Despite Shortage of Police, Samara Oblast Creates Special Militia Department to Investigate Crimes against Veterans of Putin’s War in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 31 -- Despite the fact that the Samara region is currently suffering from a severe shortage of police officers, the interior ministry there has set up a special department within the militia to investigate crimes against veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine, a sign that such crimes may be on the rise and that Moscow wants to reassure veterans of protection.

            There has been a great deal of attention to crimes committed by veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine on their return home, but very little to what may be an ever increasing problem (idelreal.org/a/v-samarskom-gu-mvd-sozdali-otdel-po-rassledovaniyu-prestupleniy-v-otnoshenii-uchastnikov-rossiyskogo-vtorzheniya-v-ukrainu/33721335.html and idelreal.org/a/v-samarskoy-oblasti-ne-hvataet-svyshe-treh-tysyach-politseyskih-huzhe-vsego-situatsiya-v-konvoe-i-patrulno-postovoy-sluzhbe/33722203.html).

            Given that officials in Samara say they are suffering from a shortage of more than 3,000 police officers, a figure that is more than a quarter of the total number the oblast is supposed to have, this decision to create a new and special body to investigate crimes against rather than by veterans is striking.

            At the very least, this move seems to be an effort to show veterans that they will be protected, even if other groups in the population will have to suffer, one more indication that in Putin’s Russia, some, these veterans, are decidedly more equal than the others, and a likely driver of hostility toward and even attacks against such veterans.

            Many of Russia’s federal subjects suffer from serious shortages of police, something that has forced them to cut back services and leave residents at greater risk of crime. This is the first known indication that a region has decided to protect veterans in this way, but it is likely to spread if indeed it has not already, albeit with less publicity given that it may backfire. 

Moscow Unprepared for Oil Spills along Northern Sea Route, Bellona Foundation Warns

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 31 – Russia’s shortcomings in responding to oil spills in the Kerch Strait in 2024 highlight Moscow’s failure to be in a position to deal with oil spills in the far more inaccessible regions of the Arctic along the Northern Sea Route and the probability that any accidents will lead to disaster, researchers at Norway’s Bellona Foundation warn.

            Veslovod Levchenko and Charles Digges, researchers at the Foundation that gained international fame for its exposure of Soviet nuclear dumping in the Arctic, say that conclusion flows from a Moscow report to the International Maritime Organization about the 2024 spills in the Kerch Strait (themoscowtimes.com/2026/03/31/the-northern-sea-route-is-risky-and-russia-is-not-prepared-a92388).

            The report, which was filed unconscionably late, the two Bellona researchers say, showed that the Russian authorities were not able to cope with the relatively small oil spill in a much more accessible southern region where warmer temperatures mean that it should have been relatively easy to cope.

            Moreover, Levchenko and Digges point out, instead of welcoming popular help, the Russian authorities discouraged put obstacles in the way of such assistance and thus transformed what should have been a minor matter that could quickly have been managed                      into a major crisis that has still not been fully resolved.

            Dealing with similar accidents in the Arctic is much more difficult, they say, and “Russia is not prepared.” At lower temperatures, oil behaved differently; and it is far harder to get personnel and equipment in place in the event of any accident. As a result, even small spills there can have major and long-lasting consequences.

            This danger is now being exacerbated by other Russian policies: boosterism about the NSR, the use of aging ships some of which are of uncertain provenance, and the failure of the authorities to set up bases with the personnel and equipment to respond to accidents when they inevitably happen.

Russia’s Universities Now Forced to Provide Students with Knowledge Its Secondary Schools Should Have But Don’t, Patrushev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 31 – Secondary schools in the Russian Federation have such low standards that Russia’s universities are forced to spend an enormous amount of time providing students with knowledge that the country’s secondary schools used to and should but no longer do, Nikolay Patrushev says.

            This sad fact of life, the Presidential assistant who head the country’s Maritime Board, told a meeting devoted to improving the quality of mathematics and natural science training in Russia, isn’t reflected in test scores but in life itself first in the universities and then in the professions (nakanune.ru/news/2026/3/31/22865093/).

            According to Nakanune journalist Yevgeny Chernyshov, Patrushev was likely basing his argument on the basis of a study which showed that “the majority of students” at St. Petersburg’s Mining University “possess virtually no familiarity with physics” when they arrive and thus have to be brought up to speed by the university itself.

