Internet Outages Hitting Russia’s Regions Far Harder than Russian Cities with Far-Reaching Consequences for Demography, Media Use and National Security, Nisnevich Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 11 – Until a year or two ago, Moscow celebrated the extension of the internet to ever more cities and villages of the Russian Federation; but now, there are ever more cases when providers are turning off the internet to these places, with far-reaching consequences for the country as a whole, Yuliy Nisnevich says.  

            Even more than television, the extension of the internet to small towns and villages in the Russian Federation reduced the differences between life there and life in the cities because rural Russians could get things local institutions couldn’t supply, a development that helped tie the country together, the HSE scholar says (newizv.ru/news/2025-12-11/smysla-zhizni-bez-interneta-net-kak-provintsiya-perezhivaet-otklyucheniya-seti-438158).

            Without the internet, Nisnevich says, “residents of villages and rural settlements now live as they did in Soviet times. There is no telephone, people can’t use banking services, televised media don’t work, and one can’t even call  taxi.” Older people sink into their old ways, but younger people are increasingly inclined to flee to the cities.

            As a result, over the last five years, the rural population of the Russian Federation has fallen by 804,000, three times the size of the decline of the population of cities, Rosstat satistics show. There are many causes for this, of course; but the increasing unreliability of internet services in rural areas is certainly one of them.

            According to Nisnevich, internet outages are leading to “a new fragmentation in the country,” one in which young people are fleeing to the cities and older age groups are returning to television, not because either especially wants to but because they had been increasingly relying on the Internet and now can’t.

New Presidential Elections in Ukraine will Not Only Further Unite that Nation but Lead It to Recommit to Joining Europe, Kolesnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 13 – Vladimir Putin has insisted that Ukraine commit to holding new presidential elections as part of any peace deal, confident that he will be able to subvert them, oust Volodymyr Zelensky, and bring to power in Kyiv a new leader who will turn away from Europe and back to Russia.

            But according to Novaya Gazeta observer Andrey Kolesnikov, Putin is completely wrong; and any new elections whoever wins will result in a Ukraine more united and more committed to joining Europe than has ever been the case in the past  (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2025/12/13/posmotrite-na-nas).

            That outcome, he continues, reflects not only the sacrifices that the Ukrainian people have made to resist Russian aggression but also the idea that Zelensky himself articulated in 2019. He told the Ukrainians then that their vote had shown them and the world that “everything was and is possible.”

            That is one of the most important reasons behind Putin’s decision to launch his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He could not afford other countries, including his own, that have emerged from the disintegration of the USSR to reach the same conclusion. But nothing that he has done, Kolesnikov suggests, can shake the confidence of Ukrainians that that is so

Russian Society will Continue to Degrade Even after Putin Leaves the Scene, Gudkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 15 – Despite the hopes and even expectations of many that Russia will fundamentally change directions after Putin’s departure from power, Lev Gudkov argues that the degradation that Russian society has experienced under him will almost certainly continue long into the future.

            The senior sociologist at the Levada Center argues that there are two reasons for that. On the one hand, given the disappointments Russians have suffered from the failure of reforms in the 1990s, they do not see any real alternative to the authoritarianism they defer to (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/kak-vygljadit-rossyskoe-budushee-posle-putina-otvechaet-nauchnyi-rukovoditel-levada-centra-lev-gudkov).

            And on the other, Gudkov continues, “all preceding culture which we have had was a hypocritical adaption to the existing order and to a repressive state.” That state weakened somewhat in the 1990s, “but our people then wanted not freedom but an increase in consumption and wanted to live as in Western countries.”

            Even then, only a few organizations largely supported by grants from abroad wanted democracy; and as a result, “the main institutions of a totalitarian society, that is, the army, the KGB and the judicial system” remained in place even if they were renamed And the Russian population accepted that “as a given” rather seeing this as something that must be changed. 

            The Putin regime has done everything it can to encourage such attitudes, the sociologist says; and consequently, any change in the bureaucracy or the population is unlikely anytime soon. There is a chance, of course, “but it is weak” – and expecting that it will happen without some cataclysmic event is almost certainly an illusion.

