Putin’s Use of Dzerzhinsky Echoes Soviet History and His Own Past but May Be Harbinger of More Repression, Historian Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – Vladimir Putin’s use of Feliks Dzerzhinsky resembles the use Soviet leaders put the founder of the Cheka to after the death of Stalin and Putin’s own use of Yury Andropov to send a message about the organs to the Russian people, Rustam Aleksander says. But it is even more worrisome because it may be a harbinger of more repression ahead.

            After ousting and then executing Lavrenty Beriya, Stalin’s last secret police chief, the Soviet dictator’s successors elevated Dzerzhinsky to an almost sacred status to suggest that real Soviet secret policemen were not guilty of the viciousness which characterized Beria’s actions, the popular historian says (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/29/feliks-vozvrashchaetsia).

            In December 1958, the Khrushchev leadership even erected a statue of Dzerzhinsky in Moscow’s Lubyanka Square; but in 1991, during the failed coup attempt, the Russian people attacked the status and pulled it down, a highly symbolic action that suggested the new Russia would not be like the old.      

            But shortly before coming to power, Putin, himself a KGB officer and then head of the FSB, came to power, sought to use Yury Andropov in a similar way, to suggest that the Russian security services were models of competence and professionalism and that he Putin was committed to following in that tradition.

            Now, instead of continuing to boost Andropov as a role model, Putin is suggesting that Dzerzhinsky is, and that, Aleksander says, “clearly signals something else entirely.” His moves in this direction are “no longer about restoring respect but rather about establishing fear and arbitrary power as the fundamental principles of Russia’s special services.”

            And that raises “a more troubling question: Is this a symbolic warning about the FSB’s future trajectory toward harsher repression or is it an actual admission that fear and repression have already become the norm in present-day Russia that that the rising generation of security officers will only intensify that?”

Putin’s War in Ukraine Behind Dramatic Increase in Missing Persons Cases in Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 28 – The number of Russians asking the human rights ombudsman in Irkutsk for help in finding missing persons has doubled since 2022 and 70 percent of such applications are connected with the war, according to an investigation by Asya Gay, a journalist with the People of Baikal portal.

            According to her figures, during the period since Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine began, 3966 Irkutsk military personnel have disappeared, 664 are known to be in prison, and 338 have unsuccessfully tried to get out of the army and whose locations are not known (baikal-stories.media/2026/04/28/pochti-chetyre-tysyachi-propavshih-bez-vesti/).

            Svetlana Semyonova, the Irkutsk oblast, says that the number of missing cases involving military personnel that have reached her office has gone up 20 times and now forms 70 percent of the total in this category; and she adds that the share in neighboring Buryatia is even higher – 80 percent, an indication that the Irkutsk figures are not outliers.

In 2022, the Irkutsk ombudsman handled 193 cases involving missing soldiers and 2513 involving other causes; but in 2025, the relationship between these two categories had changed dramatically, with 3753 involving soldiers and onlly155 all other categories, Semyonov continues.

These numbers for a single federal subject are horrific given the number of relatives and friends involved; but it is important to remember, Gay says, that they understate the problem given that many people suffering such losses do not turn to the authorities for help because they do not think they will get any.

Almost Half of Russian Victims of Crime Don’t Report This to Police, St. Petersburg’s Institute of Law Enforcement Problems Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – Between 2020 and 2024, 13 percent of Russians were victims of fraud, assault, theft, robbery or violent robbery, but only 55 percent of them reported these incidents to police and 10 percent did not tell anyone about what happened, according to St. Petersburg’s Institute of Law Enforcement Problems.

            What this means, the Institute says on the  basis of surveys conducted since 2018 is that “the police remain unaware of a vast number of crimes” and that the information they do have is systematically distorted as some crimes are far more likely to be reported than others (tochno.st/materials/skolko-liudei-stanoviatsia-zertvami-prestuplenii-i-kakaia-cast-prestupnosti-ne-ucityvaetsia-v-oficialnoi-statistike).

            These surveys have found that different age groups report even violent crimes at different rates. Among victims of assault over 65, 91 percent of women and 76 percent of men turn to the police, but among the 18 to 24 cohort, these figures are only at 43 percent for women and 26 percent for men.

            Online crime, so-called “victimless” crimes like drug possession, and family violence are less likely to be reported, the surveys found, with police completely unaware of at least 60 percent of online crimes involving fraud and financial loss, the Institute says. Far more Russians are thus victims of crime than the police know or act on or that official statistics report.

With Russian Birthrate Continuing to Plummet, Putin Orders Reproductive Health Screenings for Wide Swath of Population

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 28 – With Russian birthrates continuing to plummet despite all the Kremlin’s efforts to reverse that trend, Vladimir Putin has directed the health ministry to conduct more medical check-ups to assess the reproductive health of the population and thus the ability of both men and women to have children (ehorussia.com/new/node/34486).

            According to Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, such screenings have already begun and are proving “highly popular,” but these have been voluntary and relatively few in number. It is unclear how Russians will respond especially if they are compelled to undergo such examinations and if the authorities use the outcomes to direct them to have more children.

            Moreover, it is unclear who will conduct these tests in many parts of the country because Putin’s healthcare “optimization” program has resulted in the shuttering of many medical points or how the regime will pay for such tests. Indeed, they may become yet another unfunded liability imposed on the regions.

            The most likely use of data collected from such tests, however widespread they prove to be, will be a government effort to shift the blame for the plummeting birth rates away from Putin policies to the physical conditions of Russians. But such efforts are likely to backfire because many will recognize such physical problems are typically the result of social ones.

Desertification of Southern Russia and Kazakhstan In Part Result of Cancellation of Stalin’s Plan to Transform Nature There, ‘Rhythm of Eurasia’ Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – In the last years of Stalin’s rule, the Soviet dictator made plans to “transform nature” by among other things rerouting the flow of water in Russian rivers. Those plans were cancelled by his successors; but the problems this program was designed to fix remain – and Stalin’s ideas remain relevant and should be revisited, Aleksey Chichkin says.