            Pastrushev said that he is convinced that “it is already too late to try to fix things at the university level. Instead, the schools must be improved rather than praised, something that will require that “teachers have the opportunity to focus on teaching rather than on having up to two full-time loads just to make ends meet.”

            Specifically, the Putin aide called for “salary increases for mathematics, physics and chemistry teachers, warning that as a result of a lack of proficiency in these subjects among graduates, Russia will soon find itself with absolutely no specialists left to serve the shipbuilding industry and the navy.”

            What Patrushev did not say but what is likely on his mind and even more on those of his listeners is that the sad state of pre-university education in the Russian Federation is to a large extent the result of Vladimir Putin’s educational optimization programs and shift of money from schools to finance the war in Ukraine. 

‘Tatar Lobby’ in Moscow Plays Key Role Now and Could Play Larger One in the Future, Three Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – What is often called “the Tatar lobby” in Moscow -- the numerous officials and businessmen both ethnic Tatar and ethnic Russian who work in the Russian capital -- have long attracted attention there and in other republics for their role in promoting and defending the interests of Tatarstan there, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

            (For background on this group, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/bashkirs-upset-by-power-of-tatar-lobby.html, prufy.ru/news/kazan/176823-ot_mordovii_do_khabarovska_kak_tatarskoe_lobbi_vozglavilo_ministerstva_i_regiony_v_8_subektakh_rf/ and realnoevremya.ru/articles/193598-v-moskve-vse-familii-izvestnyh-tatarstanskih-upravlencev-na-sluhu.)

            The IdelReal portal asked three experts –Ruslan Aysin, a Tatar political émigré and activist, Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter and now Putin critic who earlier worked in Bashkortostan, and Irina Busygina, formerly at the HSE and now at Harvard’s Davis Center, for their views on the Tatar lobby and its future (idelreal.org/a/tatarskoe-lobbi-i-predely-loyalnosti-gotova-li-kazan-k-samostoyatelnosti/33714210.html).

            Aysin says that Tatarstan’s political leadership posses “significant lobbying capabilities” but ones that tend to be concentrated in specific areas of importance to the republic such as construction. Their role there has become possible because “Moscow views the Tatarstan elite as highly effective and sufficiently loyal.” That gives this elite “a special value.”

            Sometime the lobby is successful in promoting a cause or delaying the implementation of a Moscow decision but that its position is “behavioral rather than strictly political” and in any case reflects the views of Kazan rather than being an independent actor in its own right. That could change, however, if Moscow weakened and could no longer eliminate rivals.

            Gallyamov says that neither the Kazan elite nor its lobby will push for secession anytime soon but instead will seek to maximize Tatarstan’s influence and freedom of action within the Russian Federation. Both groups resent much that Moscow does but recognize that too actively expressing such views would be dangerous.

            And Busygina observes that the Tatar lobby is an intriguing object for study because she does not know of any other region or republic which has anything like it -- although all have permanent representations in Moscow that may provide something similar. (On these, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/embassies-of-non-russian-republics.html and indowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/apparently-on-moscows-order-functions.html.)

            She says that there is discontent with Moscow in both Kazan and among the Tatar lobby and that “A weakening of Moscow could serve to expose it. But it is definitely there. However, to openly demonstrate this discontent right now would be tantamount to political suicide. It would be an absolutely irrational move."

She says that what she means by the "weakening of the center" would be Putin’s loss of his current ability to mediate among various groups in the center and have the last word. At present, none of these groups is capable of challenging him.”  But that could change; and if it did, these groups which “loathe one another” and have different visions of the future could act.

In that event, regional and republic capitals and their representatives in Moscow could play a dramatically expanded role in determining the direction Russia will take given the likelihood that some of the competitors for power in the Russian capital will seek them as allies in that struggle.

Kremlin Plans to Declare Memorial Extremist ‘Part of General Trend’ to Crush All Independent Groups and Normalize Repression, Cherkasov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 29 – On April 9, the Russian Supreme Court will hear a suit by the justice ministry to call Memorial and all its branches an extremist organization. There can be little doubt what the decision will be because this is “part of a general trend” to destroy independent social organizations and normalize repression, Aleksandr Cherkasov says.

            This can best be described as a reversal of perestroika and of the work of dissidents at the end of Soviet times who sought to create a societal consensus that “Soviet power  was based on repressions and that such a basis of governance is something abnormal and must not exist,” the longtime Memorial activist says (vot-tak.tv/92349158/zapret-memoriala-v-rossii).