            Indeed, he continues, Levada Center polls show that “80 to 85 percent of Russians do not want to take part in politics viewing it as ‘a dirty business’ or something for which they don’t have time.” Consequently, they are unlikely to mobilize and put pressure on the state for real change and will continue to defer to it, something Putin’s successors will exploit as he has.

            Given that, Gudkov concludes, “the most likely scenario is a gradual decline of Russia to the status of a regional power, weak and corrupt, a type of pariah state dependent on more powerful countries like China. In response, democratic countries will erect some kind of fence, a barrier, to isolate this disaster zone.”

Despite Kremlin Propaganda, Barely Half of Students in a Typical Russian Oblast Identify as ‘Citizens of Russia,’ New Study Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 15 – Under Putin, Russian schools have promoted patriotism and called on students to identify first and foremost as citizens of Russia; but a new sociological study of 653 students in higher educational institutions in Oryol Oblast suggests that this Kremlin effort has been far from successful.

            Fifty-two percent identified as  citizens of Russiaople while over a third said they were simply people (Viktor Sapryka et al., “On the formation of civic identity among students of Oryol Oblast” (in Russian), Vestnik Instituta sotsiologii, 16:2 (2025): 86-107, full text at https://www.vestnik-isras.ru/files/File/Vestnik_2025_53/Sapryka_i_ko_53_86-107.pdf).

            Because Oryol is a typical predominantly ethnic Russian federal subject, Yevgeny Chernyshov of the Nakanune news agency says, these findings are likely typical for ethnic Russian areas as a whole and highlight the ineffectiveness of existing programs of patriotic education in the Russian Federation (nakanune.ru/articles/124187/).

            In part, of course, this lack of identification as citizens of the Russian Federtion is generational; but in part, Chernyshov suggests, it highlights the fact that students have a relatively poor knowledge of their country’s history and are affected by foreign news that has left them with an inaccurate or at least in complete understanding of Russia’s place in the world

Three Distinct Groups Form Russian Opposition to Putin’s War in Ukraine, ‘Chronicles Project’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 10 – The share of Russians who oppose Putin’s war in Ukraine has stayed remarkably stable since 2022 at about 20 percent; but this segment of the population is not the monolith many think, Vsevolod Bederson, a researcher at the Chronicles Project says. Rather they consist of three groups which together form a complex mosaic.

            Just under half of this 20 percent (45 percent) form the core of consistent peace supporters, he says surveys show. These people oppose the war, give priority to social spending, and would support a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine (ridl.io/ru/ne-blok-a-mozaika-portret-rossijskih-protivnikov-vojny-v-tsifrah/).

            The second of these three groups, which he calls “the anti-war voters,” forms 14 percent of the opposition. They oppose the war, voted in 2024 but not for Putin and favor elected mayors. And the third, “anti-war non-voters” who form 41 percent of the opposition, are against the war, but did not vote in 2024 although favor elected mayors.

            These groups vary not only in their focus but also in terms of their composition and actions. The anti-war voters are disproportionately aged 40 to 49. The anti-war non-voters are mostly young. And the core opposition group in contrast to the other two is almost evenly distributed in terms of age.

            While most in all three say the war has had a negative impact on their lives, there is a significant divergence in the shares who say that “nothing has changed.” “In the narrow core and among non-voters,” Bederson says, “roughly a quarter give this answer while among the politically active anti-war voters, this figure is only six to seven percent.”

            Another importance variance among them is that nearly a third of all opponents of the war say their relatives experienced repression in Soviet times, “but among anti-war voters, the share having family memories of Soviet terror is significantly higher – 44 percent,” the Chronicles analyst reports.

            In terms of other behaviors, the three groups vary as well. The narrow core and non-voters “are considerably more likely to have helped the army and much less likely to have given aid to refugees while “among the active anti-war voters, the reverse is true: these are much less likely to have provide help for the military and much more likely to have helped refugees.

In Just 50 Years, Russia will have More Muslims than Orthodox Christians, Russian Priest Now Living in France Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 13 – If current demographic trends continue, with fertility rates among Russians significantly lower than among historically Muslim nations in that country, Hieromonk Ioann says, 50 years from now, -- that is in 2075 -- Russia will have more Muslims than Orthodox Christians and thus have the right to call itself a Muslim country.

