the cusp of becoming am ever more important market for other countries and eventually an ever more important producer of goods and at least for the next few decades source of migrants as well.

Kremlin Increasingly Using Repressive Measures to Try to Boost Birthrate, Shukyurov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 19 – Until the start of Vladimir Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, the Russian authorities sought to boost the country’s birthrate by offering various incentives like maternal capital to lead more women to have more children. But since then, Aby Shukyurov says, they have increasing turned to repressive measures and more are on the way.
    The Russian demographer who now teaches in Paris says that Moscow has made this change both because of the failure of incentives to significantly raise the birthrate and because of the Kremlin’s increasing propensity to see repressive measures as inherently more effective (reforum.io/blog/2024/12/19/aby-shukyurov-repressii-voshli-v-demograficheskie-programmy/).
    In the last two years, Moscow and the regions have banned Childfree propaganda, prohibited abortions in private clinics, and limited access to abortion pills. These efforts, however, have not had a significant effect. Indeed, while the number of abortions continue to fall, the number of births has not gone up.
    In the next year, Shukyurov suggests, the Russian authorities appear likely to take three additional repressive steps in this area: defining fetuses as persons and thus making abortion murder, imposing special taxes on those who don’t have children, and making it more difficult for couples to get divorced.
    None of these measures will be popular, but more importantly from the point of view of the authorities, none of them is likely to lead to an increase in the Russian birthrate, which has long been falling as in other countries because of urbanization and other changes arising from social modernization.
    If the Russian government really wanted to increase the population, Shukyurov continues, it would be far better advised to spend money increasing the life expectancy of Russians and especially of Russian men. But such efforts would be expensive. Moreover, for the time being, Kremlin policies in Ukraine are contributing to a decline in male life expectancy.  

Restrictions on Migrant Workers Already Hitting Russian Citizens, Especially Those who aren’t Ethnically Russian or Don't Appear to Be

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – Russian officials are imposing ever more restrictions on which kinds of jobs migrant workers can take, a position that more than half of the Russian population supports. But these limits on migrants are increasingly having an impact on anyone who doesn’t look Slavic including many ethnic Russians, the People of Baikal portal says.
    With the imposition of restrictions, Russian police in many places, the news agency says, are challenging people who don’t look Slavic and demanding that they prove that they are not immigrants (baikal-journal.ru/2024/12/18/chem-tak-stradat-na-chuzhoj-zemle-luchshe-uehat-otsyuda/).
    The more limitations Moscow and the federal subjects place on immigrants, the more frequent this phenomenon is likely to become, something that revives a longstanding tradition in Russia of extending attacks on one group to others perceived to be similar or somehow related and that threatens to make such repression even more widespread.
    Indeed, this trend recalls an old and bitter Soviet joke about a Russian rabbit who is seeking to flee into Poland. When asked why he is doing so, the Russian rabbit says that it is because the police are arresting camels. When it is pointed out that he isn’t a camel, the rabbit says “Yes, but just try to prove that!”

Putin Says ‘Ethnic Jews Tearing Apart Russian Orthodox Church,’ Reviving Theme of Stalin’s Campaign Against ‘Rootless Cosmopolitans’

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – Of the many untrue and disturbing comments Vladimir Putin made during his “direct line” show, the following was perhaps the worst and most fateful: He accused “ethnic Jews” not part of their own religion of working to tear apart the Russian Orthodox Church (youtube.com/watch?v=-BUW37AuG4E).
    The Kremlin leader blamed the Jews for “tearing apart the church” not because they are “atheists” but because “these are people without any beliefs, godless people, they’re ethnic Jews but has anyone seen them in a synagogue? I don’t think so” (jta.org/2024/12/19/global/vladimir-putin-accuses-ethnic-jews-of-tearing-apart-the-russian-orthodox-church).
    Many are horrified. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow who left Russia after Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine, suggested that what Putin said “echoes the Stalinist anti-Semitic rhetoric of the Doctors’ Plot era (1948-1953)” and called on people of good will to condemn this (x.com/ChiefRabbiPG/status/1869783979169050836).
    Many Russian nationalists around Putin, including the increasingly powerful and influential “Russian Community,” have been openly anti-Semitic for some time; and Putin himself has fanned anti-Semitism by attacking Ukraine as a country needing what he calls “de-Nazification” even though it has a Jewish president.
    But the Kremlin leader’s words this week are his clearest and most noxious so far and will undoubtedly be taken as a sign that his regime will not oppose and may even openly support attacks on Jews, thus repeating the long and sad history of Russia in which attacks on Jews may not come first but almost inevitably come when the regime launches attacks on other groups.

