Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 13 – Predominantly ethnic Russian federal subjects have officially shuttered 120 villages, mow of which are already ghost towns or on the way to being so, putting the Russian Federation on track to eliminate far more than the record 134 closed in 2025, the Club of the Regions says.
Novgorod has closed the most so far this year, 35, the portal says. Kostroma is second with 23; Arkhangelsk with 19 and Perm Kray 11, the portal says. In other regions, almost all of them predominantly ethnic Russian, officials formally closed down between one and five villages (club-rf.ru/news/65214).
This pattern reflects the emptying out of the ethnic Russian countryside that Putin and others have expressed so much concern about; but because villages in Russia cease to exist not when they lose people but when regional or all-Russian officials say they do, the closure of villages that the Club of the Regions reports now is striking.
The portal says that such actions now are “at odds” with what Putin has been talking about; but at the same time, it reflects the budgetary constraints that the regions are experiencing as a result of Putin’s war in Ukraine. Unless they officially “abolish” such villages, they are expected to maintain political structures for them even if there are no people there.
In most cases, the regional authorities simply close down operations of village governments when these places lose all or all but a handful of people; and so the closures this year not only reflect regional budgetary problems but also the collapse of ethnic Russian villages on which the demographic future of the Russian nation has depended.
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