            The Russian Orthodox priest who left Russia a year ago because of opposition to Putin’s war in Ukraine argues that in fact Russia is becoming Muslim much more rapidly than that as many who call themselves Orthodox do so are not believers believing while Muslims are far more committed (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2025/12/13/glubokaia-dukhovnaia-turbulentnost).

            He bases his conclusions on Russian census data, interior ministry reporting about attendance at religious services, and sociological studies and points out that it is the combination of ethnic Russian decline and non-Russian Muslim growth that is behind what many will view as a civilizational shift. 

            According to the priest now in emigration in France, the declining size of Russian Orthodoxy in Russia under current arrangements will be “a stimulus for the rebirth in Russia of a free Orthodox church,” a development that will allow everyone to see that the ROC MP as currently run is in fact less a church than “a form of paganism, an imperial-militarist cult.”

Putin Says Restoration of USSR Excluded Because It would ‘Critically Change’ Ethnic and Religious Composition of Russia’s Population

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 10 – Putin has often said the disintegration of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20^th century;” but as the editors of Nezavisimaya Gazeta observer, “he has never called for a restoration of the Soviet Union in any form” although he has said that the former republics should remain close and not link themselves to Russia’s enemies.

            Two recent statements, the editors say, explain why he has adopted that position. On the one hand, his press spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently told journalists that Putin “doesn’t want to restore the USSR because this is impossible” and “to speak about that possibility doesn’t show respect to our partners and allies in the CIS” (ng.ru/editorial/2025-12-10/2_9398_red.html).

            And on the other, in an interview with Indian journalists, Putin himself declared, the newspaper’s editors say, that the restoration of the USSR is “simply excluded” because it would “critically change both the ethnic and the religious composition of the population of the Russian Federation.” (emphasis supplied)

            Nezavisimaya Gazeta suggests that Putin has changed his vocabulary when speaking about this issue in response to the changing domestic and foreign policy situations he finds himself in, sometimes expressing more openly imperialistic and sometimes less imperialistic attitudes.

            But despite that, he has never departed from the view that the USSR cannot be restored – and now he has made clearer than ever before that his reason for advancing that view is not so much his belief that the Soviet system didn’t work but rather because a new USSR would have demographic consequences he doesn’t want – and that would lead to a further disintegration.  

            For a discussion of how that could happen and why Putin feels himself compelled to avoid setting the stage for a third round of the disintegration of the Russian state that those seeking the restoration of the USSR are unwittingly setting the stage for, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/03/putin-thinks-he-is-restoring-soviet.html.

           This is not to say, of course,  that Putin won't pursue the inclusion of parts of other countries like Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan which he believes are naturally part of Russia and whose incorporation would not change the ethnic and religious mix of the Russian Federation to a dangerous degree

Attacks on Decembrist Rising in 1825 Highlight What Putin Regime Really Fears

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 14 – Two hundred years ago, on December 14, 1825, a group of Russian army officers rose against the tsarist regime and demanded a constitution. Brutally suppressed, they nonetheless became heroes in Soviet hagiography as examples of the willingness of some Russians to protest tsarist autocracy.

            In Putin’s time, however, they have been subject to increasing attacks by Russian commentators and officials as out of touch “rebels,” Catholics and Lutherans, and their action not as something positive but as retrograde (meduza.io/paragraph/2025/12/11/dekabristy-ne-znali-svoy-narod-oni-myatezhniki-a-takzhe-katoliki-ili-lyuterane-ih-bunt-eto-regress and pointmedia.io/story/6939553ee657f59b666dce83).

            Such attacks should not be dismissed as irrelevant because they in fact highlight what the Putin regime really fears: the possibility of challenges to itself from within the elite – fears that are leading those around Putin to try to ensure that if there is any such rising, the Russian people will not support it but rather rally round those in power.  

             Because the Decembrist rising took place during an interregnum after one tsar had died and another had not yet been crowned, attacks on what they did are likely to intensify given that those around Putin are especially alarmed about the possibility that the situation will get out of hand, not as long as Putin remains in power but after he leaves the scene.  