            The Rhythm of Eurasia analyst says that in 1948 Stalin announced plans for reforestation of areas along these rivers and other means to redirect and save Russia in the southern portions of the RSFSR and the Kazakh SSR (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-04-29--stalinskij-plan-preobrazovanija-prirody-otmenen-v-1953-m-no-aktualen-ponyne-87368).

            “Had this program been fully implemented” – and Stalin suggested it would take until 1966 -- Chichkin continues, “it would have enabled this vast region to boost natural soil fertility, while minimizing the extent of soil degradation and desertification, the impact of dry winds, the frequency of droughts, and other associated climatic and environmental extremes.”

            As a result of the cancellation of Stalin’s program by his successors, the situation has gotten worse with forests along riverways being cut down, erosion and water loss increased, and all the other problems that his program would have addressed earlier when it was easier are now much larger, the commentator says.

            Consequently, it is long past time for Moscow to consider reviving the Stalin-era plan regarding the most effective means of fighting desertification in the south of Russia and in the adjoining regions of Kazakhstan. Indeed, unless it does so, these problems almost certainly will continue to expand and may become too large to address at all.

            What makes this argument worth noting is that it represents an attempt, one that is now far from alone, to present Stalin not only as the victor in the Great Fatherland War but a thoughtful statesman concerned about the well-being of his country and thus someone who should be emulated rather than condemned.

Finnish Paper Suggests Hungarians Ashamed of Their Finno-Ugric Origins

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 28 – It has long been common ground that three Finno-Ugric peoples – the Estonians, the Finns and the Hungarians – have independent statehood and that they are the first nations that those Finno-Ugric peoples still living under Russian rule look to for help and support.

            But a Finnish newspaper is now suggesting that the Hungarians are somehow “ashamed” of their Finno-Ugric roots and prefer instead to stress their ties to the Huns, something that helps explain why Hungary has been far less focused on the Finno-Ugric nations within the borders of the Russian Federation.

            (The article, “Hungarians: Finnish is No Longer a Related Language and That is the Issue,” appeared in Finnish in Helsinki’s Ilta-Sanomat (is.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000011934420.html) and is discussed in Russian in Tallinn’s Mari portal (mariuver.eu/2026/04/28/vengry-stesnjajutsja-svoego-finno-ugorskogo-proiskhozhdenija/.)

            The article cites the conclusions of University of Budapest linguist Marta Csepregi who says that “especially in the 21^st century,” ever more Hungarians are insisting that “Hungary does not belong to a common language family with Finland,” a reflection of their conviction that Hungarians real origin lies with the Huns and that they are closer to the Turks.

            “Despite all this,” the Finnish article says, “for the average Hungarian, Finland remains closer than Sweden or Norway, and Marta Csepregi hopes that the Finns will consider Hungary closer than these countries which it neighbors.”

            There is no question that Finns and Estonians feel closer to each other and to the other Finno-Ugric peoples than do the Hungarians who live further away, do not have Finno-Ugric neighbors, and have a language which is more distant from other Finno-Ugrics than are Estonian and Finnish.

            But the difference in attitudes about Finno-Ugric languages and peoples between Estonians and Finns, on the one hand, and Hungarians, on the other, helps to explain why the Finno-Ugric peoples within the Russian borders who are subject to intense assimilationist pressures are less likely to find support in Budapest than in Helsinki and Tallinn.

Ethnic Russians Still in Central Asia will Assimilate to Local Populations in Future Unless Moscow Works to Repatriate Them Now, Shustov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – Most Russians operate on the assumption that while non-Russians may assimilate to Russians, ethnic Russians will not assimilate to non-Russian nationalities even if they live among them.  That has never been true, of course, despite Moscow’s best efforts; but it is seldom acknowledged even as a possibility.

            That makes a new article by Aleksandr Shustov, a Russian commentator who specializes on ethnic issues, especially important. He says Moscow must try to repatriate ethnic Russians from Central Asia or else those Russians will be assimilated by the titular nationalities there in a few decades and lost to the Russian world (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-04-29--repatriacija-iz-srednej-azii-vostrebovana-russkimi-iz-za-ugrozy-assimiljacii-87395).

            Russia already has a repatriation program which exists alongside but is fundamentally different from the resettlement of compatriots. Unlike the latter, repatriants can live wherever they like in the Russian Fedeation. Over the last two years, some 10,000 ethnic Russians have taken advantage of this program (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/04/15/1190464-repatriantov-pereselilis).

            A recent study by experts at Moscow State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences suggests that the potential number of repatriants could be much larger (jour.fnisc.ru/index.php/population/article/view/11063/10726), and Shustov argues that Moscow should act to get as many of them back as possible.

            Otherwise, the commentator suggests, they will be lost to Russia entirely with many dying out and others eventually becoming part of the titular nationality                     

Moscow Doesn’t Recognize Young Russians Aren’t Having Children Because They’re ‘Afraid’ to Do So, Khazin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 28 – Moscow is seeking to encourage young Russians by offering various incentives and benefits; but that approach won’t work, Mikhail Khazin says, because the real reason young people in the Russian Federation aren’t having children is because they are afraid to given the structure of the economy they must operate within.

            The Russian economist and commentator says that “it is no secret that our country’s birthrate is low because starting a family entails a whole host of problems; and young people are afraid” (province.ru/society/4494276-molodej-boitsya-mihail-hazin-otkrovenno-nazval-prichiny-pochemu-rossiyane-malo-rojayut/).

            Young Russians are afraid that they could lose out if they have children before they earn enough money to buy an apartment. But that doesn’t happen until they are 40 or 45; and by that time, they are too old to start a family and thus don’t, something that has sent the fertility rate down to 1.4 children per Russian woman per lifetime or lower.

            Fear of not being able to own an apartment and have a good life if they have children is thus the primary reason why young Russians are putting off having children and then in all too many cases not having children at all, Khazin says; and that is not only a demographic tragedy but the root cause of Russia’s labor shortage.

            Obviously, going back to a system in which young married couples lived with their parents isn’t an option: it is simply too difficult for them to do that and the housing in which their parents live is typically old and even decaying. And consequently, Moscow must face up to this and seek new ways to eliminate the not unreasonable fears young people have. 

