Russian Reformers Must Call for Different Kind of Strong State or Risk Continuation of Despotism, Bursygina and Filippov Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 25 – Those who want to see Russia become a democratic and law-based state after Putin must make it clear they are calling for is “not a weak state after a strong autocracy” but rather another kind of strong state based on politics and law but capable of enforcing common rules for all, Irina Bursygina and Mikhail Filippov says.

            Otherwise, these two Russian analysts who now teach at Harvard and SUNY Binghampton respectively say, the widespread fear among Russians that what the democrats seek is a weak state unable to hold the country together and will continue to support autocracy (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/05/25/silnii-tsentr-kak-nedostayuschii-element-demokraticheskoi-alternativi-a196196).

            Putinism, Bursygina and Filippov say, “offers a politically understandable answer to Russian fears of a weak center and more broadly of a weak state,” but “this answer not only destroys political freedom but has other destructive consequences.” Consequently, those who want democracy in Russia must offer a different but clear and understandable answer.”

            That answer, they argue, must call for the creatio questionn of a strong state “together with politics and not instead of that;” and a failure to come up with this answer and promote it will leave the democrats without the allies they would otherwise have and ensure that the supporters of autocracy will have more support than they should.

            This view is held not just by Putin but by a large number of Russians as a result of the events of the last 35 years. It is widely held because it is convincing … “The weakening of the center is thus equated by supporters of the status quo as a weakening of the state as such,” and therefore even many who don’t like Putin’s approach don’t see an alternative.

            What those who want to see a law-based state with democracy and real federalism need to convince such people of is that it is possible to make the government responsive to the people and the laws institutions formulate but at the same time not making is weak, something many Russians do not yet accept.

            Byrsygina and Filippova say that “a strong state after reforms is not a state which controls all political and economic processes. Rather it is a state capable of maintaining a common space of rules, ensuring the carrying out of decisions, resolving conflicts among major interest groups, and not becoming a hostage to more powerful coalitions.”

            Putinism by its authoritarianism and suppression of politics addresses these problems in its own way and appears to many to be “a practical resolution” of them. But it not only fails to do that but creates a situation in which the state, however powerful it may appear, in fact suffers from serious problems, they continue.

            Having suppressed political activity, they continue, the Russian state in its Putinist variant “loses not only accountability but the capacity for self-correction” given that “institutions deprived of autonomy ever more poorly send up bad news and correct mistakes,” and the supposedly strong center operates increasingly blind to what is happening.  

            “The war against Ukraine, Bursygina and Filippov argue, “is the most vivid manifestation of this defect, a failure of the Putin model even when judged by its own criteria.” Indeed, the Kremlin’s unwillingness to listen to anything but echoes of itself has resulted in “a monumental error” with far-reaching consequences.

            Those who want to see democracy and rule of law come to Russia not only must overcome the fears of many Russians that moves in that direction will result in a weakened rather than strengthened state, the two continue; and that as a result, what reforms are calling for will open the way to the disintegration of the state followed by a recrudescence of authoritarianism.

            There are, of course, reasons for such fears. The restoration of democracy requires that new players enter the political sphere; but many of them will do so without the constraints that limit such players in established constitutional systems – and as a result, there is a danger that they will go too far at a time when the state has not evolved in ways to limit such outcomes.

            “This dilemma,” the two analysts argue, “is most clearly evident in the relationship between the central government and the regions” and in Russian fears about federalism undermining the state. In fact, “federalism doesn’t equal a weak state: on the contrary, federalism requires the simultaneous existence of a strong central authority and strong regional elites.”

            That is the lesson that can be drawn from existing successful federations; but it is not one that most Russians have accepted. They believe just the opposite. “Politically speaking,” Bursygina and Filippov say, “the extent to which these fears are rational is of little consequence; what matters is their persistence.”

“Consequently, any federalization initiative that fails to articulate the nature of a strong, democratic central government inevitably narrows the coalition of support for reform from the start: regional elites fear regulatory uncertainty; business fears asset redistribution; the bureaucracy fears a loss of governability; and the general public fears a return to chaos.”

What is critical then is that the advocates of democracy, rule of law and federalism need to change the way the question about the future of the country is posed. “The dispute is not taking place between a strong authoritarian government” as Putin would have it “and a weak democratic one. It must be between two models of a strong state.”

Unless the debate is reframed in that way, those advocating democracy and rule of law are likely to find the battles ahead far more difficult to win; and those who want something like the Putinist status quo will find it far easier to mount a defense against any change either now or when Putin leaves the scene.

Belarus Both Spies on Russia and Spies for Russia, BelPol Project Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 24 – The Belarusian special services operating under diplomatic cover both spy on Russia at Minsk’s embassy and consulates in the Russian Federation and for Russia in Belarusian missions in other countries, according to a new BelPol investigation.

            The anti-Lukashenka group said that Belarusian spies are in Minsk’s diplomatic missions not only in EU and NATO countries but around the world, helping Moscow as this Belarusian assistance is not widely recognized (echofm.online/news/proekt-belpol-opublikoval-rassledovanie-o-predpolagagemoj-seti-belorusskih-speczsluzhb-pod-diplomaticheskim-prikrytiem).

            But BelPol found that “the largest concentration of Belarusian agents is found in Russia” where the total number of spies in the embassy and consulates “exceed those of any other Belarusian diplomatic post abroad, a reflection of the fact that “Luashenka does not fully trust Russia as an ally.”

Feminist Anti-War Resistance Documents Increasing Repression of Women in Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 25 – The Feminist Anti-War Resistance movement has been releasing annual reports on the impact of Putin’s war in Ukraine on the lives of Russian women at home. It has just released the latest for 2026, and its contents have been reported by the Important Stories portal, which also talked to some of the report’s compilers who spoke on condition of anonymity.