Free Space in Russian Universities for Veterans of Putin’s War Reducing Opportunities for Others, Sparking Demands Moscow Correct This

Paul Goble

            Staunton. Dec. 11 – Vladimir Putin has ordered that veterans of his war in Ukraine be given preferential treatment in admissions to and support for higher education, a directive that is already having the effect of reducing opportunities for others, including the most gifted. Parents and politicians are outraged and some politicians and public figures are demanding changes.

            Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov complained to the Presidential Human Rights Council last month that the provision of so many slots for veterans in universities was limiting opportunities for other Russian students (absatz.media/news/142537-rossiya-mozhet-ispolzovat-golubej-kiborgov-na-fronte-naravne-s-boevymi-delfinami).

            And now Andrey Kolesnik, who earlier served in the Duma as a United Russia deputy and now works as a legislator in Kaliningrad, has called on the Russian legislature to consider increasing the number of government-subsidized slots in higher education so those that aren’t veterans could still have a chance (absatz.media/news/144327-v-gosdume-nashli-reshenie-kak-spravitsya-s-nehvatkoj-byudzhetnyh-mest-v-vuzah-iz-za-lgot-dlya-detej-bojcov-svo).

            These two complaints are likely to grow as more veterans return and occupy positions in universities and elsewhere that Russians who had not served there had expected would be available to them or their children. (On this larger problem, see business-gazeta.ru/article/689691.)

            Budgetary stringencies in Moscow make it unlikely that the Russian government will be able to meet these demands and that in turn suggests that ever more Russians will be infuriated by the privileges veterans are getting at the expense of themselves and their families, yet another source of tensions in Russia if and when Putin’s war ends. 

Former Soviet Republics Replacing Russian Toponyms but American State of Alaska Isn’t, Russia’s ‘Eastern Express’ Notes

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 12 – Former Soviet republics are routinely replacing Russian place names with ones taken from their national histories while the US state of Alaska, which once was part of the Russian Empire, is not, a reflection of “the inferiority complex” many of the former republics feel but that Americans in Alaska don’t, Russia’s Eastern Express portal says.

            Alaskans, who suffer from no such complexes, the portal continues, “has preserved dozens of Russian toponyms;” and no one feels the need to change names in order to boost a new identity (asia24.media/news/pochemu-v-ssha-sokhranili-desyatki-russkikh-toponimov-a-v-stranakh-tsentralnoy-azii-pereimenovanie-u/).

            Changing the name of a city or street is “the simplest, most visible and accessible means of symbolic revenge,” something the residents of many former Soviet republics feel the need to take but that residents of the US state of Alaska clearly don’t and thus do not display a similar interest in eliminating Russian toponyms.

            An obsession with renaming, the portal continues, “reveals not confidence but insecurity if not in fact outright inadequacy. A strong and well-established identity is not afraid of the layers of history. It absorbs them and lives with them. Constantly looking back at an ‘ideologically alien’ past and fighting its ghosts is a sign that the present is still defined by negation.”

Inflation Hitting Russia’s Poor Far Harder than Those with Higher Incomes, ‘To Be Precise’ Portal Documents

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 10 – Because poorer people have to spend a higher share of their incomes on the basic necessities than do those with higher incomes, it has long been recognized in Western countries that increases in prices for such necessities means that real inflation is far higher for the poor than for better off groups.

            Now, the To Be Precise portal has documented that this pattern is also true for the residents of the Russian Federation where increasingly high inflation is hurting the poorest segments of the population far harder than those with higher incomes (tochno.st/materials/na-135-vyse-byla-infliaciia-u-samyx-bednyx-po-sravneniiu-s-samymi-bogatymi-v-2024-godu).

            Because Putin’s war in Ukraine sent prices for some luxury goods skyrocketing as imports became less available and domestic produces raised their prices to take advantage of this trend, in 2022 and 2023, inflation increased more for those with higher incomes than with lower ones. But since 2024, the more typical pattern in which the poor are hurt more has returned.

            Between 2004 and 2021, prices in Russia grew more rapidly for the poor than for the better off. During that period, food prices increased 3.2 times for the poor but only 2.8 times for the rich. Then, in the first months of the war in Ukraine, that pattern was reversed but only for a relatively brief time. 