Russians with Same Names as Other Russians Sanctioned by the West Suffering as a Result

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – While many of those Russian officials Western countries have imposed sanctions on have learned how to get around them, these sanctions have hit and often hit hard are Russians who happen to have the same name as those who have been sanctioned but often are treated as if they are the same individual.
    The Holod news agency has spoken with about ten of these people as well as to lawyers who have worked with this problem and recounts both the problems such Russians have in sending or receiving money and provides advice on the steps they need to take in order to avoid difficulties (holod.media/2024/12/18/ne-ta-mariia-zaharova/).
    The agency points out that many of these problems might be avoided if it were not for the fact that the governments imposing sanctions often provide only limited information about those they wish to sanction, such as first and last name, sex and citizenship, but do not specify the position the individual they wish to punish occupies.
    As a result, people who share these names, gender and citizenship with the targets of sanctions often become collateral damage and face difficulties that often delay their movement of money around. But Russian lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov says there are four steps such people can take to minimize the problems.
    First, those with the same name as someone sanctions can collect documents proving they are someone else. Second, they can appeal to the government or agency issuing the sanctions for a declaration on that account. Third, they can seek redress from the banking authorities of the country in which they live. And fourth, if all else fails, they can seek legal help.
    But Smirnov warns that such people are likely to continue to face problems even if they do everything right, at least until those issuing the sanctions are more precise in defining who it is they wish to target.  

Duma Foolishly Wants to Create an Institute for the Study of Traditional Values, El Murid Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – Anna Kuznetsova, the deputy speaker of the Russian Duma, is calling for the creation of an Institute for the Study of Traditional Values so that lawmakers and others will know what values are traditional an what are not and thus will be able to promote the former and oppose the latter, Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid says.
    But the very idea, the blogger says, is “absurd,” an effort to create an ideology that will lead to Russia’s further degradation and one that ignores the fact that traditional values can only exist alongside other values as part of a larger moral universe (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/22418 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6763D4F0AB59E).
    Indeed, El Murid continues, underlying this proposal is the notion that “the country should not have a future for only in that case is such an institute required.” But that won’t be the end of such absurdities. Instead, “other structures will inevitably be created to address and solve the same problem: to turn the country into a cemetery.”

Couriers in Russia Now Receive Higher Pay than Doctors, Teachers, and Even IT Professionals

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – Demand for couriers has risen so fast that there are almost 200,000 vacancies in that sector and as a result, their salaries have risen as well over the last several years and now exceed those of doctors, teachers, and even IT professionals, a sign that the market is not allocating work in ways that best serve the Russian people, Ilya Grashchenkov says.
    The head of the Moscow Center for Regional Politics points out that almost all of the couriers are in the major cities even though “it is no secet that the country needs to increase production primarily in the regions” (rosbalt.ru/news/2024-12-18/ilya-graschenkov-kuriery-obognali-programmistov-po-zarplatam-chto-eto-znachit-5278925).
    Unless that is done, reported income gains will be illusory and Russia will continue to fall behind the advanced countries, Grashchenkov continues. But “for now,” he says, “the high-wage economy the country seeks is being formed not through high-tech industries but rather thanks to people on bicycles with backpacks.”
    Unless that changes – and it will require massive government intervention to do so – the Kremlin may be able to point to large wage gains but neither it nor the population of the country as a whole will be able to avoid the degradation that is certain to follow such arrangements and trends.  