            Among the report’s key findings (istories.media/stories/2026/05/25/kak-izmenilos-polozhenie-zhenshchin-v-rossii-vo-vremya-voini/), all of which confirm the increasingly negative situation Russian women currently find themselves in because of Putin’s war are the following:

·       The Russian authorities, working closely with the Russian Orthodox Church and nationalist groups like the Russian Community, are making it ever more difficult to get an abortion in many parts of the country and sparking a rise in abortion tourism for those who can afford it.

·       New school textbooks and programs have eliminated discussions of the possible futures of Russian women to only two things: the mother of children and patriots who join the military to defend their country. All other careers are now discussed as if they are for men only.

·       The disproportionate rates of mobilization and mortality in Russia’s ethnic republics and remote regions are forcing women in those places to “shoulder tasks that in traditional communities are historically considered men’s work.

·       The influence of informal associations like the Russian Community are “on the rise across the country. As a result, these groups have effectively taken on the functions of ‘a morality police and migration control bodies.” As a result, ethnically motivated attacks against women” have continued to rise.

·       “More than a thousand women have become victims of violent crimes committed by military personnel” over the last year. Often the perpetrators face no punishment and instead of going to prison return to the war zone.

·       And “over the course of 2025, the volume of calls regarding domestic violence to the All-Russian Helpline for Women surged by 40 percent,” and in more than 60 percent of cases where domestic violence actually reaches the courts, the perpetrator receive only minimal penalties such as a five of 5000 rubles (75 US dollars).”

All this means that the violence veterans and soldiers are committing now will continue and lead to an increasing spiral of attacks against Russian women in the future, this year’s FAR report says.

Tatarstan Brings Its Nationality Policy Strategy Document Closely into Line with Moscow’s

Paul Goble

               Staunton, May 19 – From the end of Gorbachev’s time until now, Tatarstan invariably adopted nationality strategy documents that focused on the republic and its titular nationality and were to a greater or lesser extent at odds with Moscow’s. Now that has changed, and Kazan has promulgated one that is now tightly aligned with Moscow’s.

            The republic’s new nationality policy strategy, which was signed off on by republic head Rustam Minnikhanov on May 16, was drafted by scholars and officials in Kazan; but there can be little doubt that they were under orders to come up with a new document echoing on all key issues the November 2025 all-Russian document of the same kind.

            On the one hand, it seems clear as well that many in Kazan will be unhappy with the new provisions and will work to oppose the policy implications of the new declaration; but on the other, these declarations common to the Moscow and Kazan documents likely point to some of the directions the Putin regime is likely to pursue in the coming months and years.

            That makes a new article in Kazan’s Business-Gazeta by two Tatarstan journalists, Anna Skryp and Ivan Skryabin, who compare the language of the republic and all-Russian strategy documents, important not only for their republic but for other republics and nationalities and also for Moscow as well (business-gazeta.ru/article/702544).

            They lead off with the following conclusion: “the republic’s strategy has been brought into alignment with the federal strategy adopted in November 2025, especially with regard to the equalization of Russian and Tatar languages as native, the challenges identified – neo-Nazism rather than religious extremism – and the creation of adaptation centers for migrants.

            Even more, the two write, “the primary objective of the strategy” Tatarstan has signed off on “is the preservation of the state unity and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, the bolstering of internal stability, and the formation of a pan-Russian civic identity” rather than any ethno-national one.

            Among the other changes the new coordinated Tatarstan nationality policy strategy document makes from its predecessors are the following:

·       The new document makes no reference to the task of safeguarding the constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens whereas the previous Tatarstan one did.

·       The new document specifies that it is a priority to strengthen the unity and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, something the previous strategy document did not.

·       The new document makes no reference to a central plank of the earlier one, “strengthening Tatarstan as the historically established form of the Tatar people's statehood."

·       The new document refers to both Russian and Tatar as native languages, something the earlier version did not.

·       The new document specifies that Kazan must seek to “ensure the use” of Russian but makes no similar demand as far as Tatar is concerned. The earlier version spoke only of Tatar in this regard.

·       Throughout, the new program speaks about “risks” rather than “problems” and specifies that these come from abroad. The older program did not do either.

·       And the new version speaks of the ethnic Russians as “a state-forming people,” something the earlier Tatarstan version did not.

Lukashenka has Repressed at Least 500,000 Belarusians Since 2020, Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 22 – “The number of politically motivated criminal  cases [in Belarus] exceeds the number of those freed or serving time behind bars,” Vladimir Zhigar says in a new report which shows that since 2020, the Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenk has actively repressed 500,000 of his country’s citizens, not the few thousand many speak of.

            Zhigar, who represents the organization of former force structure employees who now cooperate with the BelPol opposition, made these remarks at a congress concerning such people at a conference in Vilnius (rfi.fr/ru/европа/20260522-belpol-с-мая-2020-года-в-беларуси-репрессировано-полмиллиона-человек).

            There, he presented a report BelPol has compiled about repression in Belarus since 2020. According to him, at least a half million Belarusians have been subject to repressive actions by the state, a figure that his group has compiled because Lukashenka stopped publishing data on this issue two years ago.

            This figure includes both those who Belsians who have been harassed without being arrested, others against whom charges have been brought and who have been imprisoned for various lengths of time, and a third group consisting of those who have subjected to harassment and various restrictions after they are released, according to the report.

            As large as the figure of 500,000 is, BelPol continues, the true dimensions of repression in Belarus are much larger if one includes the families and friends of those subject to repression in the narrow sense and all Belarusians who suffer from Lukashenka’s authoritarian policies. 