            In 2024, the last year for which statistics are available, price rises for all goods and services rose by 10.1 percent for Russia’s poorest people, but only by 8.9 percent for the richest. That means that the poor in Russia are now being confronted by a rate of inflation 13.5 percent higher than are the better off.

            This pattern helps to explain why better off groups were angrier at the Kremlin in 2022-2023 and poorer groups less so – and why that pattern likely changed in 2024. As a result, the Putin regime faces fewer questions from better off groups and more from the poorer segments of the population who in the past have been its prime supporters. 

Russian AI Must Be Based on Radically Conservative Russian Texts, Malofeyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 11 – AI, as artificial intelligence is known, reflects the texts that are used to predict and select materials for inclusion in texts it comes up with and distributes. In the West, these texts are typically the most recent; but Konstantin Malofeyev says that in Russia they should reflect more conservative ones.

            Among the texts the Orthodox oligarch suggests Russian AI must be based on are Domostroy, the 16^th century guide to family life, the Gospels, and the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Ivan Ilin, and Aleksandr Dugin (t.me/kvmalofeev/3970, discussed at moscowtimes.ru/2025/12/11/v-rossii-predlozhili-sozdat-iskusstvennii-intellekt-na-osnove-domostroya-i-trudov-dugina-a182627).

            Otherwise, Malofeyev warns, the thoughtless use of Western models will lead to “the loss of identity” among Russians and the penetration of Western values given that as Patriarch Kirill has already warned, AI “removes a sense of responsibility” from those individuals who use it without understanding how it is generated.

            To oversee this process of creating a sovereign Russian internet, he calls for the creation in the Russian Federation of “an internet special service” analogous in his view to the National Security Agency of the US or to the Cyber Space Administration in the Peoples Republic of China.

            What Malofeyev is calling for in many ways would introduce into Russia AI something that Russian intelligence services have already tried to insert into Western AI platforms by creating bots that flood the information space Western AI uses in generating texts for widely used Internet portals.  

Russian Oil Companies Should Use Siberian Rivers to Export Their Production, Verkhoturov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 11 – Rather than waiting for the construction of pipelines or railways, Russian oil companies should ship their production via Siberian rivers to the Arctic where the oil can be transferred to ships and sent either eastward to the Pacific rim countries or westward toward Europe, Dmitry Verkhoturov says.

            These rivers are deep enough and wide enough for ships to carry oil at less cost per ton per kilometer than even pipelines, the Siberian economic reporter says; but up to now, Russian oil company executives have not exploited this route, although they will likely have to if oil increasingly is found far from existing pipeline routes (sibmix.com/?doc=19182).

            In addition to the lack of interest among oil company executives, Verkhoturov’s proposal faces two other major challenges: the fear of Russia’s growing environmental movement that such transit will lead to accidents and the contamination of these rivers and the problems Moscow is having with keeping ports where these rivers empty into the Arctic ice free.

            There has been a great deal of attention to the potential environmental impact of such use of Siberia’s rivers (https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russians-want-to-develop-arctic-but.html). There has been much less to the problems of ice in ports where the rivers reach the Arctic.

            But that is now becoming a major issue. Even as Moscow officials are celebrating that for the first time ever, Russia has eight nuclear icebreakers on the Northern Sea Route (arctic.ru/infrastructure/20251211/1065451.html), smaller Russian icebreakers aren’t available to keep key ports there ice free and open for navigation.

            The Barents Observer reports that a Russian tanker had to give up on making a planned stop at the port where the Ob flows into the Arctic because no Russian icebreaker was available to open a channel (thebarentsobserver.com/news/shadow-tanker-blocked-by-arctic-sea-icenbsp/442007).

            The lack of a sufficient number of icebreakers capable of keeping ports open is not only yet another reason why Verkhoturov’s proposal is unlikely to go anywhere but also why nuclear icebreakers alone are unlike to be sufficient to solve the NSR’s ice problems however impressive they appear and however often Moscow officials point to them as a kind of salvation. 

