Astrakhan after Three Years of Putin’s Expanded War in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 24 – The last few months have seen a spate of articles about the state of this or that region three years into Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine. (For a review and the reasons these are so important, see jamestown.org/program/reports-from-regions-show-the-cost-of-putins-war-outside-moscow/).

            The latest is about Astrakhan. Written by Oleg Shein, a native of that region and a prominent opposition politician, it highlights both the many problems that Astrakhan shares with other Russian regions and perhaps especially important how different it is from other predominantly ethnic Russian regions (posle.media/article/astrakhan-region-during-the-war).

            Shein draws five conclusions about the state of Astrakhan today that will be familiar to those who follow what has been taking place in other predominantly ethnic Russian regions in particular since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine:

1.     Although extremely rich in natural resources, its population is extremely poor; and that disconnect is increasing. Worker’s incomes have fallen “by at least a quarter” over the last decades, “investment has collapsed,” and “one in every 15 families has left the region.

2.     While less inclined to state patriotism or nationalism than other federal subjects, its residents are empathetic about the country and its population, something that Kremlin propaganda has exploited to generate support for the war.

3.     Bonuses to get men to join the army are “dramatically disproportionate to the income of workers,” but “even these payments have had to be increased 22 times in two years to ensure a relatively small influx of contract soldiers.”

4.     “The regional budget has shrunk by a seventh,” and as a result, spending on basic needs and infrastructure has cratered.

5.     But, Shein says, “there are no direct military hardships, and the population simply live in a state of permanent crisis.”

At the same time, the politician and commentator calls attention to the ways in which Astrakhan may be different from other predominantly ethnic Russian regions:

1.     It is multinational, with nearly a third of its population consisting of Muslim nationalities; but Astrakhan Russians and these peoples coexist with “no interethnic tension” and few problems.

2.     Only seven percent of Astrakhan residents display state patriotism, an idea which “equates the state with the country. That is far lower than in most other regions, and considerably behind the figure in Moscow where 43 percent of the residents make that equation.

3.     Astrakhan residents are more likely to express their views online than in face-to-face conversations, something that makes their attitudes appear to a casual observer more conformist.

4.     Facing serious inflation and thus a decline in living standards, Astrakhan residents say they have lived through such things before and can survive – and expect to.

5.      But the war is hitting them harder in another way. Some 2,000 Astrakhan residents have died in Putin’s Ukrainian war, an enormous figure compared to the only 37 of them who died in the course of the ten years of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.