New Generation of Russian Orthodox Leaders Contains Both More Liberals and More Reactionaries, Mitrokhin Says

Paul Goble     

            Staunton, Dec. 7 – One of the most widely spread assumptions of observers of the Russian scene is that each succeeding generation of those who emerge as leaders will be ever more liberal. But with respect to the Russian Orthodox Church that assumption is deeply flawed, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin.

            Instead, the specialist on Russian Orthodoxy at the University of Bremen says, the rising generation contains a range of opinions much like those of its predecessor, ranging from the liberal to the reactionary (moscowtimes.ru/2025/12/07/venichka-i-vladimirskaya-eparhiya-provintsialnii-anekdot-o-sovremennoi-russkoyazichnoi-pravoslavnoi-kulture-a182133).

            He draws this conclusion on the basis of a close examination of how people on both sides of this divide have acted in recent cases in various bishoprics of the ROC MP and notes that while Putin may be the final arbiter, he often is not involved and the struggle over outcomes reflects divisions within younger priests and bishops that the Patriarchate can’t easily stop.

            This split means both that it is a mistake to think that Russian Orthodoxy is moving in the same direction in an uncontested way in various parts of the country or that the leadership of the church after Kirill passes from the scene will be either one way or the other. The jury is still out on that. 

More than Half of Russia’s Immigrant Workers in Moscow and St. Petersburg Agglomerations, Rosstat Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 7 – A major reason that the status of migrant workers in Russia has become so politically charged is that, according to a new report by the government’s statistical arm, more than half of Russia’s immigrant population is concentrated in the urban agglomerations of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

            A new Rosstat report says that 26.2 percent of all migrant workers are in Moscow city, 18 percent more are in Moscow Oblast, and 12.7 percent are in St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, for a total in those two agglomerations of 56.9 percent (nazaccent.ru/content/44895-rosstat-nazval-regiony-rossii-s-samym-bolshim-kolichestvom-migrantov/).

            Following the Moscow and St. Petersburg agglomerations in this ranking are Sverdlovsk Oblast with 2.4 percent, Tatarstan with 2.2.percent, Amur Oblast with 1.8 percent, Novosibirsk Oblast with 1.6 percent, Primorsky Ray with 1.6 percent, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast with 1.5 percent and Irkutsk Oblast with 1.4 percent.

High Costs and Increasing Budgetary Stringencies Forcing Moscow to Abandon Plans for New Rail Routes Supporting Northern Sea Route and Trade with China

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 5 – Because of budgetary stringencies arising from Putin’s war in Ukraine, Moscow has decided to postpone and thus effectively cancel the construction of new railways east of the Urals that would have supported the Northern Sea Route and trade with China.

            Moscow has given up for the present on the construction of the North Siberian railway that would expand Russia’s east-west railways in the region now dependent exclusively on the Trans-Siberian and the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM). And it has put off plans to build a new north-south route between Tomsk and China (kommersant.ru/doc/8250102).

            The two projects, the first of which was designed to support land support for the Northern Sea Route and the second to promote trade between Russia and China, would have passed through some of the most difficult terrain in the world and were estimated to cost more than 500 billion US dollars.

            These suspensions follow Moscow’s decision in 2023 to put off the construction of the Northern Broad Gage route until the end of this decades (kommersant.ru/doc/6053991).  And the all into question rail projects that Vladimir Putin had earlier celebrated as Russia’s “projects of the decade.”

            The Kremlin may hope that China will provide the funding that Moscow no longer can; but if Beijing does do so, it will almost certainly seek to extract from the Kremlin concessions on access to mineral supplies and insist on the use of Chinese laborers to do the work, both of which will create new problems for relations between the two allies. 

 

Pushkin Institute Says Russia’s Word of the Year is ‘Victory;’ Russian People Say It is ‘Anxiety’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 7 – At the end of October, the Pushkin Institute declared that Russia’s word of the year was “victory,” a decision that beyond any doubt conformed to the wishes of the Kremlin. But now, a poll shows that the Russian people believe say that the real word of the year for them is “anxiety.”

            More than a third of Russians told a poll conducted jointly by the Lingua Company, the World and Education publisher and the Skvortso Reading project that “anxiety” should be listed as word of the year, far outpacing all others, including “victory” (nazaccent.ru/content/44898-slovom-goda-po-itogam-narodnogo-golosovaniya-stalo-trevozhnost/).

            Such declarations and surveys are hardly scientific, but it is striking that the preferred choice of Russians is so different from what the Russian government clearly prefers, yet another indication that when polls are crafted so that answers are not explicitly anti-Kremlin, Russians are quite ready to indicate how much at odds with the regime they really are. 

