Ethnic Russians Overwhelmingly Fear the Disintegration of Their Country, Gallyamov Says, and That Helps the Kremlin Retain Power

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 26 – Ethnic Russians “are afraid of the collapse of the country,” Abbas Gallyamov says. “They are no longer afraid of losing Putin, the Donbass, or Crimea. They couldn’t care less about them. But they are afraid of events like those which accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union, from numerous inter-ethnic conflicts to mass impoverishment.”

            Because that is so, the commentator who earlier served as a Putin speechwriter and retains close contacts with the ruling stratum, says, the Kremlin will be able to exploit the presence of non-Russians on the PACE group representing the peoples of Russia to rally ethnic Russians around the regime (echofm.online/opinions/razvala-strany-rossiyane-boyatsya).

            That is not what the non-Russians want or even what many of the ethnic Russians on the PACE group would prefer, but “the presence of representatives of the indigenous peoples of Russia will clearly be interpreted by the Kremlin as an attempt to break up Russia; and the first result of this will bee the consolidation of the ethnic Russian majority around the regime.”

            “Perhaps in the future, the activities of the representatives of the indigenous people will play a positive role,” the commentator continues.” That can’t be excluded; “but at this stage, their presence will be used effectively by Kremlin propaganda because “Russians are afraid of the collapse of their country.”

            “Of course, this is not what the ethnic Russian opposition needs,” especially now when it can do little but issue appeals of one kind or another. But it is the reality that they too must work with given the ethnic Russian majority in the Russian Federation is so afraid of collapse that the Kremlin retains at least for now that powerful lever to use against its opponents.

 

Whom are Russians Going to Believe about Murmansk -- Kremlin Media or Their Own Eyes?

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 26 – Governments around the world routinely try to control the narratives about problems lest their populations draw conclusions based on what they can see and hear. But few regimes have gone as far as the Kremlin in doing so, a pattern highlighted this week by how it is trying to control the reactions of Russians to the dark and freezing city of Murmansk.

            At a time when Russian aggression has turned out the lights in Kyiv and many other Ukrainian cities, the Putin regime is especially interested in preventing Russians from drawing parallels between what is happening in Ukraine and what is happening inside Russia given that the two things have their roots in the same place – the Kremlin and its contempt for people.

            Many Russian population points have suffered this winter but no large city more and for a longer period that Murmansk in the Russian north where there has been no heat, light or water for days (thebarentsobserver.com/news/darkness-descended-on-murmansk/444153, meduza.io/feature/2026/01/26/v-murmanske-treti-sutki-pereboi-s-elektrichestvom-i-podachey-tepla-eto-krupneyshiy-gorod-za-polyarnym-krugom-i-seychas-tam-moroz and krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/105279).

            Despite or more precisely because of the scope of this tragedy, Kremlin-controlled media have devoted little attention to it, clearly reflecting the hopes of Russia’s rulers that what these outlets don’t report, the Russian people won’t pay attention to (t.me/agentstvonews/13673 and nemoskva.net/2026/01/26/federalnye-telekanaly-otkazalis-ot-polnoczennogo-osveshheniya-blekauta-v-murmanskoj-oblasti/).

            And to reenforce this message, the Kremlin has used bots to push its message that the disaster in Murmansk was the result of something other than the failures of officials to live up to their responsibilities to maintain the infrastructure needed to keep people warm and safe (t.me/botnadzor_org/1910).

            But as independent social anthropologist Aleksandr Arkhipova points out, Kremlin messengers have gone even further and introduced a new term of art for what is happening in Murmansk (t.me/anthro_fun/3853 and nemoskva.net/2026/01/26/ne-otklyuchenie-a-rotacziya-elektrichestva-murmanskie-energetiki-izobreli-novoe-slovosochetanie-chtoby-skryt-masshtab-avarii/).

            “It will become clear to anyone who thinks about this for a second that what is going on are rolling blackouts,” Arkhipova says, especially as these words “say nothing about a major a ccident or about people being without eating. In short and as usual, we have our lovely euphemisms, a product of a world where nothing bad ever happens.”

            Residents of Murmansk posted comments on Arkhipova’s article and said that what electricity there is comes on mostly at night but that in some apartment blocks, heating and water have been cut off, with some of the city’s shops closed as well. They also say that bread has disappeared from the shelves because the city’s bakeries have been affected by power outages.

            As so often happens in such situations, the Russian government’s effort to control the popular reaction is backfiring with its efforts transparently obvious, thus leading the population to conclude or even report that the situation is far worse than people would have assumed if they had been told the truth to begin with. 

For Fifth Year Running, Russians Bought More Anti-Depressants than the Year Before

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 26 – For the fifth year in a row, Russians set a record with their purchases of anti-depressants; but what is the most important factor in leading them to do so has changed. In 2022, they were afraid of being drafted and sent to fight in Ukraine; now, they are more worried about losing their jobs.

            In 2021, Russians bought 9.2 million anti-depressant pills; in 2025, they bought 22.3 million, more than 2.4 times more, the DSM Group reports (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/01/26/ktk-zavershil-remont-vpu-3-i-otgruzhaet-neft-v-shtatnom-rezhime-konsortsium-a185413).

            Some of this increase likely reflects the fact that Russians appear to be increasingly willing to turn to their doctors with problems like depression and doctors are ready to prescribe drugs like Zoloft. But some of it almost certainly reflects the spread of depression among Russians, who are now worried more about losing their jobs than about the war in Ukraine.