            Other speakers at the Vilnius conference, including Belarusian Nobelist Ales Ales Bialiatski, agreed and said that Lukashenka’s continuing campaign against the population is designed to intimidate all Belarusians to keep quiet and to force those who can’t to leave the country and not return.

Grozny's ‘Embassy’ in Kazan Quite Active but Typically Below the Radar Screen

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – At the dawn of Soviet times, regions and republics routinely set up representative offices in Moscow and also in other regions with whom they had lots of business to compensate for the lack of adequate communication. While many were eliminated later, some continue to work to this day.

            The permanent representations of the union republics became the basis for the formation of embassies when these countries became independent, with the embassies often located in the same buildings and consisting of the same people as the permanent representations had had earlier.

            Some non-Russian republics and predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays also set up offices not only in the Russian capital but also in their counterparts elsewhere in Russia or even abroad. Most have shut down since 1991, but some remain and a few new ones have opened -- although they seldom get much attention, despite being “proto-embassies” as it were.

            (For background, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/01/non-russian-republic-embassies-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/embassies-of-non-russian-republics.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/apparently-on-moscows-order-functions.html and the sources cited therein.)

            To avoid making Moscow suspicious that they have some nefarious purpose, these representative offices generally operate below the radar screen and seldom call attention to themselves by talking about what they do. That makes a new article about the Chechen office in Tatarstan especially important (tatar-inform.ru/news/predstavitel-glavy-cecni-v-tatarstane-eli-kagarbekov-k-nam-obrashhayutsya-po-vsem-voprosam-my-otkryty-6024738).

            In it, Eli Kagarbekov, head of Grozny’s office in Kazan which opened in July 2024 and himself a native of Tatarstan and local businessman, says that he and his team “deal with a very large spectrum of issues beginning from simple questions ones and ending with economic and even political ones.

            The Chechen office in Kazan is particularly interested in assisting and promoting business cooperation between the two republics, he says, pointing to plans for a large Chechen business mission to Tatarstan in the hopes of expanding ties among the major firms of the two republics, Kagarebekov continues. Earlier this year, a smaller delegation already came.

            There are approximately 1200 Tatars in Chechnya and 1,000 Chechens in Tatarstan, the permanent representative says; and one of his most important tasks is to help each develop and to expand ties between the two in all aspects of life, including tourism, although that became more difficult when direct air connections between Kazan and Grozny were suspended not long ago.

            Perhaps the most intriguing comment Kagarbekov made was his statement that other north Caucasians living in or visiting Tatarstan often turn to  him for assistance because their own republics do not yet have similar permanent representations and they can count on the Chechen one to help.

Putin’s Rewriting of History All About Shifting Responsibility for Past Crimes Away from the State, Shor-Tchudnovskaya Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 22 – Putin’s rewriting of history all about shifting responsibility for past crimes away from the state, Anna Shor-Tchudnovskaya says; and it is succeeding because even many of that state’s victims are more than willing to accept the idea that the Russian state is innocent even as far as their suffering is concerned.

            The Russian sociologist who now works at Vienna’s Sigmund Freud University, says this pattern shows how “naïve” many Russians and others have ben in thinking that Russia “was just a step away from ‘a normal society’” (sapere.online/vsem-kazalos-chto-my-v-shage-ot-normalnogo-obshhestva-eta-naivnost-sygrala-zluyu-shutku/).

            While much has been written about the new Russian law concerning “the genocide of the Soviet people,” some aspects of it and especially “several other intriguing amendments that were quietly introduced alongside it,” the sociologist says, “slipped in amidst the general commotion” but in fact prove at least as significant.

            “For instance,” she says, “the concept of state policy for perpetuating the memory of victims of political repression,” a document that has been in place for a decade, was “completely rewritten” and effectively replaced “one group of victims” with another, and eliminated any suggestions that the Russian state was to blame.

            According to Shor-Tchudnovskaya, “this was done with a very specific objective in mind: to ensure the very notion of an "internal" genocide—a genocide perpetrated against one's own people—would never even cross anyone's mind.” The document’s provisions about perpetuating memory and the mass nature of these repressions were dropped.

            Moreover, in the new edition, “working regarding the necessity of ‘condemning the ideology of political terror” was also deleted; and replaced by d references to the Soviet period have by talk about “the achievements of the Russian state,” with emphasis placed “toward highlighting just how excellent our state is.”

            All this has been done, the sociologist suggests, in order to shift attention away from domestic problems to “the victims of ‘an externally organized genocide’” and to “rehabilitate the state” in the eyes of the population.

            “One potential consequence of this shift,” she continues, “is that resistance movements in the occupied territories following World War II could come to be perceived as ‘resistance to denazification.’  That has not happened yet, but such an interpretation remains entirely plausible.”

            But more generally, Shor-Tchudnovskaya says, in the new version of the document, “particular pride is placed upon the role of the state—a state which, if it ever did anything wrong, was merely experiencing ‘tragic chapters’ which means that “no one bears the blame for it; it is simply how fate unfolded, or how higher powers intervened.”

            Unfortunately, many Russians, even many who themselves or whose relatives were the victims of Soviet crimes are all too willing to accept this approach, something that sets them apart from the way Germans who suffered under the Nazis view their situation and condemn the Nazi state as a whole.

            Russians, the sociologist says, overwhelmingly want people to acknowledge that their mistreatment was “unjustified” but “a random error” and that they see no need to condemn the state for what happened. Blaming the powers that be, some of them have told Memorial, “is unnecessary and goes too far.”

Russia has Been Very Slow to Publicize Location of Bomb Shelters

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 22 – Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in February 2022 and even since Ukraine began to attack Russian cities with drones, only 25 federal subjects of the Russian Federation have released information about the location of bomb shelters – and independent analysts say two-thirds of those identified are in poor condition.