Many Suffer from ‘Delusion’ that after Putin, ‘Everything will Return to Normal and Be Just Fine,’ Sulandziga Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – Many people “expect and hope that the Putin regime will fall – and then that everything will return to normal and be just fine,” Pavel Sulyandziga, head of the Batani International Indigenous Fund for Development and Solidarity and former vice president of RAIPON who has been forced into emigration.
    To think that way, he argues, is to suffer from “a profound delusion. Things won’t be the same as they used to be before! And the sooner the Artic community … realizes this, the sooner it will be possible to begin building a new system of relations with Russia and have effective interactions in the future” (batani.org/archives/2846).
    Before 2010, most members of the Arctic community outside of Russia regarded that country as “friendly,” albeit “with some oddities and peculiarities.” But “we have all witnessed what that illusion led to” in the form of Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine and his breaking off of relations between Artic peoples.
    What the Western community, including governments, activists and scholars, must grasp is that “there is a dangerous enemy on the other side and that its oddities and peculiarities are not just whims of the regime but sources of its power and a threat to the outside world. Any policy toward or relations with Russia must be based on an acknowledgement of that fact.”

No Matter How Many Territorial Concessions Ingushetia Makes, Kadyrov Won’t Stop Until He Controls All of Ingushetia, Sultygov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – Some may believe that Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov will be satisfied if Magas hands over the parkland to Chechnya that he is demanding, but Sarazhdin Sultygov, a prominent Ingush activist, argues that the Chechen leader will never be satisfied until he has swallowed Ingushetia whole.
    The vice president of the Mekk-Khel organization says that Kadyrov “will not stop” because “he hates the Ingush. He doesn’t like the fact hat the Ingush are inflexible and that he cannot destroy us. He says that we are brothers but then offends us and seizes our land” (youtube.com/watch?v=c2zoklvZGEs and fortanga.org/2024/12/kadyrov-ne-ostanovitsya-dazhe-zabrav-erzi-obshhestvennik-sultygov-vyskazalsya-o-peredache-ingushskih-territorij-i-pisme-chajki/).
    Sultygov is especially angry about Kadyrov’s harsh words concerning the Ingush treatment of Chechen refugees in the 1990s and about the apparent support the Chechen leader has in Moscow for his expansionist agenda (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/chechnya-pressuring-ingushetia-to-yield.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/kadyrovs-comments-about-ingush-sparks.html).
    His comments are the latest indication that opposition to Kadyrov is heating up across the North Caucasus because the Chechen leader has been making claims not only against Ingushetia but against Dagestan as well (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/chechen-issue-in-daghestan-heats-up.html).
    All this leaves Moscow in a difficult position. If it supports Kadyrov now as it has in the past, it will offend all the other North Caucasus republics and nations; but if it doesn’t, Kadyrov may not remain Moscow’s reliable agent of control in Chechnya itself, something that could spark another war there.  

2024 Marked a Partial Stabilization of ‘New Repressive Landscape’ in Russia, OVD-Info Expert Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – The Kremlin’s increasing repression has driven anti-war protests almost completely underground, led to the growth of attacks on groups and in places far from the center, and increasingly involved “uncivil society,” groups that share the values of the state but at least nominally aren’t part of it, according to Dan Storyev.
    The managing reporter at OVD-Info which tracks repression in the Russian Federation says that all these developments have come after “the Kremlin’s successful obliteration of opposition structures within Russia” and opens the way to an even more totalitarian system (ridl.io/russia-s-repressive-home-front/).
    The repressive approach of the government regarding anti-war protest means that while 18,910 Russians were detained for taking part in such demonstrations in 2022, only 34 have been so far in 2024, as people have shifted from open protests to underground actions that the authorities have had more difficulty in stamping out.
    In response to this shift, the powers have brought more charges against people for criticizing the army or the war in Ukraine and have done so against members of groups and especially those far from Moscow who were not touched in the past. In fact, Storyev says, “repression is now reaching places that previously didn’t engage in political activity.”
    But the two most important developments in this area lie elsewhere: the use of groups like the Russian Community and others allied with the government to carry out Kremlin repression and the expansion of repression against personal autonomy concerning abortions, gender roles and so on.  