            There is no question that Khazin is on to something: various surveys have shown that Russians who have children early as the Kremlin wants on average see a decline in their standard of living, something many potential parents aren’t willing to risk given all the other problems in Russian live now.

            But having identified the problem, Khazin offers no easy way out except to suggest that the widespread use of AI might be a way, although he acknowledges that the experience of other countries, including the US, suggest that artificial intelligence can be a two-edged sword, bringing benefits but also a variety of new problems.

A Rubicon has Been Crossed: No One in Russia No Matter How Distant from Ukraine Can Feel Entirely Secure, Shoigu Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 27 – Since the start of 2026, Ukrainian drones have hit targets in almost a third of Russia’ federal subjects, many like those in the Urals far from the frontline of Putin’s war in Ukraine. As a result, Sergey Shoigu says, “not one Russian region is a secure location” anymore, a sign that the distinction between front and rear has been obliterated.

            The words of the former Russian defense minister and current secretary of the Russian Security Council show that a Rubicon has been crossed. For more than four years, most people in Russia were content to accept the Kremlin’s false claims that the war did not threaten them directly, but that has now become impossible.

            That undermines the Kremlin’s claims and raises questions about the way in which the war has come home to Russia like “a boomerang,” and it unsettles Russians who live far from the battle lines in Ukraine and had thought that however many burdens they had to bear, they were at least safe (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/04/27/effekt-bumeranga).

            While one could hope that Russians could force Putin to make peace so that they could recover a sense of being invulnerable, the more likely result, given Putin’s personality and policy preferences is that the Kremlin leader will use this sense of uncertainty to justify even more radical moves against Ukraine – and quite likely against Russians as well.

Moscow Patriarchate Acts as If the USSR Still Existed, Creating Unnecessary Problems for Itself and the Kremlin, Religious Affairs Specialist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 26 – There have been some significant personnel changes in the hierarchy of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations which manages ties with Orthodox communities outside the Russian Federation and serves as the foreign policy arm of the Russian church.          

            The current patriarch and most of his predecessors sprung from this body, and it is out of it that key ideas which define the Moscow Patriarchate’s thinking about the proper relationship between Moscow and the former Soviet republics, Anastasiya Koskello, a graduate student at the Institute of Europe, says (ng.ru/kartblansh/2026-04-26/3_9483_kb.html).

            These ideas, which the scholar says can be summed up under the notion that “we must live as if the collapse of the USSR never occurred” and include the idea of “canonical territory” which does not exist in canon law. Instead, it was dreamed up by the External Relations Department to justify claims of exclusivity across the former Soviet space.

            Because of the way Moscow has acted on the basis of these ideas, the ROC MP has created problems for itself and for the Kremlin that could have been avoided had the church diplomats performed more “diplomatically.” And now there are signs that it may be taken even more directly under the state than has been the case.

            According to Kostello, the Department “in its current form faces either abolition or comprehensive reform for one simple reason: its diplomatic apparatus proved professionally incapable of navigating the post-Soviet era effectively.” It has lost Ukraine and is leading other republics whose Orthodox never thought about breaking with Moscow to do just that.

            There is already on the horizon a group of experts who are ready to take over or at least play a much larger role in the Department: The Higher School of Economics has created a new master’s program entitled “Religious Diplomacy in the Modern World” whose first students are to be admitted this year,

            Prospective students, Koskello continues, have been promised employment as “international relations specialists within religious organizations, including their offices outside the Russian Federation.” That is a clear attack on the Moscow Patriarchate’s diplomacy and would have been unthinkable as recently as two years ago.

            Patriarch Kirill can be counted on to resist the injection of such people into his foreign relations body, but he has been so weakened by failures in Ukraine and elsewhere that he may not be able to do so successfully. And if he fails, more than just the External Relations Department of the ROC MP will be changed. Instead, the entire hierarchy will as well.

Russians Increasingly Turning to Fortune Tellers in Quest for Certainty Their Lives under Putin Lack

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 27 – Eighty-five percent of Russians now turn to fortune tellers or tarot card readers (wciom.ru/analytical-reviews/analiticheskii-obzor/mistika-gde-to-rjadom), a dramatic rise from before 2022 (vedomosti.ru/society/news/2026/01/28/1172246-atol-spros-rossiyan).

According to specialists on this form of public behavior, Russians are turning to fortune tellers because they believe that those who offer information from the other side as it were can provide them with reassurance and predictability that their lives currently lack under the rule of Vladimir Putin (currenttime.tv/a/v-rossii-rastet-populyarnost-gadaniy-i-magicheskih-obryadov/33741111.html).

Among the most prominent of these experts is Nataliya Shavshukova, a Moscow State University-trained political scientist who now teaches in Warsaw, says pointedly that “ by turning to magicians and fortune tellers, Russians are seeking new sources of support during unstable times.”

She suggests that something similar happened at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, another “period also characterized by a high degree of uncertainty.” Russians apparently believe that fortune tellers can give them if not “clear answers, at least ‘some’ kind of answer,” something that Russian officials increasingly don’t even try to provide.

Digitalization of Data Making Possible Return of a Planned Economy in the Best Sense, Putin Aide Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 26 – The autonomation of management processes and the widespread digitalization of economic relations is leading to the return of an updated version of the planned economy that operated in the USSR for more than 70 years, Maksim Oreshkin, a former economic development minister and now an aide to Vladimir Putin, says.

            He made that comment during a talk to a Moscow conference on Higher Education in the New Technological Era, and it is far from clear just how far he wants to go in that direction                                  (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/26/pomoschnik-putina-zayavil-o-vozvraschenii-planovoi-ekonomiki-a193757).

            But three things are clear: First, Oreshkin believes that computerization can address one of the biggest problems of the planned economy in Soviet times, the inability of planners to come up with plans given the complexity of economic activity and the uncertainties that such shortcomings inevitably produced.