            According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, three regions released information on the location of bomb shelters in 2022, five more did so in 2023, five in 2024, three in 2025, and seven so far this year (/novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/05/22/za-chetyre-goda-voiny-tolko-25-regionov-rossii-raskryli-adresa-bomboubezhishch-podschitala-novaia-evropa-news).

            Elsewhere, information about where bomb shelters are located remains classified, even though Ukrainian drones have reached far more federal subjects than the 25 that have identified where such facilities are located but at least in part because at least two-thirds of the shelters are unfit for use.

            In June of last year, Moscow said that a map of all shelters would be posted on the State Services portal by December 2025; but that hasn’t happened; and many Russians not surprisingly are outraged by this all-too-obvious evidence that the powers that be in the Putin regime don’t care nearly as much about the population’s safety as they routinely claim to be.

After Putin, Russia Must Either Modernize Quickly or Face Disintegration, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – The editors of Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta warn that “every prolonged historical period over the last century and a half has ended in a state of stupor and paralysis of central authority and has been accompanied by the disintegration of the country.”

            “Often,” the editors say in a lead article, these two developments “have been attended by military defeats or the absence of a clear military victory;” but there have been exceptions – and Russians can avoid disaster if they recognize the threat and work to counter it (ng.ru/editorial/2026-05-21/2_9500_21052026.html).

            When Russians have not done so -- and that has been more often than not, the editors suggest -- “fragments of the disintegrating Russia have instigated wars among themselves or against the remaining central core of the country, a pattern observed in both the 20th and 21st centuries).”

            The most obvious example in recent Russian history where the leadership at least recognized the threat and acted expeditiously came after Stalin’s death in 1953. Then, “the ossifying Stalinist regime rapidly transformed into a system of collective leadership exercised by members of the Politburo.”

            That was possible because Moscow had a powerful army and was making “rapid social and technological progress, the kind of developments many around the world at the time viewed as a model worthy of emulation.” As a result, “Russia weathered a succession crisis … without suffering territorial disintegration.”

            What this means, the paper’s editors say, is that “Russian history offers only two possible scenarios: It may navigate its current historical situation by following the pattern of disintegration or by pursuing the pattern of rapid transformation.” There are no other alternatives, they write.

            And they conclude by pointing out that “These same history textbooks also suggest that, to avoid territorial disintegration, Russians must now avoid a military defeat or even a contentious stalemat in the war [they say] currently being waged by NATO nations against Russia” via a Ukrainian proxy.

            “Any attempt to obscure this historical choice from contemporary Russian society is a poor strategy in the ongoing conflict with the West,” they conclude, given the risk of stagnation of the country and then its disintegration as in 1918 and again in 1991.

Tokayev’s Praise for the Golden Horde Gives Moscow a Taste of Its Own Medicine and Moscow Doesn’t Like It

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 22 – Earlier this month, Kazakhstan President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev gave a speech in which he praised the Golden Horde and said it was a proper guide for the Kazakhs in the future, a position that echoes Moscow’s talk about an ancient Russian tradition but offends many there by challenging Russian views on the Horde.

            Speaking at an Astana symposium on the Golden Horde on May 19, Tokayev did not simply mention the Golden Horde but argued it was a major Eurasian power in its own right, a civilizational model for the Great Steppe and as such had its own institutions, laws, military and financial system (altyn-orda.kz/vystuplenie-glavy-gosudarstva-kasym-zhomarta-tokaeva-na-mezhdunarodnom-simpoziume-zolotaya-orda-kak-model-stepnoj-tsivilizatsii-istoriya-arheologiya-kultura-identichnost/).

            Every part of his remarks represented a challenge to the Russian imperial tradition that Putin represents. Now as in the past, Moscow treats the Golden Horde as “a yoke,” “a dark age,” and a symbol of Russia’s enslavement and the cause of its suffering.

            For Russians who think this way, “the Steppe was not a civilization but a threat, not a state but a mere raiding party, and not a system of governance but of chaos,” the Altyn-Orda portal says in summing up Tokayev’s remarks. Not surprisingly, many in Moscow are furious (altyn-orda.kz/rech-tokaeva-o-zolotoj-orde-vyzvala-nervnuyu-reaktsiyu-v-rossii/).

            What is especially infuriating from Moscow’s point of view, of course, is not the mere mention of the Golden Horde but that fact, the portal continues, that “Kazakhstan is beginning to construct its own historical narrative—one in which the Ulus of Jochi and the Golden Horde are viewed not as ‘a foreign invasion’  but as an integral part of the history of statehood in the Kazakh Steppe.”

            With his words, Tokayev is “declaring to the world that the Steppe is not some void situated between China, Rus’, and Europe but rather an independent center of power in its own right, a conduit for trade routes, diplomatic ties, cultural exchanges and political models” for now and the future, the portal continues.

            Moreover, the portal says, “while the history of the Great Steppe was previously often written by those observing it from the outside, Kazakhstan has now begun to write it from within. In essence, Tokayev’s speech is not a dispute with Russia regarding the past; it is a declaration regarding the future. “

            That is, Tokayev’s argument about the Golden Horde show that from now on Kazakhstan will be “grounding its identity not in the Soviet legacy or in the role of Moscow’s ‘junior partner’ but rather on the basis of a far deeper historical foundation,” one at least as old or more likely older than the Russian tradition.

            In Tokayev’s vision, the portal says, “the Golden Horde is not ‘a yoke,’ but a civilizational bedrock—not a dark stain on history, but a grand Eurasian project;” and that is “precisely why the Russian reaction has been so agitated. When Kazakhstan reclaimed the Golden Horde, it is reclaiming not just its history but it true self.”