Increasing Demand for Burials since Start of Putin’s Expanded War in Ukraine Sends Funeral Service Prices Skyrocketing

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – The cost of funeral services in Russia has been skyrocketing, in part because of general inflation and sanctions but primarily because of increasing demand for burials since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, sparking anger among Russians who are facing real difficulties in paying for last rites, according to an Okno Group survey.
    Over the last year alone, the cost of funerals has risen by nine percent overall and by more than 30 percent in some places; and Russians now face real difficulties in getting the defense ministry what it has committed itself to (fedstat.ru/indicator/31448 and okno.group/dayte-skidku-na-leshenku-pohoronnyy-biznes-vo-vremya-voyny/).
    Those increases, of course, come on top of prices rises in 2022 and 2023; and they are a final insult and indignity to Russians who have sacrificed their husbands, sons and fathers to fight in Putin’s war, something that will add to their anger about his government which is less prepared to honor and respect those it sends to die than the Kremlin repeatedly claims.  

Keeping Migrant Children who Don’t Know Russian Out of Schools Counterproductive and ‘Stupid,’ Activist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – Keeping migrant children who don’t know Russian from attending Russian schools and learning the language is “not only amoral but stupid” and Russian nationalists should be taking the lead in the fight against Duma plans to do just that, according to Olga Nikolayenko, a leader of efforts to protect migrant children.
    Such a step, near approval in the Duma, she continues, “not only contradicts morality, international law, the Constitution of the Russian Federation” but also good sense because it throws these children on the streets and deprives Moscow of a chance to spread knowledge of the Russian language (holod.media/2024/12/17/ne-tolko-amoralno-no-i-glupo/).
    If migrant children are thrown into the streets, Nikolayenko continues, they may form gangs and will contribute to the ghettoization of the migrant communities, she continues; and when they eventually return to their homelands, they will not speak Russian and will be even more inclined to be anti-Russian than they would if they learned the language.
    If these children are allowed to attend Russian schools and thus do learn Russian, they and their parents are far more likely to integrate into Russian society as productive members, to develop more positive attitudes toward Russians, and be its ambassadors when they return to their homelands.
    Which future would any sensible Russian nationalist want? The answer is obvious, the activist says; but unfortunately, in Russia today, many people, including Russian nationalists, don’t follow their interests but their febrile emotions – and thus lead the country into ever more difficulties.

Batal-Haji Sufi Order in Ingushetia ‘New Wahhabis in Eyes of Regional and Federal Authorities,’ a Perspective that May Trigger a New War

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – Ingush and Russian officials have been attacking leaders of the Batal-Haji Sufi order centered on Ingushetia for five years, but they are now moving to attack all of its more than 20,000 members because they see them as “the new Wahhabis” and thus an alternative state formation threatening state power in that North Caucasus republic.
    Islam Belokiyev, an opposition blogger from Magas, says Ingush siloviki are now pressing Moscow to declare all Batal-Haji members extremist so that it will be easier to link them to Ukraine and the West and impose more draconian punishments (kavkazr.com/a/dlya-silovikov-eto-novye-vahhabity-v-ingushetii-prodolzhaetsya-presledovanie-batalhadzhintsev/33244173.html).
    But because the Batal-Haji order is so large and because its membership includes numerous officials, such an action could quickly lead to the collapse of the republic government, a development that almost certainly would lead to the intervention of Chechnya, especially since Ramzan Kadyrov has taken up the defense of the order.
    (For background on the Batal-Haji order and its travails in recent years, see  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/11/moscow-attacks-ingushetias-batal-haji.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/russian-officials-accuse-influential.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/chechnyas-kadyrov-takes-up-cause-of.html.)