            Second, the Putin aide mentions prices for taxi rides as a place where such planning could occur, an indication that if a move in this direction is made anytime soon, it is likely to be applied not across the economy as a whole but only in limited segments of the economy as a kind of test drive.

            And third, however that be, any suggestion of this kind by someone near the center of power is going to send shockwaves through the Russian economy and undermine international confidence in that economy still further given that the rise of the market in place of planning remains one of the chief victories of the end of the USSR as far as many are concerned.

Russians Now So Pessimistic They’ve Cut Back on Purchases to Have Funds If the Situation Gets Even Worse, ‘Important Stories’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 27 – Russians are now so pessimistic about the future that they’ve cut back on purchases so as to have funds if the situation gets even worse and they either lose their jobs or have their hours cut back, according to a variety of surveys and expert interviews reviewed by the Important Stories portal.

            But such behavior is making the situation even worse because even though incomes are rising and inflation makes purchases sooner more rational, flat or even declining consumer demand makes any recovery less likely (istories.media/opinions/2026/04/27/pochemu-rossiyane-ekonomyat-yesli-ofitsialno-ikh-dokhodi-rastut/).

            Russians are now worried that the country’s economic decline will either cost them their jobs or their paid hours and that they won’t be able to respond by getting new positions. In many cases, there are already more applicants per position than was the case only a few months ago.

            Among the many surveys the portal sites is a report prepared by the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences which found that this pessimism now touches all socio-economic groups and thus casts a dark shadow on the entire economy rather than just particular segments (ecfor.ru/publication/kvartalnyj-prognoz-vvp-vypusk-69/).

Ingushetia Head Admits What Everyone Knows: Regions and Republics are Cutting Back on Programs for Their Residents to Pay for Putin’s War in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 27 – Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, head of the Republic of Ingushetia, has freely admitted what everyone in Russia certainly knows: their federal subjects have been forced to cut back on programs for their own residents in order to pay for Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine.

            Most regional and republic heads are extremely cautious about making this link explicit, but Kalimatov is blunt: “In the conditions of the Special Military Operation … it is sometimes necessary to put off some projects so that other more important tasks can be carried out” (fortanga.org/2026/04/vlasti-ingushetii-priznalis-chto-vynuzhdeny-otkladyvat-byudzhetnye-proekty-v-svyazi-s-tratami-na-vojnu-v-ukraine/).

            Ingushetia, he continues, has sent nearly 500 million rubles (6 million US dollars) in humanitarian help, to rebuilding a region in Zaporozhye Oblast, and to provide summer camps for children displaced by the fighting. This is no small sum for a small republic that has lost several hundred dead in combat there.

            What makes remarks like Kalimatov’s so important is that they will make it easier for others to connect the dots and complain about what the war is costing them not only in lives and treasure but in their daily lives as money for basic needs disappears to fuel Putin’s military aggression.

Putin’s Repression has Shifted Center of Protest Activity from Better Off Strata to Poorer Groups and Kremlin Should Be Worried, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 24 – Something dramatic, even revolutionary, has happened in Russia in recent months, Abbas Gallyamov says. The center of protest activity has shifted form the major cities where the educated and well-to-do are concentrated to poorer groups outside the metropolises.

            These “less privileged groups in the provinces have typically been far more loyal,” the former Putin speechwriter and now Putin critic says. But repressive measures of recent years have drastically altered this dynamic, and now it is the poorer segments of society rather than the wealthier ones who are most inclined to voice their discontent” (pointmedia.io/story/69eb64b175d0d3346a25cb0c).

            “One reason for this,” Gallyamov says, “is the decline in living standards. In keeping with the logic that "proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains," those strata of the citizenry that have been driven to utter destitution are now turning toward dissent. Another factor stems from the sharp escalation in state repression.

The commentator continues: “The resident of the metropolis—who, until recently, was still openly critical of the authorities—has now developed a palpable sense of dread … and so he takes great pains to mask his true sentiments, providing both pollsters and his superiors with the answers he knows they want to hear.”

At the same time, “the resident of the provinces—who, until recently, remained steadfastly loyal—has not experienced any significant increase in fear as a result of these repressive measures. He does not perceive them as being directed against him personally” as he comforts himself by saying that he’s “voted for Putin all along.”

Such poorer rural groups do not consist of heroes, Gallyamov continues. They retain “a certain level of fear toward authorit] … but [in sharp contrast to the situation among urban groups] that fear has not intensified significantly of late. His level of irritation, however, has begun to rise.”

Such former loyalists instead “feel that the authorities have deceived them: they promised one thing but delivered something entirely different in return.” As a result, they feel “ in voicing discontent, they are somehow ‘within their rights’ in demanding things from the authorities.” In contrast, urban groups never believed the regime and are now more afraid.

“By unleashing repression” as they have, the commentator says, “the authorities thus intimidate one segment of society while simultaneously forfeiting the support of another—a far larger one. The problem, however, is not merely a matter of numbers: An intimidated populace constitutes a deeply unreliable social base.”

And even if this larger group does “’sincerely’ internalize the narratives of the powers that be, “they nonetheless remain broken, spineless individuals. At the slightest sign of adversity, they buckle.” After all, Gallyamov concludes, as history shows, “you cannot construct a stable political edifice upon such a foundation. It will be nothing more than a rickety shack.”

Turkmenistan’s Military in Crisis

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 26 – For most of the period since 1991, Turkmenistan lived in a kind of splendid isolation with its repressive government preventing most people from finding out what was taking place there. In the last several years, it has opened up; and problems that Ashgabat had hidden are gaining attention.

            One of the most serious that has now been revealed concerns the situation in the country’s military, a situation that is now so bad that it raises questions about the government’s ability to counter foreign threats from neighboring Afghanistan or even defend itself against a rising by its own hard-pressed population.

            According to a report on the Asia-Today portal, “A surge in suicides among conscripts has compelled the Turkmen military command to restrict personnel’s access to weapons. Units have had keys to armories confiscated, bayonets replaced with batons, and live-fire training exercises cancelled” (asia-today.news/27042026/8132/).