But a curious coincidence, Tokayev’s speech came only four days after Kazakhstan and the Turkic world marked the 90^th anniversary of the  birth of Kazakh writer and philosopher Olzhas Suleimenov  (https://ru.euronews.com/culture/2026/04/15/90-let-olzhasu-sulejmenovu-pisatel-stavshij-golosom-antiyadernogo-dvizheniya ).

Suleimenov’s 1975 book, Az i Ya also challenged the Russian understanding of the Horde and was almost immediately suppressed by the Soviets and has been an underground classic for Turkic and other ethnic groups in the Russian empire ever since . (For background, see  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/09/kazakh-authorities-confiscate-paper-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/01/pandemic-testing-leaders-and-countries.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/09/window-on-eurasia-putin-doesnt-know.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2012/10/window-on-eurasia-cis-continuing-and.html.)

Moscow Arrests Ten Senior Muslim Leaders, Sending New Chill through Russia’s Islamic Community

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – The Russian authorities have arrested on a variety of charges ten senior Muslim leaders, an action that some are linking to a recent suggestion that Muslims are ready to take power in Russia and that others say is directed at undermining an even more senior mufti who in the Kremlin’s view has taken a too independent line.

            On the arrests, see  t.me/agentstvonews/15450, echofm.online/news/v-rossii-zaderzhany-kak-minimum-dva-muftiya, meduza.io/feature/2026/05/21/v-rossii-zaderzhali-dvuh-muftiev-duhovnogo-upravleniya-musulman-odnogo-zapodozrili-vo-vzyatke-vtorogo-v-nepovinovenii-politsii, https://t.me/OstashkoNews/213428 and sova-center.ru/religion/news/harassment/intervention/2026/05/d53798/.

            Neither the arrests themselves nor the specific reasons for them have been confirmed by Russian officials. On the one hand, that means that these actions may be the beginning of a general crackdown on the Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSD) that oversee most of the Muslim parishes in the Russian Federation or a one time action.

            And on the other, because that is so, speculation is rife about what is going on. Most observers suggest it is Moscow’s response to suggestions by Ruslan Kutayev, the head of the Assembly of Peoples of the Caucasus and one of the five non-Russians on the Russian Platform at PACE, that Muslims are ready to take power in Moscow (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/27/mibudem-kontrolirovat-moskvu-bivshii-vitse-premer-chechni-zayavil-chto-musulmane-gotovi-vzyat-vlast-vrossii-a193864).

              That is certainly plausible, although it is worth noting that Kurayev has made a variety of radical statements like this over the last decade and was not subject to arrest although he was forced to emigrate (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-north-caucasus-republic-will-emerge.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/north-caucasians-aspire-to-have-one-of.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/04/best-option-for-north-caucasian-peoples.html).

            Others have suggested that this is a Moscow move against Gainutdin (https://t.me/rybar/80400) and that the Kremlin may finally have decided to crush dissent within the Muslim community and make it as loyal to itself as is the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

              If that is the case, the Russian authorities will have to do more than arrest a few dozen Muslim leaders given that Islam does not have clergy or a clerical hierarchy that Moscow can hope to control. Consequently, if these arrests do presage a new Moscow move against Islam, they are likely to presage widespread resistance. 

Russians Very Much Aware Unemployment is Rising, Whatever Kremlin Says, New VTsIOM Survey Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – The VTsIOM polling agency says that Russians are now more aware of rising unemployment in their country than they have been at any point since the beginning of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine. If this trend continues, the Agents portal says, “it will deprive the Russian authorities of one of their favorite arguments” that the economy is doing well.

            Polling agencies like the Kremlin-linked VTsIOM, the portal reports, have regularly compiled data on what they call “the unemployment index,” a metric that is based on surveys which ask Russians whether they know anyone among their circles who is out of a job (agents.media/rossiyane-stolknulis-s-dovoennym-urovnem-bezrabotitsy/).

            “In April,” it says, VTsIOM found that “the share of Russians reporting that four or more of their relatives or acquaintances in their social circles had lost their jobs rose to seven percent, up from five percent in March. Another 17 percent reported that one to three of their acquaintances had been left without work, compared to 16 percent the month before.”

            While nearly two-thirds continued to say that no one near them had lost a job, “the index, which reflets the difference between positive and negative responses to the question ‘How many people among your close relatives and acquaintance have lost their jobs over the last two to three  months’ rose by five percentage point in one month and reached an all-time high” since 2022.

            In posting these figures on its telegram channel, VTsIOM analysts suggested that “we may be witnessing the first signs of a reversal in the labor market which for the past four years has suffered from an excessively low supply of available labor.” If that is the case, then the Russian economy is doing worse and firms are shedding workers faster than officials admit.

Putin Regime Even Less Tolerant of Jokes than Late Soviet One Was, ‘Important Stories’ Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – “When times are bad,” a Polish joke runs, “people tell political jokes. When they get worse, people stop.” That observation may help to explain why the Important Stories portal has found that the Putin regime is even less tolerant of jokes than was the Soviet in the Brezhnev era.    

After examining dozens of court cases in which standup comics and ordinary Russians have been charged and convicted for telling political jokes, jokes that the courts often repeat in their judgments, the portal reaches that thoroughly depressing conclusion (istories.media/stories/2026/05/21/o-chem-nelzya-shutit-v-rossii/).

According to its investigation, Russians of all kinds today put themselves in legal jeopardy if they tell jokes about Putin’s war in Ukraine, ethnic Russians and at least some other ethnic groups, religion in general and the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in particular, bribes, and of course Putin himself.

The Important Stories report concludes with a comment by Ekaterina Shulmann, a Russian political analyst now living in Kazakhstan, about this trend. She points out that in recent years, “the genre of stand-up comedy has acquired a certain social significant and its practitioners have come to resemble somewhat the variety show hosts of Soviet times.”