Russian Economy Split Between Surging and Stagnating Sectors and So are Attitudes of Russians about the Future, Academy of Sciences Study Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – Many want to evaluate the Russian economy as a whole rather than recognize that the Russian economy is split between sectors that are booming, mostly those funded by the government for its war in Ukraine, and others which are stagnant or even declining, most of those driven by consumer spending, Mikhail Sergeyev says in a discussion of new research by the Academy of Sciences.
    And these observers make a similar mistake in evaluating Russian attitudes about the future, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta economics reporter says, forgetting that those who are benefitting have positive attitudes while those who aren’t have negative ones (ng.ru/economics/2024-12-17/1_9158_problem.html).
    In general, these second differences follow generational lines, Sergeyev continues, with older workers being more likely to be in the government-funded industries and younger ones struggling in those driven by consumer spending. As a result, older Russians tend to be more optimistic about the future than younger ones.
    These differences, he adds, help to explain why older Russians are more in favor of the war in Ukraine and its continuation than are younger ones who see the war as depressing their prospects and the prospects of the Russian Federation in the future.

Russia’s Critical Shortage of Teachers in STEM Subjects Threatens Country’s Development, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – Russia is currently experiencing critical shortages of teachers in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), something that threatens the country’s development, according to the editors of Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta; and the government is not responding to this crisis with the necessary urgency.  
    At present, the editors say, almost one school in four does not have a teacher of physics and almost one in two does not have a chemistry instructor, a lack that means a large swath of young people are never exposed to those disciplines and thus are less likely to go into them professionally (ng.ru/editorial/2024-12-17/2_9158_red.html).
    Many Russians, including members of the Duma, are disturbed about this and are pressuring the government to do more. The government in response has announced plans to solve the problem by 2030; but, the editors say, it has not committed anything like the funds necessary to attract more teachers in these fields.
    Lest the situation deteriorate further, Nezavisimaya Gazeta says, it would be a good idea to consider forming social councils that could take responsibility for particular schools and offer to fill key teaching slots with those who have expertise in STEM subjects acquired not by teacher training but by life experiences.
    Such people, the paper suggests, would attract young people into these fields before Russia falls even further behind other countries.  

Many Families of Russians Fighting in Ukraine Freezing in Their Homes

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – Thousands of Russian families whose fathers, husbands and sons are now fighting in Ukraine are freezing in their homes because of ruptured pipes and the collapse of the communal heating system (thebarentsobserver.com/news/people-are-freezing-in-putins-arctic-navy-towns/422253 and semnasem.org/articles/2024/12/17/gorod-razorvannyh-trub).
    In response to complaints, Russian officials have promised that they will correct the situation (thebarentsobserver.com/security/touchdown-in-sputnik-defence-minister-belousov-pays-visit-to-naval-infantry-brigade-near-nordic-nato-border/326724), but perhaps the best indication of how Russians feel about this situation is the spread of the following anecdote:
    Many note that Putin says Russia is always ready to fight a nuclear war, even though it has never had to do so; but regardless of whether that is true or not, it is clearly the case that neither he nor any other Russian official is ready for winter, even though that season and the cold it brings Russia comes every year.