            But the portal continues, “these measures fail to address systemic issues: the army remains plagued by hazing and impunity for violence,” with “the situation further complicated by mass desertion. Servicemen are going AWOL to take on illicit side jobs, leaving themselves without identification documents or any means of leaving the country.”

And it reports, “official complaints regarding service conditions are ignored, while appeals submitted to state agencies are frequently bounced back into the system without ever being reviewed. The crisis has also impacted the military’s personnel pipeline” at all levels.

“Due to the declining prestige of military service,” for example, “military academies are facing a severe shortage of applicants, forcing draft boards to go door-to-door in a desperate search for recruits. This has led to a decline in selection standards and a further deterioration of the country's defense sector.”

Doctors in Russia’s Better-Off Federal Subjects Paid Three to Four Times as Much as Those in Poorer Ones, ‘Nakanune’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 21 – That some Russian federal subjects are better off than others is a commonplace, but the ways in which this difference affects the wages of people in specific sectors and how those differences in pay rates generate shortages in those sectors often goes unrecognized.

            That makes an article by Nikitia Svetlov, a Nakanune journalist, so important. He not only documents the differences in pay for doctors region by region but also points to the ways in which these differences are contributing to a shortage of medical personnel across the country as a whole (nakanune.ru/articles/124599/).

            The most poorly paid doctors are found in the North Caucasus and in poorer and predominantly ethnic Russian regions outside of the major cities in the central part of the country, he shows, while the best paid are found in oil and gas producing regions and in the metropolises like Moscow and St. Petersburg.

            Svetlov cites the conclusion of Andrey Konoval, co-chair of the Interregional Healthcare Workers Union that “the current remuneration system in healthcare is effectively decentralized, Following the abandonment of the unified wage scale, the regions gained broad autonomy to set rates, and federal regulation has been reduced to minimal guarantees.”

            As a result, Konoval says, “each region forms its own wage arrangements based on its financial capabilities,” something that leads to radical differences sin pay but also to a shortage of personnel because jobs in the high-paying cities are hard to get while no one wants to work for the  much lower pay in poorer areas.

            For more than a decade, Russian officials from Putin on down have called for setting a single countrywide standard or at least indexing pay on the basis of the incomes of individual regions; but despite much talk, Svetlov say, there has been no progress – and the result has been a growing shortage of doctors in Russia as a whole.

Youth Crime in Moscow Jumps 152 Percent from 2024 to 2025, Russian Interior Ministry Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 22 – For the first time in more than a decade, crimes committed by young people rose by 10 percent in the Russian Federation as a whole and by a whopping 152 percent in the city of Moscow, according to the Russian interior ministry. And these crimes were increasingly serious with almost 50 percent of them being classified as especially serious.

            According to Nakanune journalist Elena Rychkova, these increases have sparked a discussion among Russian experts and politicians who collectively point to a wide variety of factors that have gone a long way to reverse the progress in this segment of law enforcement in recent years (nakanune.ru/articles/124595/).

            “Historical experience shows,” she writes, “the prevention of crime among young people is based on three things – accessible education, activities for children outside of school hours, and psychological support.” But “today,” she says on the basis of her discussions with experts, there are “problems with each.”

            Only 51 percent of schools have a psychologist, class leaders are overworked and underpaid and thus can’t devote attention to children with problems, and many who are involved with children don’t have the training required to do their work at all adequately, Rychkova continues.

Moreover, “children feel the general concerns of society” including economic instability and the growing gap between rich and power. And some of them are turning to kinds of crime specifically connected with these problems. Young Russians committed 2.5 times as many crimes involving terrorism in 2025 than in 2024.

Some officials want to reduce youth crime by cutting the age at which people can be tried as adults from 16 to 14, but that simply shifts the category in which crimes are counted and more than that means that children are more often sent to prison, out of which they come ten or more years later with even greater problems.

A particularly serious cause of crime among young people is that afterschool activities that used to be paid for by the government are now available only to children whose parents have enough money to pay for them, the journalist says. As a result, many who should be taking part and avoiding crime aren’t doing the first but are doing the second.

And the money going to patriotic forums isn’t proving to be the replacement of “real work with each child” that some have expected. It is time to recognize that free activities, sports teams, and professional psychologists are “not a luxury but a necessity.” If that isn’t recognized and acted upon, then crime rates among the young will continue to rise.

Putin Drops Support for Agglomerations in Hopes of Saving Russia Demographically

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 21 – The Russia countryside and its smaller cities have been emptying out and filling the country’s major cities with ever more people, a trend that some Russian officials have promoted as pointing to a Russia of the future consisting of these urban agglomerations.

            In the past, Putin has even appeared to support that idea, especially as it requires less of the government; but now he is changing course, the URA news agency reports, because birthrates in the major cities are so low and those in smaller cities and villages are much higher (ura.news/articles/1053087393).

            In the two largest cities, the capitals of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the fertility rate – the number of children per woman per lifetime – has fallen to just over 1.0, far less than the 2,2 needed to keep the population constant. But more immediately, it is below the rouhly 1.5 to 1.8 in smaller cities and villages.

            Russia’s demographic situation has become so dire that even though the rates in smaller cities and villages are also below replacement levels, they are higher than in the megalopolises and so Putin has felt compelled to stop supporting them as he had and instead to support smaller cities and villages.

            Doing so will entail enormous economic and political consequences; and it is entirely possible that no Russian government, especially one spending so heavily on Putin’s war in Ukraine, will be able to do so. But to slow Russia’s demographic decline, Putin and his regime now have little choice. 

‘The More Russians Fear Their Own Government and Grovel Before It, The Greater Their Urge to Take It Out on Someone Less Intimidating,’ Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 24 – Russian aggressiveness toward minorities and foreigners plays “a compensatory role,” Abbas Gallyamov says, because “the more Russians fear their own government and grovel before it, the greater their urged to take it out on someone less intimidating.”

            By displaying such negative attitudes toward others, the former Putin speech writer and now commentator critic argues, “the less insignificant and humiliated” they feel about their own situation. Consequently, should a democratic regime be established in this country, this need for compensation would vanish” (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/10305 resposted at  echofm.online/opinions/istinnoe-liczo-rossiyan).