Failure of Central Asian Countries to Replace Aging Infrastructure Becoming Economic, Social and Political Threat to Their Future, ‘Bugin’ Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 10 – Much of the basic infrastructure in Central Asia, including housing, plumbing, electricity, and transportation routes, was built in Soviet times, is not being replaced or in some cases even repaired, and is rapidly becoming a threat to the economic, social and political stability of the region, according to the Bugin portal.

            At present, the portal says, “the average age of critical infrastructure [in Central Asia] exceeds 30 to 40 years” because the post-Soviet states have lacked the resources to replace it and spend an increasing share of their resources simply on trying to keep it repaired, a task they are rapidly falling behind on (bugin.info/detail/ekonomika-iznosa-kak-vet/ru).

            The situation is especially dire in the production of electricity. “The average age of thermal electric power stations in Kazakhstan is 55 years, in Kyrgyzstan, 45, and in Uzbekistan about 40.” As a result, less power in generated than is needed, and much that is generated is lost before it can be delivered to where it is needed.

            Transportation arteries suffer from similar aging. “In Kazakhstan,” Bugin says, “more than 30 percent of the national highways need repair, in Kyrgyzstan, the figure is about 40 percent and in Tajikistan as much as 45 percent.” Railways are also in trouble: the average age of locomotives now exceeds 65 percent. And airports haven’t been updated for two decades.

            Housing infrastructure is also aging with repairs falling behind the consequences of that. Stoppages and accidents have increased across the region by 25 percent over the last five years. Nearly two-thirds of the plumbing in housing needs to be repaired, and the situation is getting worse as now 30 to 40 percent of the housing stock in cities was build “more than 40 years ago.”

            These problems are causing many potential foreign investors to decide not to put money into Central Asia, decisions that by themselves are only adding to the problem. And at the same time, they are reducing the competitiveness of Central Asian economies and even their ability to serve as transit zones.

            The aging of infrastructure and the inability of governments to address this problem given the enormous costs of doing so is leading to a decline in the standard of living first of all in the cities and then, because of problems with water distribution, in the villages of the countries of this region.,

            As a result, the portal says, aging infrastructure is “becoming one of the main macro risks over the next 15 to 20 years,” given that “the costs of maintaining aging infrastructure are growing faster than GDP and the need for investment in these sectors exceeds the budgetary capacity” of all the countries there, even when their economies are growing.

            And Bugin concludes: “Aging infrastructure is becoming a factor that could limit the region's ambitions … The question is not whether the countries of the region will be able to update infrastructure, but whether they will do so before dilapidation becomes an irreversible macroeconomic constraint.”

Russian Politicians Urge Moscow to Denounce Dual Citizenship Accord with Tajikistan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 9 – Thirty years ago, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan signed a treaty establishing that all citizens of one country are automatically citizens of the other, the only such arrangement on the post-Soviet space and one adopted nominally to help that Central Asian republic recover from a civil war and in fact intended to integrate it more tightly with Russia.

            Now, however, an increasing number of Russians, including senior members of the Duma, are urging Moscow to denounce this agreement because of what they see as its negative impact on the Russian Federation (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2025-12-08--priezzhih-pod-kontrol.-dvojnoe-grazhdanstvo-rossii-i-tadzhikistana-otmenjat-84476).

            The 1995 accord gives “special rights to Tajiks on the territory of Russia and to Russians on that of Tajikistan;” but as there are now more than a million Tajiks in Russia and only a relative handful of ethnic Russians in Tajikistan, it is the Russians who are raising the issue of denouncing that treaty rather than Tajiks and the government of Tajikistan.

            As Russian commentator Kirill Ozimko points out, to understand why the 1995 treaty is being questioned in Russia, one must recognize the key difference between the dual citizenship arrangements it establishes and a situation in which the citizen of one country simply has one or more passports from another.

            “An important feature of dual citizenship is that its holders have the right to choose which country they will serve in the military of and which they will pay taxes in. For example, if a person is a tax resident of Tajikistan, he will pay taxes and serve in the military exclusively in that country.”

            “Having a Russian passport does not obligate [Tajiks] to serve in the Russian military,” Ozimko continues. Moreover, Russian citizens who get a Tajik passport or Tajiks who get a Russian one “are not required to inform their country’s immigration service … and when crossing the Russian or Tajikistan border dual citizens can use either passport.”