“Do you remember that significant segment of Russian culture? It was officially sanctioned, after all; these were not dissidents,” she asks rhetorically. “Yet, at the same time, there was something about them that wasn't entirely "Soviet." Some did suffer for what they said that sparked laughter but not as many as now.

In Putin’s time, “stand-up comedians began to be weeded out. Some suffered direct repercussions; others, having refused to support the war in 2022, left the country; while still others remained behind and attempted to engage in a delicate balancing act.” But the future for this kind of humor in Russia is not bright.

That is because “an authoritarian regime [like Putin’s] cannot tolerate individual agency in any sphere whatsoever. No matter what your line of work, if you act independently—rather than on official orders—and manage to do something that draws an audience and earns you public affection, that alone is deemed suspicious.”

Telling jokes in that environment is increasingly dangerous and thus increasingly both rare and private. 

Denunciation of Some Russians by Others has Tripled Over the Last Year – and Many are about Settling Scores Rather than Exposing Real Threats, Karpitskaya Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – The number of denunciations of some Russians by others that were filed with the government’s communication agency tripled between 2024 and 2025, from 86,000 to 252,000, at least in part because of the Putin regime’s encouragement of the population to turn in those people are calling attention to violations of the law.

            Many of these complaints are legitimate and have led officials to investigate and bring charges, journalist Dina Karpitskaya says; but a large share of them reflect public paranoia, petty vindictiveness or a desire to “get on the nerves” of those co-workers, bosses or neighbors (kp.ru/daily/277783.5/5249794/).

            In a Komsomolskaya Pravda article entitled “Informants or Vigilantes? Russians File Hundreds of Reports against One Another,” Karpitskaya suggests that a large share of these denunciations cross the line from civic duty into slander based on no evidence or simple paranoia.

            The journalist calls particular attention to the emergence of companies offering services to those who want to file denunciations. She tested one of these companies and was offered its services to “’thoroughly vet’” the social media accounts of the person she was complaining about and for a fee to force those attacked to “run around police stations and other agencies.

            Unless Russians are encouraged to be more restrained, Karpitskaya says, the problem is likely to grow because “the system doesn’t always distinguish between genuine threat” and made up ones, a real problem given that “we certainly knowhow to put people behind bars for a single ear of grain.”

Declining Birthrates in Russian Villages Mean Rural Areas Can’t Compensate for Even Larger Declines in Russian Cities, Rosstat Figures Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – Russian commentators and officials have comforted themselves for many years with the idea that birthrate in Russian villages are sufficiently high that they will cushion the country from the dramatically declining figures on that metric in Russian urban areas and even prompted some to call for “de-urbanizing” Russia to solve its demographic problems.

            But figures released by the Russian government’s statistical arm Rosstat show that in 2025 the fertility rate for Russia’s rural population had fallen to 1.464, slightly above the all-Russian figure including city residents but the lowest figure for rural Russia in 35 years  (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/05/21/1198799-summarnii-koeffitsient-rozhdaemosti-v-selah-stal-minimalnim).

            The rural figure is far below the 2.2 children per woman per lifetime needed to keep the population of the country as a whole level and, even more than that, also mean that rural Russia now can do little to help compensate for the overall decline that is led by urban residents where the fertility rate is approaching 1.0 in some of the largest.

            The only time since the end of the USSR where rural population fertility rates were even as high as 2.2 was in 2014, when Rosstat reports that it reached 2.272. Since then it has fallen by almost one child per rural Russian woman per lifetime, a decline that tracks with what is going on in Russian cities.

            Two other developments Rosstat reports now are also likely to be worrisome to Moscow officials. First, the only federal subjects where the fertility rate is still above 2.2 are where there are non-Russian majorities such as Tuva where it stands at 2.56; and second, the decline in fertility rates in rural areas fell from 2024 to 2025 at twice the rate of urban areas, 0.06 compared to 0.03, in part because of Putin’s optimization program that has closed rural hospitals.

 

Ukraine Can Win Unless Moscow Uses Nuclear Weapons or Sparks a Revolution in Kyiv, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – As Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine grinds on into its fifth year, ever more people are asking whether Ukraine can win. According to Vladimir Putin, it can do so as long as Russia doesn’t use nuclear weapons in a wholesale manner and as long as no revolution takes place within Ukraine itself.

            The London-based Russian analyst argues that “it is already clear what such a [Ukrainian] victory might look like” and even how it could be achieved (t.me/v_pastukhov/1910 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/kak-pobeda-ukrainy-mozhet-vyglyadet-s-uchetom-vseh-realij).

            “Provided that Ukraine does not overextend itself to the breaking point,” Pastukhov says, “it will with European support slowly and steadily drive up the cost of the war for Russia until that cost become politically untenable.” That would open the way for a Ukrainian victory and a Russian defeat.

            If the war does end with a Ukrainian victory, it is still “unlikely that Russia would lose Crimea … but it might well be forced to ‘regurgitate’ some of the territories it has occupied.” Instead, and “most likely,” he says, “the outcome would involve a ceasefire along the actual line of demarcation.”

            For Putin and the Russian elite, that would be “tantamount to defeat” because Putin loyalists “would not be able to accept the ruins of a half-conquered Donbass as adequate compensation for the rupture of normal relations with the West, four years of crippling sanctions, and the loss of several hundred thousand killed and maimed Russians.”

            Pastukhov says that he believes that “this reality is understood above all within the Kremlin itself and that Moscow’s future efforts in Ukraine will be “concentrated in two specific directions: the simulation of nuclear weapons use and attempts to eliminate Zelensky,” the latter being in the Kremlin’s mind “tantamount to a revolution in Ukraine.”