            According to Gallyamov, “the surge in militarism and war hysteria” Russians displayed at the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, represented not a display of “the true face of the Russian people but rather “an attempt by ordinary, peace-loving citizens to rid themselves of the overwhelming emotions of bewilderment and fear that gripped them.”

            When peoples feel fear, they are most likely to huddle together and follow the direction of their leaders; but when they don’t feel such fears, they are far more likely to behave very differently, as surveys in Russia since the end of Soviet times have regularly shown, Gallyamov continues.

            “To understand what the Russian people are ‘truly’ like,” he suggests, “one must look back to a period when they were left, to the greatest extent possible, to their own devices—to a time when state propaganda was virtually non-existent and the administrative apparatus was not yet running roughshod over society. In short: to the 1990s.”

            During that decade, Gallyamov continues, “the inhabitants of Russia made no particular effort to meddle in the affairs of their neighbors, nor did they vote for various "patriotic" political blocs during elections” – with “the exception of brief periods immediately following terrorist attacks.”

“The prevailing sentiment was: ‘Just leave them alone; let them live however they wish.” Indeed, “in 2005, 2010, and 2014, the Levada Center surveyed Russians regarding whether the First and Second Chechen Wars were just wars for Russia. In all three instances, the majority of respondents answered in the negative.”

Moreover, “with the sole exception of the Great Patriotic War, not a single other conflict was deemed just by those surveyed—neither the Russo-Japanese War, nor World War I, nor the Winter War against Finland, nor the war in Afghanistan. And when Russians have been asked whether they want to be a great power or live well, they have routinely chosen the latter.

“Only once, in the midst of the wave of ‘Crimean euphoria’ in March 2014,” did an almost equal number favor the two. “In all other cases, the first option—the "imperial" one—consistently lost out to the second” – and typically by large margins of two to one or more “much as was the case in the 1990s.”

Best Option for North Caucasian Peoples is Restoration of Mountaineer Republic, Chechen Member of Russian Platform at PACE Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 23 – Ruslan Kutayev, the head of the Assembly of Peoples of the Caucasus and one of the five non-Russians on the Russian Platform at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, says the best option for the peoples of the North Caucasus is the restoration of a single Mountaineer Republic from the Black to the Caspian sea.

            In a wide-ranging interview to Ukraine’s Rizniy lyudi, he argues that each people there has the right to declare independence but that they will be better able to maintain it against Russian aggression is they create a common state (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/23/ruslan-kutaev-mi-kavkaztsi-v-moskve-postavim-takuyu-vlast-kakaya-nam-udobna-a193444).

            (For background on efforts to revive the Mountaineer Republic of 1918-1919, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/04/moscow-unwittingly-promoting-broader.html and jamestown.org/resurgent-dreams-of-independence-in-the-north-caucasus/ and sources cited therein.)

            Two other comments by Kutayev are especially important as well. First of all, he says, that the members of the Russian Platform have not addressed yet the issue of the possible disintegration of the Russian Federation but that when they do, it is certain that there will be a variety of opinions rather than any clear agreement.

            And second, he argues, those who think Putin has acted on his own as far as aggression against Ukraine and other non-Russians are wrong. In reality, Putin has simply carried out what most Russians believe and want because they are followers of “the religion of Russian nationalism, which is called the ideology of the Russian world.”

On 40th Anniversary of Chernobyl Disaster, Nearly 80 Percent of Russians Prepared to Rely on Nuclear Power Stations, VTsIOM Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 23 – Forth years ago this week, the world’s worst nuclear power disaster took place in Chernobyl in what was then the Ukrainian SSR. People in Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation continue to struggle with the consequences; but in Russia at least, people are no longer opposed to the development of nuclear power plants, a VTsIOM poll finds.

            In 1990, a survey found that only 14 percent of Russians favored building and using such plants. Now, 78 percent do; with the number of opponents of such an approach falling from 56 percent to 12 percent. And at the same time, the belief that nuclear power is safe rose, albeit in smaller amounts (readovka.news/news/241777/).

            Today, 27 percent of Russians say that the recurrence of a Chernobyl-type accident is “practically impossible,” up from 20 percent in 1990; and the share of those who remain convinced that similar accidents are “quite probable” fell over the same period from 20 percent to 17 percent.

            Over the last decade, VTsIOM surveys have found that Russians are less concerned about the impact of any accident on public health but far more concerned about the environmental damage such accidents cause. In 2016, 17 percent said their impact on the environment was the most destructive thing. Now, 55 percent of Russians do.

 

Despite Putin’s Promotion of Traditional Families, Few Russians Now Can Say Who is Head of Family, VTsIOM Director Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 23 – In yet another indication that the Putin regime’s neo-traditionalism is running up against fundamental changes in Russian life, Valery Fedorov, head of the VTsIOM polling agency, says that “the role of head of the family has disappeared for the majority of Russians.”

             He told the all-Russian conference on The Demographic Transition in Russia that “today, when we ask people, ‘Who is the head of your family?’ it turns out that they do not have a head of the family. That role has disappeared,” one of “the radical changes” which has occurred in Russian family life (vz.ru/news/2026/4/23/1413173.html).

            Another major change has been a revision of accepted roles of men and women and the increasing problem of a shortage of men, something that reflects among other things losses from problems with the health of the male portion of the population and losses in the war in Ukraine. These changes will affect the country for “many decades ahead.”

            But perhaps the most important change is the declining importance of family as a Russian value. It now ranks second to health; and that declining importance in the significance and importance of family life is preventing Russia from solving  existing demographic problems, Fedorov continues.

            Two other problems affecting Russian family life and undermining any possibility that the patriarchal values the Kremlin is promoting can be achieved are the increasing share of Russians who are growing up in single-parent families and the rising tide of violence within families.

            At present, 40 percent of Russian children now grow up in single-parent families, most of this trend being the result of divorce, death and desertion; but now Russian officials and experts are worried about an additional factor: the decision of women to raise children on their own rather than establishing families (nakanune.ru/articles/124609/).

