Environmental Activism, a Seedbed for Political Dissent, ‘a Headache for Russia’s Colonial Rulers,’ Sidorov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 25 – Those who pressed for the independence of the union republics at the end of Soviet times first cut their teeth as it were by taking part in environmental and historical preservation movements, groups that the Soviet authorities were uncertain as to how they should react but that for more than a decade served as seedbeds of the national movements.

            Now environmental activism appears to be playing the same role. And Prague commentator Kharun Sidorov says that in Bashkortostan, it has now reached the point where it has become “a headache for the colonial powers,” one they know is dangerous but are unsure as to how best to respond (idelreal.org/a/32471339.html).

            Clashes between the environmental activists and the authorities over the last several years in that Middle Volga republic, the commentator says, have “clearly demonstrated that eco-activism and environmental protests are more than just a struggle bout the environment … They are a means of mobilizing the indigenous people … and a locomotive for its civic mobilization.”

            The powers that be in Moscow and Ufa can see this and are trapped between a desire to keep everything quiet and fears that the more force they use to achieve that end the greater the possibility becomes that by such actions, the powers will radicalize protesters, speeding the process in which these will change for focusing on the environment to focusing on politics.

            “This is understandable,” Sidorov continues. “The essence of the political superstructure established by the Kremlin in Bashkortostan, including its fictitious opposition component, is to ensure the predatory development of the resources of the federal subject” and to ensure that the population doesn’t get in the way.

            According to Sidorov, “under such conditions, eco-activism is a manifestation, something spontaneous, of the most natural instinct of resistance and mobilization of the ruled.” That has clear negative consequences for those who protest, but it also has serious negative consequences for those still in power.

Russia Descending Not into a Civil War but into a War of All Against All, Gerashchenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 25 – In the wake of the Prigozhin rising, Anton Gerashchenko says, Russia faces “a bloody war, not a civil war but rather a war of clans and the private armies of Chechens, the Prigozhin PMC and bandits. This conflict will be a new 1990s but much more horrific.”

            In a comment about the Prigozhin rising, the former deputy interior minister of Ukraine makes a number of points about what has happened and what will likely happen in Russia now. Three of those points are especially noteworthy (gordonua.com/blogs/agerashhenko/rossii-predstoit-krovavaya-voyna-ne-grazhdanskaya-a-voyna-klanov-i-chastnyh-armiy-chechencev-prigozhincev-banditov-eto-budut-novye-90-e-no-namnogo-strashnee-1670284.html).

            First of all, Gerashchenko says, “the power vertical has been destroyed. No one in Russia from now on will  be able to feel secure. Nown country t an official, not an oligarch, and not an FSB officer, who up until now had considered themselves masters of the situation.” And related to this, no one will look to Putin to protect them: he no longer has the monopoly of force needed to do so.

            Second, the number of armed bands will now grow exponentially. “Every major business and every oligarch will create if they haven’t done so already private armies such as the one Gazprom created for its on defense. Conflicts and division of property will be decided by force,” in the manner but much more violently than was the case in the 1990s.

            And third – and this may prove the most immediately important – “the Russian army has de facto ceased to exist as a single organism. Soldiers and officers, sitting in trenches in the war unleashed by Putin yesterday finally recognized the complete senselessness of the war against Ukraine” given the collapse of order in Russia itself.

Prigozhin Revolt hasn't Led to Collapse of State, Skobov Says; It Only Showed That Such a Collapse had Already Taken Place

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 25 – Some are suggesting that Prigozhin’s revolt sparked the collapse of the Russian state, but that is incorrect, Aleksandr Skobov says. His action only threw into sharp relief that the collapse of Russian statehood and any legal order there had already happened and that the country is run by “a conglomerate of bandit groups.”

            The most dangerous of these, of course, the Russian commentator says, is not that of Prigozhin but that of Vladimir Putin, which consists of “a clique of geopolitical maniacs” who want to conquer the territories of others and are prepared to threaten and possibly even launch a nuclear war (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=64986026DBC2E).

            Prigozhin’s PMC is another, albeit less significant one. “It is a typical formation of ‘the dogs of war,’ for whom war is a way of life. Compared to Putin’s crew, Skobov continues, Prigozhin’s people “turned out to be more ‘rational scoundrels’” who were compelled to tell at least part of the truth about the Putin regime.”