            Russian government efforts to break the consensus the dissidents had created began in the mid-1990s as part of the Yeltsin regime’s efforts to “seize he agenda of the communists and national patriots” and involved both regular celebrations of victory day and the launching of the first Chechen war.

            When Vladimir Putin came to power, he expanded this effort to reverse the memory of the past, a change, Cherkasov says, most prominently symbolized by the shift in how Russians thought about the Great Patriotic War. Earlier, most believed that memory of that conflict meant that it must never happen again. Now, Putin promoted the notion that “we can do it again.”

            Then, the current leader pushed for laws that allowed his regime to declare whole groups extremist or worse and then take action against anyone cooperating with them without having to show that the individual charged had actually done anything. That is the method Stalin used; and now Putin is using exactly the same today.

            “Such changes of the conception of memory regarding the past Soviet terror are part of the politics of the normalization of repression as a method of rule now,” Cherkasov continues. New laws about fakes about the army represent precisely a return to Soviet laws about disseminating false information or conducting anti-Soviet propaganda.

            But what is especially worrisome, the Memorial activist says, is that such an approach normalizes repression now as a means of rue. “’Yes, under Stalin or under Brezhnev,’ it is possible that someone was falsely arrested, but on the whole everything was done correctly!” – that is the message this transformation of memory of the past sends.

            According to Cherkasov, the Putin regime much like its Stalinist predecessor is going through four stages in describing its opponents: first as foreign agents, then as undesirables, then as extremists, and finally as terrorists. “We now are between the third and the fourth,” with movement continuing in the wrong direction.

            Such categorizations not only save time for investigators, prosecutors and judges but make it easier and easier for the regime to crush anyone who doesn’t hew to its line, Cherkasov says, again, just as was the case in Stalin’s time. Everyone needs to recognize what is happening; and those who can must resist in ways that do the least harm to those who oppose such things. 

Kremlin Reducing Support for Population Groups which Can’t Provide Workers or Soldiers More than for Those who Can, Orekh Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – Putin has reduced social spending across the board to finance his war in Ukraine, but he hasn’t done so equally. Instead, Anton Orekh says, he has cut programs for groups that can’t provide workers or soldiers far more deeply than he has for those groups which can do so.

            No one says that people who can’t help the economy or the military are “superfluous,” commentator Anton Orekh says. Instead, the Kremlin talks about fiscal responsibility and national security. But the regime’s message is clear: some Russians are more worthy of support and survival than others (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/30/optimizatsiia-naseleniia).

            This difference helps explain why government spending for young people who won’t be able to be workers or soldiers anytime soon and for the elderly who no longer can serve in those capacities suffer more than others and thus why Russia’s demographic numbers are tanking, the commentator adds.

            He concludes his jeremiad on this point by quoting Russian satirist Mikhail Zhvanetsky’s observation that “patriotism is a precise, clear and well-argumented explanation of why we must live worse than others.” Tragically, Putin’s Russia is not the only country on earth whose government is following his short-sighted and morally indefensible approach.

Putin’s War in Ukraine has “Killed” TV Because Moscow’s Inability to Win has Undermined Russians’ Trust in It, ‘Re-Russia’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 25 – Data from polling by the Public Opinion Foundation and the Levada Center show that Putin’s war in Ukraine has “inflicted the latest powerful hit on the influence of television” in Russia after the Kremlin leader had used it to build his authoritarian system, the Re-Russia portal says.

            According to data from both polling organizations (fom.ru/SMI-i-internet/15312 and levada.ru/2025/09/11/istochniki-informatsii-v-avguste-2025-polzovanie-i-doverie/), the analytic portal says, “the share of those who consider TV their primary source of information declined noticeably during 2024-2025” (re-russia.net/review/810/).

            Before Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, the portal says, “approximately 60 percent of Russian respondents cited television as their primary source of news; but by 2024-2025, this figure had dropped to roughly 55 percent and now, it stands at 47 percent.”

            “Conversely, the proportion of those who say they never watch television and/or do not own a TV set rose from 18 percent” at the start of the war “to 33 percent by March 2026,” with the changes even more dramatic among the young: “only 16 percent of them view TV as their most important source of information and an even smaller percentage who trust it.”

            Re-Russia concludes: “TV appears to have irretrievably lost its status as one of the primary instruments of authoritarian control; and despite having played a pivotal role in justifying the war and fostering patriotic mobilization as recently as 2022-2023, it lost its propaganda potency during 2024-2025 largely because of the protracted and unsuccessful war.”