            In contrast, the commentator says, “a second citizenship simply entails obtaining an additional passport, and each country with which an individual is connected considers them exclusively their own citizen and therefor imposes obligations on them regardless of whether they have fulfilled them in another country.”

            It is striking that Russia has a dual citizenship agreement only with Tajikistan and that it has not signed such an accord even with Belarusians, who can obtain Russian citizenship via a simplified procedure but “that will be a second citizenship rather than a dual one,” Ozimko concludes. Many of the former Soviet republics even have bans on second citizenships.

            At a time when the question of military service is of rising significance in Russia given Putin’s war in Ukraine, many members of the Duma are suggesting that the 1995 accord should be denounced so that everyone will know what rights and responsibilities Tajiks who have declared Russian citizenship will be unambiguously responsible for serving Russia.

Given that almost half a million Tajiks have done so, many in the Duma are saying the 1995 treaty must be denounced; and according to Ozimko, the government is likely to agree with them – especially because some fear that otherwise the number of Tajiks with uncertain citizenship living in the Russian Federation might try to form a national republic.

 

In Contrast to Russia’s Kid Glove Approach, Ukraine has Taken a Tough Line Not Only against Elite Corruption but Also Crimes by Veterans

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 9 – Ukraine differs from Russia in taking a hard line against not only elite corruption but also crimes by veterans. As a result, there are more court cases and convictions in Ukraine than in Russia, leading to media coverage in the West suggesting there is a bigger problem in the former rather than the latter, precisely what the Kremlin wants people to believe.

            But in fact, the reverse is true. The kid glove approach the Russian legal system has taken is only making the situation worse (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/11/russian-war-veterans-returning-home.html) while the much tougher position Kyiv has adopted suggests how much more progress it has made toward becoming a law-based country.

            The willingness of Kyiv to pursue criminal charges against veterans has been highlighted by a Novaya Gaeta Europe report showing that Ukrainian courts have secured 8,000 convictions of veterans and some serving military personnel “under ‘civilian’ articles,” with “about 7,000” of these involving veterans (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/12/09/vosem-tysiach-veteranov-voiny-v-ukraine-byli-osuzhdeny-po-ugolovnym-delam).

            The paper calculates that this figure means than approximately six percent of all Ukrainian veterans have been convicted of violating what it calls “civilian” laws, something that will go a long way to limiting the spread of crime back into society when veterans return and a marked contrast with what is happening in the Russian Federation. 

Karelian Language Dying in Karelian Republic Because of Moscow’s Policies and Flight of Karelians to Finland

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 9 – Between the last two Russian Federation censuses, the number of people declaring Karelian their native language declined by a greater percentage than was the case for any other nationality in that country which is the titular nationality of a non-Russian republic.

            The reasons for that are clear, Leyla Latypova says in her latest Moscow Times article about non-Russians in the Russian Federation, a combination of Russian government policies and the flight of Karelians to Finland (themoscowtimes.com/2025/12/09/in-russias-karelia-neighboring-finlands-nato-membership-deepens-divides-a91178).

            Russian policies have attracted the most attention. Because Karelians refuse to give up the Latin script, Russian law precludes their language being the state language of the republic. That situation, originally set up when Moscow hoped to absorb Finland, now leaves Karelia as the only non-Russian republic in which their language doesn’t have that status.

            As a result, Karelian speakers cannot insist on its use in official contexts; and Russian officials there have limited their opportunities to use it in others, especially in recent years as relations between the Russian Federation and the West have deteriorated, especially since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022.

            But another major cause of the decline of Karelian in Karelia is that an increasing number of Karelians have fled to Finland where Helsinki has worked hard to support and even expand its use there and earlier in Karelia. Now, however, those who want to speak Karelian and mutually intelligible Finnish have more opportunities if they move.

            According to Karelians with whom Latypova spoke, few of the members of that nationality accept Russian propaganda which portrays Finns in increasingly hostile ways and instead view Finland as what may be their last bastion of support at a time when Karelian as a language is dying in its homeland within the Russian Federation.