Moscow Actively Preparing for Nuremberg-Style Trial of Ukrainians for ‘War Crimes,’ Stepashin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 7 – Sergey Stepashin, former Russian prime minister and current head of the Association of Jurists of Russia, says that Russian law enforcement structures are already preparing a tribunal at which Ukrainians will face charges of war crimes, a structure that recalls the Nuremberg trials after World War II where German war criminals were tried.

            The Russian politician says that while preparation for such a forum is now actively taking place in Moscow, no decision has been made yet on where these trials will occur. “First, let us finish the special operation; and then we will think about that,” he tells TASS (tass.ru/obschestvo/25837147).

            Various officials and human rights activists in the West have talked about convening a forum to try Russians for war crimes but these suggestions have not gone beyond that. But what Stepashin is signaling is that the Kremlin will continue to model its behavior on what happened during and after World War II.

            Having declared that the Russian war in Ukraine is the continuation of the fight against Nazism, Putin and his regime have little choice but to try to convene a Nuremberg-style trial of Ukrainians if Moscow is in a position to do so. Given Moscow’s shortage of allies, however, it is difficult to know what countries might send jurists to take part, however.

 

Putin Won’t End His War Because His Survival Requires It Continue, Doliyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 7 – Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine and the problems of the Russian people have increased, many commentators have suggested that the Russians will soon revolt, Mikhail Doliyev says; but their predictions are based on a set of assumptions that are precisely wrong. Only if his war stops will revolts begin.

            “The Putin regime,” the Russian commentator says, “exists only thanks to war.” It “began thanks to the war in Chechnya;” and it continues now because of the expanded war in Ukraine and talk about the need to continue the fight against NATO and Europe (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6934973477E44).

            Indeed, Doliyev continues, “Putin’s subjects consider that he is defending them from enemies and traitors; and some “consider him the assembler of lands. But the main thing is that they feel his “defense” against enemies. As a result of that great goal, Russians no longer thinks about the economy, bridge construction, deprivation of freedom or lack of internet access.”

            Russians are told and they believe that “they are ‘liberating the whole world from Nazism.’ But “take away the war from them, and they will notice the devastation they now live in.” That is the primary reason why Putin must continue the war. If he doesn’t, Russians will finally recognize what he has done, been appalled and quite possibly revolt.

            Those who call themselves the Russian opposition don’t understand this, but Putin does and so as long as he is alive and in power, the war will continue, albeit with enough feints to allow him to rebuild his forces and convince the Russians once again that the war trumps all the other problems he and it have caused. 

Putin Plans to Extend Assimilationist Policies He’s Imposing on Occupied Ukrainian Areas to Non-Russians within Russian Federation, Levchenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 6 – The new nationality strategy document shows that Putin intends to extend the assimilationist policies he has been pursuing in Russian-occupied Ukrainian areas to non-Russian nations within the current borders of the Russian Federation, according to Russian cultural commentator Yan Levchenko.

            In an article in The Moscow Times provocatively entitled “One People, One Reich and One Fuhrer,” he argues that this presages greater chances within the Russian Federation than most have yet understood (moscowtimes.ru/2025/12/06/odin-narod-odin-reih-odin-fyurer-natsionalnaya-politika-rossii-kak-instrument-polnogo-i-okonchatelnogo-edineniya-a182122).

            When the previous nationality policy paper was released in 2012 and even when Putin amended the Russian Constitution after that, the Kremlin leader hid his intentions with talk about the multi-national people of his country apparently to avoid disturbing his Western “partners” and non-Russians inside Russia.

            But a war going on and producing a patriotic upsurge, Levchenko continues, “there is no longer any need to pretend to be some kind of ‘transitional society’ where at least outward tolerance is cultivated and the semblance of a concern for diversity is created” because “the aggression against Ukraine sanctions the cleansing of all ‘others’ within Russia.

            Up to now, he argues, “representatives of the national minorities have been outraged by the normalized racism in society, they have been raising their voices and demanding respect. But now they must seriously consider the consequences of too native an understanding of equality and the right of peoples to preserve their identity.”

            In the future, Moscow will work to “suppress at the very outset any potential hotbeds of separatism which is now going to be declared to include any manifestations not only of political or social subjectivity but even cultural subjectivity by representatives of the country’s national minorities.”

            This shift has happened because “the experience of protecting the Russian-speaking population of the ‘reunited’ regions of eastern Ukraine from discrimination is a demonstration to everyone about how peoples everywhere are to be treated in times of trial,” the Russian culturalist says.o

            And what makes this even clearer is the fact that “none of the other languages and peoples of Russia are even given a mention in the strategy document. It only refers to the Russian language which is openly declared to be an instrument for the assimilation of the population of the regions of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Fedeation since 2014.”

            After all, Putin has long declared that Russians and Ukrainians are one people; and he insists in the new strategy document that almost all the peoples of the Russian Federation must share a common identity by 2036. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the assimilation he has pushed in Ukraine will now be redoubled inside Russia itself.