            Russia’s “actual use of weapons still appears to be a highly risky undertaking” and “the temptation to ‘do something’ about Zelensky and to try to install a different figure in his place for ‘negotiations’ will grow stronger with each passing day,” Pastukhov says, especially with the image of the US moves in Venezuela in the minds of the Kremlin.

            “If Zelensky should manage to survive such an ordeal in both a political and strictly physical sense,” the Russian analyst says, “then the time to ‘count one’s chickens’ will arrive in a different coop entirely, one where quite inconveniently for it, elections happen to be on the schedule in the near future.”

Russian Veterans ‘Simply Don’t Fit into Existing Political Machinery,’ Kremlin has Concluded

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 19 – Despite Putin’s constant suggestions that veterans of his war in Ukraine represent “the nation’s new elite,” there are ever more signs that in the view of the Kremlin, these people “simply do not fit into the existing political machinery,” according to Olga Churakova, a journalist with the Important Stories portal.

            As the 2026 Duma elections approach, she says, “the Russian authorities are as a result are wrestling with a dilemma: they need to bring war veterans into parliament” as Putin wants “without letting them coalesce into a genuine political force” that might challenge the Kremlin leader and his regime (istories.media/opinions/2026/05/19/ne-vremya-geroev/).

            In fact, Churakova continues, “the political system itself has no idea what to do with the veterans” when it comes to making them part of the elite.  Consequently, the Kremlin has scrapped plans to bring into the Duma as many as 150 veterans with insiders saying “you can’t bring people” in such numbers as “they are completely non-systemic.”

            First, the Kremlin reduced the number of veterans it planned to have in the Duma to 50 to 70 and more recently, it has cut them back further to about 40. According to Churakova, “the prospect of a new bloc of military deputies clearly makes the Kremlin uneasy;” and the Presidential Administration is trying to figure out how to ensure it controls them.

            One thing is clear, she continues, for the Kremlin, “the less consolidated this group remains, the easier it will be to manage them.” And there are other problems: “even at lower levels, the integration of veterans is already floundering” with many veteran-candidates having lost their primaries.

            Moreover, “despite the high level of societal respect for  war participants, there is no reliable public data indicating how this reverence translates into actual votes at the ballot box, Churakova says. As a result, “for political parties, running a veteran is a gamble that by no means guarantees victory.”

            “All this is unfolding against the backdrop of rapidly deteriorating social sentiment,” she says, and so “the authorities are being forced to maneuver carefully: they are already purging radical deputies from the public sphere to avoid inflaming domestic tensions.  As a result, “the prospect of introducing an unpredictable bloc of veterans suffering from PTSD into the new Duma looks quite risky.”

Churakova concludes: “The Russian authorities have backed themselves into a tight corner of their own making: these “war heroes” are desperately needed as ideological symbols, but they are far too dangerous to be empowered as real political actors.” This is leading the Kremlin to “lose face and quietly retreat from its declared principles.”

Siberia Offers Few Opportunities for Profitable Investments and So is Unlikely to Get Them, Verkhoturov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 19 – Many officials and commentators in Moscow talk about Siberia as the place where Russia’s future economic growth will take off, Dmitry Verkhoturov says; but such predications clearly exaggerate Siberia’s economic position and especially its attractiveness as a place for new investment.

            The Siberian journalist who has long focused on economic issues in Russian areas east of the Urals draws that depressing conclusion on the basis of a newly released 65-page report by Rosstat entitled The Socio-Economic Situation of the Siberian Federal District in 2025 (sibmix.com/?doc=21237).

That report shows, Verkhoturov says, that last year, the Siberian Federal District accounted for 12.9 percent of Russia’s mineral extraction; 9.8 percent of manufacturing output; 12.8 percent of energy production; and 10.4 percent of agricultural output; but only 8.2 percent of total profits and a miniscule 2.9 percent of financial investments.

Thus, he writes, “Siberia’s contribution to the Russian economy is, in reality, not particularly large. Admittedly, Siberia still fares reasonably well compared to the Southern—and especially the North Caucasian—Federal Districts; but taken as a whole, the Northwest, Volga, and Ural Districts carry significantly more weight.”

According to the journalist, “the most intriguing insights are found in the section detailing the financial results of business organizations for the period of January through September 2025. Although not covering a full calendar year, they nonetheless accurately reflect the relative profitability of the economies within the various federal districts.”

Specifically, Verkhoturov says, “out of a total net profit for the country as a whole amounting to 19.2 trillion rubles, the Siberian FD accounted for only 1.5 trillion rubles or 7.8 percent.” Given that investments tend to follow profitability, that points to serious trouble ahead for those who want to increase investment in Siberia.

Indeed, he says, “Siberia is not a particularly attractive platform for economic development,” with return on every ruble invested less than half of what it is in the Central FD. “Investing there is simply unprofitable: profits are lower, and the investment payback period is longer—not to mention the host of region-specific challenges.”

And Verkhoturov concludes: “No profitability means no investment, and consequently, no economic development. Capital flows toward those regions where it can be deployed to generate significantly higher returns—where it can grow at a faster pace … and that is why no economic development strategy for Siberia has gained traction.”

Russian Penal Officials Isolating Deserters and Those Convicted of Political Crimes from General Prison Population in Magadan, Grishin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – Russian prison officials have always faced a difficult choice: isolating those prisoners they consider most dangerous often leading to explosions or allowing them to be part of the general prison population and seeing the influence of their views spread to other groups.

            Now, in Magadan, a place synonymous with the GULAG for most Russians, jailors are isolating both those who have deserted from the Russian military and those convicted of political crimes from other groups, according to Andrey Grishin, a journalist from there who fled abroad in 2023 and now faces charges.

            He reports on the continued existence of this special isolation camp on the basis of his own knowledge of the region, conversations with two victims who have since been released from it, and the reports of family members of others who remain incarcerated in this special zone (nemoskva.net/2026/05/18/barak-dlya-politicheskih/).