            According to the analyst, “Prigozhin acknowledged that Russia itself organized the bleeding wound in the Donbas and that no one was going to attack Russia,” thus demolishing two of the Kremlin’s propaganda points. Instead, he made clear that “the war was unleashed by Putin’s oligarchy to satisfy their love of power and thirst for money grubbing.”

            Prigozhin approached but did not take the last step of articulating “a revolutionary democratic slogan” like “’Down with the war!’” He lacked the firm principles to do that, and thus proved the ancient observation that “such adventurers can never be consistent fighters for freedom and justice.”

            As a result, Skobov argues, “Prigozhin’s rebellion ended with a parody of a gangster ‘shootout’ and a deal ‘according to understandings.’”

            Even more to the point, he says, “the Wagner rebellion didn’t develop into a revolution or at least a coup because the ‘patriotic’ masses he appealed to turned out to be too atomized and passive. They weren’t  able to act independently.” Moreover, the masses already knew everything Prigozhin was saying but weren’t prepared to act on it.

            “The farcical end of Prigozhin’s rising doesn’t eliminate any of the problems that caused it. Rather, it only exacerbates them. The Putin regime has shown its weakness to the world. His machine, for all its apparent impressiveness, wasn’t easter to fight the putschists; indeed, a fair part of that machine sympathized with them.”

            “Something similar can take place again at any time,” Skobov says. “Any sufficiently daring adventurer can bring down a political edifice that is based on lies and falsehoods.” No one, including the liberal opposition, can justify inaction by saying ‘this is not our war’ or claiming ‘it is impossible to push the country into a civil war.’”

            “The civil war in Russia is already underway; and this is precisely our civil war,” Skobov argues. “It is a war against ‘criminals who have seized the state and made it an instrument of their crimes.’ … These are our enemies in the civil war; and any force which takes up arms against such people should not just be supported but encourage to do so.”

Prigozhin’s Rising Cut Russian Supply Lines to Ukraine, Ensuring Kyiv can Win the War if It Acts Quickly, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 25 – In a single day, Prigozhin and his Wagner PMC sliced through the supply lines of the Russian army fighting in Ukraine, putting that army at risk of rapid defeat if as is likely the Ukrainian side recognizes what has happened in the last 24 hours and attacks Russian forces at strategic locations, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

            Because of what Prigozhin and company did, the Moscow economist and political commentator says, the war in Ukraine “is over.” The Russian forces will now lose it very quickly; and therefore what is happening is very good for Ukraine (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/06/24/putin-konchilsia).

            “The Russian army now fighting in Ukraine requires a huge logistical system,” Inozemtsev continues. And the main routes of this supply chain were “destroyed in one day” by Prigozhin who disrupted those lines over more than 1000 kilometers. “I think that the Ukrainians cannot fail to take advantage of this situation.”

            The Ukrainians need to act very quickly as Moscow may seek to recover what it has lost, but the Prigozhin rising showed how pathetic the Russian system has become under Putin and the incompetent people he has put in charge of the military. And perhaps worse for Putin is the fact that everyone can see that he can’t control the situation.

            As the latest Russian anecdote puts it, in 2021, Russia had the second strongest army in the world. By 2022, it had the second strongest one in Ukraine; and now in 2023, the Russian army is the second strongest one in Russia itself.” Russians are laughing about this, and that laughter is about Putin.

 

Tyva Will Be First Republic in Russia to Declare Independence, Zinchenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 25 – There is a consensus in both Russia and the West that if any republic now within the borders of the Russian Federation is to gain independence, the first will come from the North Caucasus regardless of whether others follow. Activists from other non-Russian republics sometimes challenge that but have had little success in shattering the consensus.

            That makes an argument by Oleksandr Zinchenko that the first republic to declare independence will come not be a Muslim republic from the North Caucasus but Tyva, a Buddhist one along the Mongolian border, intriguing. Could it be true? (gordonua.com/blogs/zinchenko/rf-raspadetsya-ne-pozzhe-2026-goda-pervoy-nezavisimost-obyavit-tyva-1670013.html).

            The Ukrainian historian and publicist says that the Russian Federation will fall apart “no later than in 2026” when Russians finally recognize the full scope of Putin’s misrule over them and that the first republic to declare its independence will not be Chechnya or Daghestan but Tyva.