Heating of Russian Homes, Schools and Hospitals has Failed ‘a Minimum of 123 Times’ since October Because of Decaying Infrastructure, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 9 – As winter sets in, the Moscow media has routinely reported how Ukrainian drone attacks have left some Russians without hot water; but the center has largely ignored a much larger problem: the way in which decaying infrastructure has left the population in some of the coldest parts of the country without heat and without water.

            The Horizontal Russia portal, which covers developments in Russia beyond Moscow’s ring road reports that since October 1, there have been “a minimum of 123 occasions” when residents have been left without heat and water because officials have not addressed the problems of aging infrastructure (semnasem.org/articles/2025/12/09/k-zime-gotovy).

            The portal was explicit that it had not included in this number losses as a result of drone attacks or other military actions connected with the war in Ukraine. Had it done so, the figure would have been much larger and the number of Russian residents adversely affected higher as well.

            Moscow and regional officials earlier declared that they were ready for what Russians call “the heating season,” but these breakdowns which have affected hundreds of thousands of residents of the Russian Federation show that this year in particular, as money is taken away from such work for Putin’s war in Ukraine, that simply isn’t true.

            The absence of heat in many apartment blocs and public institutions have left many Russians suffering with some becoming ill as a result, and without heat, pipes have frozen, something that has left these same people without water hot or cold and damaged infrastructure still further.

            What is infuriating many residents, Horizontal Russia says, is that they are now paying ever more for communal services such as heat and water but are getting ever less good service, all despite the bombastic claims of Putin regime officials that everything is under control and that they should be calm because the war in Ukraine is proceeding so successfully.

 

Leaders of Non-Russian National Movements Call for Armed Struggle against Muscovite Imperialism

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 9 – Leaders of Chechen, Buryat, Bashkir, Circassian and Oyrat-Kalmyk national movements have called on their peoples to take part in the defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression as part of what must become their armed struggle against Russian imperialism and for the freedom and independence of all peoples currently enslaved by Moscow.

            The appeal was issued by an international conference devoted to the End of Empire that took place Chicago on December 7 (t.me/s/nomad_svoboda reposted at rusmonitor.com/lidery-naczionalnyh-dvizhenij-korennyh-narodov-rf-prizvali-k-vooruzhennoj-borbe-protiv-rossijskogo-imperializma.html).

            In a resolution, they declared that "Russia is pursuing a policy of ethnic and religious assimilation of enslaved peoples, persecuting and imprisoning national activists, and conducting disproportionate mobilization for war, which leads to a physical reduction in the number of indigenous peoples. Xenophobia has become an undisguised state policy.”

            They added that “all peoples under the rule of the Russian Federation, as well as individual territories, have the full and inalienable right to self-determination, including the right to political independence and the creation of their own states. The continued existence of Russia as an empire and a "prison of nations" poses a constant threat to the entire free world.”

            And these representatives of the national movements expressed their gratitude to the Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations (ABN) for organizing the conference and for its adoption of the principle that “for the independence of national republics, it is necessary to struggle with arms in one’s hands.”

‘If US Leaves NATO, Bloc Could Become More Anti-Russian,’ Moscow Analyst Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 10 – Moscow has long sought to break apart the alliance between the United States and Europe that rests on the existence of the NATO alliance; but given the changes in US policy under the Trump Administration, one Moscow analyst is warning that the exit of the US from NATO could leave the bloc more anti-Russian than it is now.

            Among them is Vasiliy Koltashov, the head of the Center for Political-Economic Research at the Institute of the New Society, who says with the US out, the remaining Europeans may feel less constrained from launching a war against Moscow (absatz.media/news/144204-politolog-obuyasnil-pochemu-vyhod-ssha-iz-nato-priblizit-vojnu-alyansa-s-rossiej).  

            The Moscow analyst says that he doesn’t believe that the Americans are really about to leave NATO. But unlike most Russian analysts, he suggests that their continuing presence there may be something that will benefit the Russian Federation rather than work against it as has long been assumed in Russian thinking.

            If Moscow were to accept Koltashov’s argument, Washington might feel leaving NATO would win it fewer points in the Russian capital and not view such a move as a good negotiating ploy in talks with Putin. And that in turn could lead the Trump Administration to slow down its current efforts to disentangle the US from Europe by reducing the American role in NATO.