Moscow Increasingly Using Its Journalists Abroad for Espionage, Dobrokhotov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 16 – Moscow is increasingly using its journalists abroad not to spread disinformation – it has other means for that – but to penetrate opposition groups and to work as spies and spotters for spies, according to Roman Dobrokhotov, the chief editor of The Insider whom a group of Bulgarians recently attempted to kidnap.
    Most Western journalists and most Russian opposition groups are ill-prepared to defend against such penetration and espionage activity, he says, because Moscow prepares such agents by having them work first in analogous roles inside Russia, something that gives them credibility outside of Russia (pointmedia.io/story/67604c0c3d97a5c1c5781f13).
    When these journalists arrive in the West, they already have the patina of opposition figures and are typically accepted as such, Dobrokhotov continues. That allows them to work as spies or at least as spotters who can identify people that more senior Russian intelligence operatives can focus on as possible recruits.
    These pseudo-journalists are thus often very successful in such operations; and there are two additional reasons why this is an effective tactic, although The Insider editor doesn’t mention them. On the one hand, spreading suspicions about such people can disorder opposition groups in the West.
    And on the other, if these pseudo-journalists are exposed as spies, that works for Moscow’s purposes as well. It may lose a few agents, but it gains because both Russians abroad and Westerners will become ever more suspicious of working with real opposition groups, again helping the Kremlin.

Growing Shortage of Military Equipment One Reason Why Kremlin Reducing Military Recruitment Effort in Moscow, ‘Meduza’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 16 – In recent weeks, the city of Moscow has reduced the number of billboards calling on men to joint the military, a development that flies in the face of reports that the number of Russians volunteering to fight in Ukraine has been falling despite the need for more troops to replace losses there.
    But there are at least two compelling reasons this is happening, officials tell Meduza correspondents Svetlana Reiter and Andrey Pertsev. On the one hand, the billboards had become so widespread that Muscovites were ignoring them but visitors from elsewhere in Russia were taking notice and signing up in Moscow (meduza.io/feature/2024/12/16/v-moskve-stalo-menshe-reklamy-sluzhby-po-kontraktu-vmesto-otpravki-na-voynu-lyudyam-predlagayut-shodit-v-novye-rybnye-restorany).
    As a result, Moscow was easily meeting its recruitment quotas but primarily as the result of decisions by men from other federal subjects who signed up there to get the larger bonuses that the capital is offering. That has meant that regions and republics have fallen short in their efforts, an embarrassment to both their own officials and to the Kremlin as well.
    And on the other, Russian officials say – and this is likely to be the more important reason – the Russian military finds itself in a situation where it has lost so much equipment in the fighting that commanders are no longer able to supply new men with the weapons they need to be effective fighters.
    “It’s not just about recruiting people,” one official told Reiter and Pertsev; “you have to be able to arm them.” That apparently is becoming a problem for the Russian invasion force, although for obvious reasons, it isn’t one that Moscow has wanted to talk about – or for less obvious reasons, one that most coverage of the conflict has focused on.

Russian Actress Fined for Joke about Karels, a Nation Only One in 200 of Its Members under the Age of Nine Speaks Their Language

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 16 – Sometimes Muscovite efforts to make itself look better than it is regarding the treatment of non-Russian nationalities are the only times that just how repressive it really is comes to the attention of a broader audience. Such is the case with the Karels, the titular nationality of the Karelian Autonomous Republic.
    Earlier this fall, Russian actress Valeriya Lomakshina got in trouble with local officials when she suggested that the only place where anyone spoke Karel was from the stage at the republic theater. Even those in the audience, she said, needed translations into Russian. Now, she has apologized and fined 100 US dollars for her comment (nazaccent.ru/content/43286-sud-oshtrafoval-aktrisu-valeriyu-lomakinu-za-shutku-o-karelskom-yazyke/).
    As even the pro-Kremlin portal Nazaccent.ru notes, “the Karelian language is rare and at the brink of disappearing.” Only about 25,000 people in the Russian Federation speak it and most are elderly, with the media age of Karel speakers being 64. Most ominously for the future: only one in every 200 Karels under the age of nine knows the language.
    One of the reasons the Karel language is in so much difficulty is that Moscow refuses to allow it become the official language of the Karelian republic, the only republic in the Russian Federation whose titular nationality doesn’t have that status. The reason? Karelian is writing in Latin script, and Moscow requires that all official languages be written in Cyrillic script.  