            In the West, Tyva is known if at all for the spectacular triangle and diamond-shaped stamps it issued when it was nominally independent between World War I and the last days of World War II or for a 1991 book relating US physicist Richard Feynman’s desire to visit that land entitled Tuva or Bust!

            Zinchenko’s suggestion that Tyva will lead a parade of independence declarations in the future is not without some foundation. It is the least integrated portion of Putin’s Russia (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/tyva-least-integrated-part-of-russia.html). Its Buddhism and shamanism have blocked intermarriage and assimilation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/06/militant-buddhism-and-shamanism-could.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/06/tyvans-say-buddhism-and-shamanism.html).

            And the combination of poverty and nationalism have caused ethnic Russians to flee, leaving the population of the republic at more than 80 percent ethnic Tyvan and reflecting a Tyvan desire that eventually the Russians will be reduced to no more than five percent (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/03/russians-flee-tuva-as-law-decays.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/09/tuvins-dont-want-russians-to-form-more.html).

            But its landlocked status and the absence of a serious national movement suggests that Tyvans will press for ever more autonomy but that they are unlikely to seek independence unless and until others do, something that calls into question the prediction of the Ukrainian publicist.

 

Prigozhin Rising Classic Example of Mafia Wars, Nevzlin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 25 – When situations are murky and perhaps especially when they involve someone analysts have gotten used to thinking is more in control of the situation than in fact is the case, there is a great danger of overthinking the situation and constructing epicycles where none is needed instead of drawing conclusions based solely on the evidence.

            To a certain extent, that is what has happened in response to the clash between Putin and Prigozhin over the last 24 hours. But by applying Occam’s razor, Israeli-based Russian businessman and commentator Leonid Nevzlin cuts through the plethora of analytic perspectives being offered (gordonua.com/blogs/leonid-nevzlin/v-rossii-klassika-mafioznyh-voyn-kak-tolko-boss-oslab-vsegda-vyhodit-vperyod-tot-kto-molozhe-agressivnee-zlee-i-hochet-vyrvat-vlast-1670220.html).

            He argues that what has just happened need not be explained by any reference to grand politics but rather by the imperatives of mafia wars, given that the Putin regime itself is less a state in the usual sense than a criminal enterprise. Indeed, Nevzlin argues, what has just happened is “a classic example” of what mafia wars are like.

            “As soon as the boss is weakened” – and Putin has been by age, time in office and mistaken decisions – someone “younger, more aggressive, angrier and desirous of power invariably comes forward” and the situation moves toward a showdown, one that may last for some time but reflects the mafia nature of the Russian state.

            From this perspective, Nevzlin says, “Prigorzhin’s rebellion isn’t so much sudden and out of nowhere but rather something that is entirely natural. Putin has shown weakness in Ukraine; now he has demonstrated the same shortcoming in his own country.” His desire to escape from this situation with his life may make even a cell at the Hague look like a good choice.

Prigozhin Rising ‘Deadly for Putin’s Reputation’ among Russians, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 25 – Prigozhin and his forces may not have reached Moscow but they have achieved one goal: they have destroyed Putin’s reputation as a strongman capable of handling any situation, Vladimir Pastukhov says; and that may prove more fateful to the current regime than anything else

            In the course of 24 hours, the London-based Russian analyst says, “tragedy turned into comedy:” but that is not going to be for long and “the consequences will be serious. The next attempted coup is coming, and the regime will respond by becoming increasingly repressive (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=649761104F68E).

            In this situation, Pastukhov argues, “Putin looks like a fool” and there is nothing either he or anyone else can do about it.

            The last 24 hours have been “a day of disgrace for the authorities and Putin personally,” he continues. “The helplessness of the police and the National Guard, Putin’s initial silence and then dubious speech about what he described as a rebellion, cities surrendering without a fight, planes carrying the elite without clear destinations, and propagandists left without guidance.”

            All these things have been “deadly for the reputation of Putin and his regime, and they will remain stuck in the public consciousness forever … Now everyone knows that the king has no clothes and is a figure of fun. Prigozhin, himself a jester succeeded in casting the entire Putin regime in a jester’s light.”

            According to Pastukhov, “there will be less fear, and the time will come when there will be those who will want to repeat” the last day but this time “not as a joke but as something serious” – and that is what Putin, his regime, the Russian people and the world are going to be living with in the coming days, weeks or months.