            The decision to create such an isolator, Grishin says, obviously came from Moscow; but given the ways in which such prisoners incarcerated there are being mistreated is especially worrisome given that what the authorities are likely to do elsewhere, they have begun in the symbolically loaded Magadan region. 

Russians Wounded in Ukraine Face Unhappy Fate with Many Sent to Overcrowded Hospitals or Forced to Return to the Front Too Soon, ‘Novaya Gazeta Europe’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 19 – Russian troops wounded in Putin’s war in Ukraine face an unhappy fat, with many sent to overcrowded hospitals where they do not always receive the treatment they need and others returned to the front lines before they recover from their injuries, according to two articles in Novaya Gazeta Europe.

            The number of wounded flooding back for treatment in hospitals military and otherwise has increased dramatically in recent months, overwhelming military hospitals and increasingly forcing civilian ones to close services to non-soldiers, thus adding to the number of Russian victims of Putin’s war (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/05/19/svoshnikov-nastolko-dofiga-chto-voennye-gospitali-ikh-ne-vmeshchaiut).

            But perhaps the fact that many wounded soldiers are now being sent back into the front lines before their treatments are completed or even without more than superficial attention to their wounds is a larger problem, given that such men are more likely to die as a result (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/05/18/on-zhe-u-vas-muzhchina-spravitsia).

            Because commanders need soldiers to fill in for losses, they want their men back as soon as possible, Novaya Gazeta Europe reports; and doctors are thus under pressure to declare such wounded soldiers fully recovered even if the men don’t feel that way – and Russian courts typically side with the commanders and doctors rather than the soldiers.

            Because statistics are lacking and because each case appears different at r on superficial examination, such problems have received relatively little attention; but the two reports in Novaya Gazeta Europe provide sufficient detail that other articles about these problems may surface soon, eroding still further remaining Russian support for Putin’s war. 

Regional Expressions in Russian Far East Frequently have Chinese Roots

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – Vkontakte and Gramota.ru have examined more than 1000 regional terms from various parts of the Russian Federation and compiled a list of the most frequently mentioned. Perhaps the most intriguing are regionalisms from the Russian Far East, many of which are borrowed from the Chinese.

            According to Gramota.ru, among the words Russians in that region often use but which are meaningless to outsiders are kuksa which refers to instant noodles and chifanka which refers to a small Chinese café or restaurant, “a term derived from the Chinese expression chi fan, meaning to eat or have a meal” (nazaccent.ru/content/45485-nazvany-samye-populyarnye-regionalizmy-rossii/).

            Neither the diversity of regional dialects nor Chinese influence is surprising given the size of the Russian Federation, but discussions of dialects within Russian remains a politically sensitive matter given that the Kremlin increasingly seeks to impose the language spoken in Moscow on everyone else.

            Consequently, Russian speakers in regions beyond the ring road are at least implicitly engaging in a kind of political protest when they use words they themselves have developed either because these have local roots or because they reflect the impact of other neighboring language communities.

            For background on Russian regionalisms, their spread and official opposition, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/06/russian-increasingly-divided-by-ever.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russians-from-provinces-need-to-speak.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/regionalization-of-russian-language-now.html.

Russian Historians Tell Kyrgyz Scholars to Replace Term ‘Colonialism’ with the Word ‘Administration’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – From a country where a current war is called “a special military operation” and those who suggest otherwise are punished, it should come as no surprise that Russians will try to solve other political problems with analogous verbal sleight of hand. But as with the case with the war in Ukraine, such attempts are likely to backfire.

            The Russian Military Historical Society which is led by Putin loyalist Vladimir Medinsky held its first meeting with Kyrgyzstan’s expert advisory council on history and tried unsuccessfully to attack discussions of Russian colonialism by calling it something else (https://amp.rbc.ru/rbcnews/politics/18/05/2026/6a0b0d679a7947e252c6f2f5).

            At the meeting, Andrey Bykov of Moscow’s Institute of Oriental Studies called for replacing the terms “colonialism” and “colonial policy” with the terms “administration” and administrative measures” in an 11^th grade Kyrgyzstan history textbook. The Russian scholar said any failure to do that was “a tribute to fashion” and at odds with the facts.

            The Kyrgyz side wasn’t having any of this. Abylabek Askanov, head of Bishkek’s Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology, responded that doing so would be “extremely difficult” given what is generally understood by the term colonialism. Changing words won’t do anything about that.

            Bykov replied that “Russia has no intention of dictating to Kyrgyzstan,” although it is virtually certain that his audience knows that Moscow did just that in the past and that it has one so on occasion since Putin became president, most prominently in 2024 when Russian scholars attacked an Armenian textbook for “calling into question the special role of the Russian Empire.”

 

Putin’s War in Ukraine will Eventually End and Sanctions are Likely to Be Lifted, but Russia will Not Soon Get Back the Markets It has Lost, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – Many commentators are comforting themselves that Putin’s war in Ukraine will eventually end and that at that time the sanctions Western countries are likely to be lifted, Abbas Gallyamov says. But that will not be the magic elixir that so many now expect because Russia will not soon get back the markets it has lost because of this conflict.

            Countries that had been Russia’s best customers have changed their approach, selecting other suppliers for what they need, the former Putin speech writer and now Putin critic says (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/10489  reposted at echofm.online/opinions/vojna-zakonchitsya-i-dazhe-sankczii-snimut-a-vot-uteryannye-rynki-ne-vernyosh).

            Such countries will have little reason to go back to Russia unless Moscow slashes prices – and if it does that as China is now demanding, that will be just one more way why Putin’s war in Ukraine is going to cast a long dark shadow on Russia, however much so many think otherwise.