Russians Will Likely Stop Hating Groups if Kremlin Stops Whipping Up Popular Attitudes Against Them, Analysts Tell ‘Novaya Gazeta’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 21 – An analysis conducted by Nezavisimaya Gazeta Europe and the Cedar Research Center suggests that over the last six years, hatred has spread among Russians against this or that group when the government adopts laws attacking the groups involved and then uses its media to whip up public sentiment against them.

            That has had unfortunate consequences for the groups involved, Alesya Sokolova, who coordinated the study of hatred in Russia since 2020;  but it contains one silver lining: It is almost certain, she and the experts she spoke with say, that if the powers stop promoting hatred, the amount of it will fall (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/01/21/kratkaia-istoriia-nenavisti).

            That is an optimistic assessment, of course; but it means that the Russian government must be held responsible in the first instance for hatred against various groups, a hatred the Kremlin is promoting to create a sense of unity against some common and invented enemy group.

            One can only hope that judgment is correct. But it raises another possibility which may be just as disturbing: What if it is the case among Russians – or indeed some other peoples – that the only way to promote unity is to hate someone else rather than to love one’s own group and thus recognize the right of others to love theirs?

            Clearly making what would be a welcome transition from unity based on hatred to unity based on affection will not be easy, especially in countries where the rulers have found it easier and more useful to themselves to generate and then rely on hatred rather than to take the chance on affection and even love. 

Ukrainian Soldiers Not Surrendering the Way Germans Did in World War II, a Sign that End of War is Still Far Away, Panov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 22 – In the final months of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, entire German units surrendered to the Red Army, a sign that the war was near its end. But now, while some Ukrainian soldiers who have surrendered to the Russian military in Ukraine, there have been almost no instances of units doing so, Valery Panov says.

            That means, the Russian commentator says in a post on the Russian nationalist Stoletiye portal that the war in Ukraine is far from over and that Moscow must at last recognize that it isn’t fighting a branch of the Russian nation but rather NATO “mercenaries” who will continue to fight (stoletie.ru/vzglyad/russkije_protiv_russkih_675.htm).

            Panov insists that Ukrainians are not deserting in unit-sized batches out of fear of being hunted down by Kyiv or being killed by the Russians if they go over the line but rather because they still have enough confidence that they can defeat Putin’s invasion force and a strong enough sense that they are Ukrainians and not a triune branch of the Russians as the Kremlin says. 

            For a Russian nationalist portal to deliver these two messages is to challenge two of Putin’s most cherished and widely ballyhooed notions by suggesting that the war is far from over whatever advances Moscow has made and that Ukrainians aren’t just Russians who have been misled but a completely separate people.

            Acknowledging that there haven’t been the unit-sized surrenders is perhaps the more important concession as far as a Russian audience is concerned given that government media in the Russian Federation can’t stop running stories about this or that Ukrainian deserter. But as Panov makes clear, individual desertions are one thing but mass desertions are quite another.

            That and his comments about the nature of Ukrainians as a national community throw cold water on much that residents of the Russian Federation have been encouraged to believe. That such a dose of reality should come from a Russian nationalist instead of someone else is telling. 

Like Stalin, Putin Views His Soldiers and His People as a Threat to His Rule, Lea and Taskin Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 24 – Putin’s escalation of repression with the creation of the Military Counterintelligence Directorate is the result of the same “systemic dynamics” that drove Stalin to set up the Smersh [“Death to Spies”] organization during World War II rather than some “evil decision” by either Kremlin ruler, Aaron Lea and Borukh Tashkin say.

            The two Israeli analysts of Russian background argue that the actions of both dictators “perform the same function of compensating for the lack of voluntary motivation with coercion” and thus suggests that Putin will become more repressive not less just as Stalin did at the end and after World War II (region.expert/repressions/).

            Indeed, the two suggest, “Russia is now moving along the same path” Stalin tread and that “the longer the war drags on, the greater the role of structures engaged not in fighting the external enemy but in maintaining internal discipline and repression again is becoming not a side effect but a key mechanism for managing the war and the entire society.”

            When a regime “views its own army as a zone of risk rather than as a pillar of support,” Lea and Tashkin continue, it “inevitably builds a system of internal surveillance, filtering and coercion;” and in the current case represents “a transition to a model of a military state where the main threat is seen as coming not from the outside but from within.”

            Russia’s “soldiers and officers in ‘the special military operation’ are objects of suspicion rather than subjects of trust,” with the only difference from Stalin’s approach is that “today Russia has neither the ideological motivation of 1941 or Lend Lease” assistance from the Western powers.

            That means, the two Israeli analysts say, that in Putin’s Russia, there is now “only fear, violence and drones with missiles and bombs.” But “without a material base, this model is doomed not to victory but to self-destruction.” That will be clear to everyone when Muscovite state “again places executions behind the backs of soldiers” and threatens all who might retreat.

 

Russians ‘Repeating’ Worst Aspects of Soviet Behavior in World War II But Not the Most Valuable and Essential, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 26 – When today’s Russian “patriots’ talk about “repeating” what their grandfathers did, Abbas Gallyamov says, “they thought they would be repeating the raising of the victory banner over the Reichstag” in Kyiv. But “instead, they have repeated the overconfidence, self-aggrandizement, sloppiness and unprofessionalism” of their ancestors.

            Their grandfathers made all these mistakes and more but they won because they proved capable of learning from their mistakes, correcting what they had done, and then, because they had done so, achieved victory (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/9581 reposted at https://echofm.online/opinions/oni-vzyali-ot-dedov-samoe-hudshee).

            Unfortunately for Russia, the Russian commentator says, the current generation of Russians and their leaders have proven incapable of that; and so as Putin’s war in Ukraine has lasted longer that the USSR’s Great Patriotic War did, today’s warriors have not already won as they expected but are far further from any victory than they imagine.