            The other major problem attracting attention is a rising tide of home violence which is now at a higher level than even during the covid pandemic which forced people to remain together a higher percentage of the time and led to an earlier spike in violence within families (nemoskva.net/2026/04/24/novosti-nemoskvy-za-noch-24-aprelya-2/).

Russians ‘Weary’ of Constant Bans on This or That Action, Senior Kremlin Aide Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 23 – Sergey Novikov, a close aide to Presidential Administration official Sergey Kiriyenko, says that “our society has grown weary of prohibitive rhetoric” and “it is thus no loner possible to keep banning things.” Instead, he says, the government must encourage certain attitudes and behaviors rather than simply ban others.

            Speaking to a conference on “The Demographic Turning Point in Russia,” the head of the Kremlin’s directorate for public projects who has been identified as the chief censor, says that this is especially important with regard to new parents who have far too much to worry about and don’t need new bans (rbc.ru/politics/23/04/2026/69e9e8549a7947a4136a5ba1).

            If the state issues bans and threats to new parents, Novikov continues, “it won’t lead to anything good.” The best way forward is to “foster an attitude within society, a stimulating environment” in which people aren’t afraid to have children and can be confident that they will receive support.

            Moreover, Novikov stresses, “the inclination of young people to start families as early as possible—and to have children—is a very delicate process ... Naturally, we need to make this 'fashionable'—to ensure that people truly understand the meaning of happiness, of motherhood, and of fatherhood.”

Repeating What Happened at End of Soviet Times, Russians are Changing in Their Thinking but Not Yet in Their Behavior, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 24 – “Putin’s subjects are embarking on the path taken by people in the late Soviet era,” Sergey Shelin says. “They are beginning to spend their leisure time engaging in cautious jabs at the regime and are growing accustomed to complaining about the Leader’s obsolescence. But this shift has not yet translated into a change in public behavior.”

            Many have come to believe that the declaration by Vika Bonya has raised “oppositionist sentiments among Russia’s ‘deep people’ to a new and formidable level,” the Russian commentator says; but he argues that this is “an exaggeration” except in one area (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/24/chto-menyaetsya-v-golove-u-rossiyanina-a193554).

            The loyalist complaints she made are shared by almost all Russians today, Shelin suggests, except for one thing: her attacks on misogynistic attitudes by Kremlin allies. Such attacks on women are out of step with he views of many, and the Kremlin has responded by declaring through its mouthpieces that Russians must “do more” to combat misogyny.

            “The runaway success of Bony’s show suggests,” Shelin continues, “not so much that popular anger is on the verge of erupting but rather that the public has grown nostalgic for media freedom and is delighted when someone gossips about current troubles in the style” of the earlier Putin years.

            On the key issue of the war in Ukraine, attitudes among Russians “do not appear to have changed over the past year” in terms of willingness to dissent. But “Russians have grown more weary of the war than they were, a form of ‘loyal weariness” that “doesn’t translate into aner or a desire to change the status quota but rather into a wish to disengage from the conflict.”

            Russians haven’t “suddenly experienced a moral awakening” about the war. They have simply become increasingly concerned about their “own personal hardships,” although even there “this anxiety is not translating into any form of collective action, whether grassroots or top-down, even of the most innocuous kind.”

            What has happened is “a growing public appetite for consuming media criticism as a form of leisure,” just as was the case at the end of Soviet times, Shelin says. At the same time, direct attacks on Putin are being offered by military correspondents, where the image of ‘the Leader’ is now associated with obsolescence and a complete loss of touch with reality.”

            That, of course, is “a bad omen for an autocrat!”t

            Moreover, “after a three-year break, discussions, albeit still theoretical, have once again come into vogue among affluent circles, centering on the notion that emigration is after all inevitable.” People in them are withdrawing money from their bank accounts; and while it is still too soon to call this panic, that certainly appears to be something looming in the future.”

            Shelin continues: “Arguably, while the level of loyalty in the minds of Russians has not diminished of late, their sense of discontent has certainly intensified. Disapproval of the regime’s growing irrationality now encompasses virtually everyone—from staunch conformists to rabid statists.”

            And he concludes: “As of today, this discontent is likely no more intense than the routine cynicism that characterized the populace of the late Soviet Union. It could persist for a long time in forms that pose no threat to the regime—but only if Putin ceases his relentless efforts to drive his otherwise compliant subjects to the brink of exasperation.”

Vod Activist on PACE Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces Calls for Europe to Restore the Name Ingria to What Moscow Now Calls Leningrad Oblast

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 23 – Yekaterina Kuznetsova, one of the five non-Russians on the Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, is calling for PACE and other European institutions to restore the name Ingria to what Moscow now calls Leningrad Oblast.

            An ethnic Vod who now heads the Ingria House in Estonia’s border city of Narva, lays out her arguments in an appeal to PACE members (t.me/ingerimaja/7276 reposted at region.expert/ingria-lenobl). While it has been overshadowed by the declaration of Russian members of this platform, it may have more immediate consequences.

            Below is the full text in English as prepared by Kuznetsova:

On Changing the Name of Leningrad Oblast on European Maps

In the languages of the indigenous peoples of this territory, most of what is now Russia’s Leningrad Oblast historically bore the name Ingria (Ingeri, Inkeri, Inkerimaa). After the region became part of Sweden in the early 17th century, it was officially called Ingermanland.

This name remained in use for some time even after the region was conquered by the troops of Tsar Peter I and the founding of the city of Saint Petersburg. In 1725, Ingermanland Governorate was renamed Saint Petersburg Governorate. However, the Finnish-speaking indigenous population of the region continued to call their homeland Ingria.

In 1924, the former capital of the Russian Empire was renamed Leningrad, and the surrounding lands became known as Leningrad Oblast, in honor of Vladimir Lenin.

In 1991, by decision of Leningrad’s residents in a referendum, the city was restored to its historical name, Saint Petersburg. However, by that time the city and the surrounding region were separate administrative units, and as a result the official name «Leningrad Oblast» has remained to this day.