Since Putin Became President, Predominantly Ethnic Russian Regions have Seen Their Populations Plummet and the Number of Ghost Towns in Them Jump

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 15 – Vladimir Putin has cast himself as the defender of the Russian world, but in the almost 25 years since he became president, predominantly ethnic Russian regions across the country have plummeted and the number of ghost towns, villages in which no one lives any more, jump.
    Predominantly ethnic Russian regions have seen their populations decline by from 150,000 to more than 400,000 each, as residents have died off or fled to larger cities (region.expert/dying/), and the number of ghost towns has risen by a few hundred in Perm to over 2200 in Tver (facebook.com/groups/661124300699950/permalink/3730378770441139).
    These new figures show that the trends of the first decades of Putin’s rule are accelerating, something that means Russia is rapidly becoming a place of cities surrounded by empty spaces at least in predominantly ethnic Russian regions (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/12/one-in-five-villages-in-many-parts-of.html).

91 Percent of Victims of Family Violence in Russia are Women, and Men who Inflict It Get Off Unpunished or with Only Small Fines or a Few Days in Jail, ‘Scythe’ Portal Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 15 – Although most Russian women would like to see a law against family violence adopted, their country does not have one, a reflection of the patriarchal values of the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox church. Because there is no law, there are no official statistics; but activists have collected dismaying figures.
    The Scythe portal, which reports on women’s issues in Russia, reports that 91 percent of those Russians who suffer from violence in families are women, that those who engage in such violence typically get off, are fined 50 US dollars for their offenses, or sentenced to 15 days or less behind bars (kosa.media/2024/12/gendernoe-nasilie/).
    In its latest article on the subject of family violence, Scythe presents both a directory of articles about that subject in Russia and a guide to those numerous organizations which seek to protect women against such violence at a time when the authorities seem quite content to ignore its spread.  

Feminism Must Play a Key Role in Ending Moscow’s Authoritarianism and Aggression, Domańska Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 15 – Russia will remain an authoritarian and aggressive state as long as its political culture remains rooted in hegemonic masculinity, Maria Domańska argues; and thus, “feminist politics could help break the patriarchal paradigm” that keeps Russia on its current path both domestically and internationally.
    The scholar at Warsaw’s Centre for Eastern Studies adds that “the war against Ukraine is the most brutal example of the patriarchal culture of violence which permeates the Russian political system,” one manifested in “a cult of strongman rule, war and territorial conquest, hatred, and the romanticization of criminality” (ridl.io/ru/u-putinizma-ne-zhenskoe-litso/).
    According to Domańska, “the Kremlin is pursuing the neo-totalitarian goal of deepening the atomization of society and turning it into a homogeneous mass that declaratively rallies around the head of state” with women being “objective and expected to conform to ‘patriotic femininity, their main function being to produce cannon fodder for future wars.”
“In this highly ideologized political environment, sexism goes hand in hand with «internal colonialism». Formally a federation, Russia is in reality a highly centralised state in which the needs and interests of regions and local communities are disregarded, their resources are plundered and discrimination against non-Russian ethno-national groups is systemic,” she says.
Moreover, she continues, “the Kremlin’s foreign policy is also tainted with sexism and neo-colonialism: Russia’s war against Ukraine and hybrid warfare against the West have a very strong gendered dimension. State propaganda portrays Putin as an alpha male contrasted with «effeminate» Western leaders and ‘weak’ women.’”
Russian feminists have organized against the war, but their agenda is far larger because ehy recognize that “any sustainable political change in Russia must be based on gender equality,” something far more comprehensive that the usual ideas about political liberalization as advocated by opposition Russian politicians.
Few senior male opposition figures understand that, Domanska says; but there is a growing awareness among young opposition leader that “talking about ‘democracy’ without respecting women’s rights is an oxymoron” and doomed to fail.” Only if women’s rights are respected will any future democratization lift all boats and not just a favored few.