Since 2000, a dictatorial regime under Putin has formed and consolidated in Russia. A revival of imperial ideology began. All national autonomies have effectively reverted to the status of disenfranchised colonies. Moreover, the Kremlin has launched an active campaign against any movements advocating for the rights of indigenous peoples. In Leningrad Oblast, this campaign has led to a ban on even mentioning the word «Ingria». It has been removed from official Russian textbooks; Ingrian Finns have been denied recognition as an indigenous people; and in 2025, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria, which had existed in the region since 1611, was renamed the Russian Lutheran Church by government directive.

Something similar occurred in the 19th century under the ideology of the Russian Empire. As part of Russification and the suppression of national liberation movements, the official use of the names Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus was banned. Instead, terms such as the Vistula Land and the Northwestern Krai were introduced. As is well known, this attempt by imperial ideologues to erase the historical names of vast regions ultimately failed. Today’s map
includes independent Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus.

In a similar manner, the authorities of modern Russia now falsely claim that Ukraine «never existed».

We propose that, as part of supporting policies of decolonization and resisting the Kremlin’s imperial narratives, European countries begin using the historically accurate name «Ingria» instead of «Leningrad Oblast» on their maps. There are precedents for such changes.

For example, in recent years some European countries have begun referring to Georgia by its historical Georgian name, Sakartvelo. A similar situation exists with the largest region of the Russian Federation—Yakutia—which in the 1990s restored its historical name, Sakha.

Ingria is not just the correct historical name of the region. It is a symbol of the struggle for decolonization and for freedom from Russia’s aggressive and deceptive imperial ideology. We ask for your support!

For background on the Ingria movement and its constituent units, including the Vods, see  Ott Kurs , “Ingria: The Broken Landbridge Between Estonia and Finland,” GeoJournal 33.1 (1994): 107–113; Ian Matley, “The Dispersal of the Ingrian Finns,” Slavic Review 38:1 (1979): 1-16; windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/12/ingermanlanders-launch-podcast-to.html,   windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/09/ingermanland-activists-open-house-in.html,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/09/ingria-will-be-free-petersburg-hip-hop.html, www.windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/two-other-baltic-republics-remembered.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-new-aspirant-to-be-fourth-baltic.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/regionalism-threatens-russia-today-way.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/05/by-attacking-free-ingria-leader-moscow.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/10/window-on-eurasia-ingermanland-is-ready.html.

Central Bank Says Russians Overwhelmingly Want to Return to Soviet-Style Economy

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 21 – According to a new study by the Russian Central Bank, a large share of the population of its country want to restore a Soviet-style economy with tight controls over prices, the development of Russia’s own national resources, the production of all necessary goods at home, and the re-industrialization of country.

            The 44-page study says that “many respondents describe the ideal economy as self-sufficient and not dependent on external support, analogous to the USSR or present-day China” so that prices won’t grow faster than incomes and so factories will once again dominate the landscape (cbr.ru/StaticHtml/File/187618/wp_166.pdf).

            Achieving these goals, most Russians believe, requires the active intervention of the state in order to compensate for the greed of producers. The report, however, does not mention the shortages for which the USSR was notorious or the fact that many Soviet plants produced things no one wanted or needed, major reasons for the rejection of the Soviet model at the end of the 1980s.

More than Half of Russia’s Pensioners Can’t Work Because of Their Health or Family Responsibilities, ‘To Be Precise’ Portal Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, April 23 – Given Russia’s intensifying labor shortage and the desire of many Russians to reduce the influx of migrants, many Russian officials are n now looking at pensioners as a potential source of additional workers, either by raising the pension age or encouraging those who have retired to return to the workforce

But this resource is smaller than many think, according to new research by the To Be Precise portal. It finds that “almost 50 percent of pensioners who are not now employed can’t work either because of their own state of health or because they must take care of family members (rbc.ru/society/26/03/2026/69c50b1f9a794785925a5dc3 and  tochno.st/materials/ne-mogut-rabotat-iz-za-zdorovia-ili-semeinyx-obiazannostei).

Moreover, few pensioners currently in good health or without the need to take care of other family members want to work after taking a pension: Only five percent of those with higher educations and only five percent with incomplete secondary educations or less tell To Be Precise that they want to work.

And even among those pensioners who say they do want to work, 75 percent are only prepared to do so part time, while nine percent say they would be willing to work if they could work from home. Consequently, there is little chance that the share of pensioners at work will rise much beyond its current level of 18 percent of the 40.5 million pensioners in Russia.

Yet another limiting factor on pensioners working is that the Russian government reduces pensions of those who do by more radical amounts than is the case in many other countries.

Putin is Conducting an Ethnic Russian War in Ukraine, Not a Soviet or Civic Russian One as Some Suggest, Shusharin Argues

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 19 – Like Stalin before him, Putin has only “one objective: power,” and he is conducting his war in Ukraine on the basis, realizing as the Soviet dictator did before him that “the manipulation of stereotypes and cliches regarding Russian identity is the simplest and most reliable method of governance,” Dmitry Shusharin says.

            The Russian historian and commentator says that neither Putin nor Stalin “actually ‘dumbed down’ or ‘brainwashed’ the Russian people. To the contrary, these rulers merely capitalized on what fell effortlessly into their hands: the self-perceptions of Russians and their concept of their proper places in the world” (kasparovru.com/material.php?id=69E4BCE91BF24).

            From Stalin’s toast to the Russian people at the end of World War II to Putin’s statements in the lead up to and since the beginning of the latter’s expanded war in Ukraine, Shusharin says, there has been no real change “as long as the fundamental core of Russian identity remains intact.”

            That identity holds that Russia is fated to be a great power and to impose its will on others. If they fail to do so, the commentator says, “the Russians would not only cease to be ‘Russian’ in their own eyes, but in fact cease to ‘exist at all’ and thus forfeit their place in both the world and history.”

            This perception of the independent agency of other countries as an inherent threat to their own, of course, arises “from a fundamental lack of such subjectivity” within the Russian nation itself. Unless that changes, Russia will engage in “endless wars waged solely for the purpose of destroying the subjectivity and agency of others.”