‘Russian Community’ Claims One Million Followers and Now has Branches in Former Soviet Republics

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 14 – The Russian Community, a Black Hundreds-style Russian nationalist group which attacks immigrants and other minorities while working hand in glove with Russian propagandists and force structures to prevent dissent now claims more than one million followers and has opened branches in Armenia and Kazakhstan.
    That increasing reach makes it a force to be reckoned with not only inside the Russian Federation but abroad and means that its leaders are working hard to present themselves as the obedient servants of the Kremlin in all things lest their growing power spark reprisals against the group (prosleduet.media/details/russian-obchshina/).
    (For background on the group, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/11/russian-community-organization-and-its.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/extremist-russian-community-now-active.html,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/another-black-hundreds-group-revived-in.html, and jamestown.org/program/russian-community-extremists-becoming-the-black-hundreds-of-today/.)   

West Must Take Five Steps Now to Encourage Members of Russian Elite to Break with Putin and Flee Abroad, Lea and Taskin Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 14 – Between 1953 and 1990, more than 1200 members of the Soviet elite fled abroad, individual actions that Western governments supported because they calculated that this would weaken the communist regime in Moscow, Aaron Lea and Borukh Taskin say. But under Putin, almost no members of the elite have fled.
    While most of the reasons for that are to be found inside Russia and the special relationship its elites have with the regime, at least some reflect a change in attitude in Western countries which no longer encourage such cases of flight even though that would weaken Putin and thus serve their interests (themoscowtimes.com/2025/01/14/why-arent-russias-elites-fleeing-putin-a87612).
    The two international experts on Russian elites suggest that Western countries should take five steps now in order to lead more members of the elites in Russia to conclude that they would be welcome in the West and could continue their careers there while waiting for regime change in Moscow. Those five steps include:
•    First of all, “the West must construct policies that support the freedom of Russians to seek sanctuary in the West rather than continuing to exist in criminal Russia.” That will require political will as “the world changes too quickly to wait for the bureaucracy.
•    Second, they suggest, “mechanisms should be created to integrate Russian elites who have left for the West into the daily agenda of the coalition countries,” including ensuring that they will be able to keep part of any capital they bring out with them.
•    Third, “a large number of NGOs, charitable foundations, think tanks, mass media and high-tech startups where Russian emigres can find employment as board members, sponsors, supervisory board members, consultants, etc., should be created.”
•    Fourth, “we should consider involving carefully selected high-class managers and investors from Russia in the formation of at least investments, crypto-asset circulation and fiat cross-border payments betwwoeldgeeen the countries they have chosen to live in.”
•    And fifth, “a NATO-monitored integration service should be created for the departed sisloviki and others with sensitive knowledge.”

“We believe there is a significant potential for splitting Putin's elites, creating conditions for their flight from Russia and integration into Western civilization and subsequent return to a future democratic Russia. This window of opportunity will not always exist and the mechanisms supporting such a split must be discussed at the highest levels and created now,” Lea and Taskin say..
Moreover, they argue in conclusion, “if this is not done immediately, Russia’s elites, driven behind the new Iron Curtain on both sides, will continue to support Putin's power from within. Proposals aimed at dividing and fragmenting the Russian establishment … will not have the desired effect.”

All Chechens Fighting on Side of Ukraine Want Independence for Their Republic, Grozny Political Analyst Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 14 – All Chechens now fighting for Ukraine want independence for their own republic, regardless of their differences over what kind of a republic that will be, according to a Grozny political analyst speaking on condition of anonymity (kavkazr.com/a/chechnya-posle-voyny-rossii-s-ukrainoy-kto-boretsya-za-nezavisimostj/33269533.html).
    “I think,” he continues, “that already now they are forming plans at the ideological, political and informational level as well as studying and analyzing the experience of Ukrainian social and political movements under conditions of war” given the likelihood that they will have to fight other pro-Moscow Chechens in the future.
    According to the political analyst, “it is difficult to say when they will be able to achieve their goals or even if they will in the foreseeable future be able to realize them in their homeland. But their efforts undoubtedly will be useful,” especially if the Putin regime collapses as quickly as did the Asad regime in Syria.
    He and other Chechens say that they flocked to Ukraine’s side not only because they wanted to fight Russia but because Kyiv in October 2022 declared Ichkeria to be “a temporarily occupied” land, a step very close to de facto recognition of a state that the Putin regime suppressed two decades ago (kavkazr.com/a/verhovnaya-rada-priznala-nezavisimostj-ichkerii/32089610.html).

Despite What Kremlin Wants People to Believe, Millions of Russians Oppose the Ruling Minority in Moscow, Podrabinek Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 14 – Because Russia has no elections, honest sociology or a free press and because of government repression which keeps many from acting on their feelings, no on knows precisely how many Russians are opposed to Putin’s autocracy, Aleksandr Podrabinek, a former Soviet dissident and now rights activist in Moscow says.
    But anyone who walks the streets of a Russian city and looks beyond the propaganda posters can see that there are millions who oppose the regime which has guns and power but represents only a tiny minority, he continues (svoboda.org/a/obraz-gibloy-rossii-aleksandr-podrabinek-o-tvortsah-illyuziy/33263349.html).
    Presenting the opposition as a tiny minority of marginal figures is a time-tested method of Russian rulers who know that the best way to keep people from acting on their feelings is to atomize society and convince people that no one shares the views that they have, Podrabinek says.
    Worse by atomizing society for that purpose, the Putin regime like its predecessors has convinced Russian émigré opponents of the regime that they know the situation inside Russia better than do those who actually live there and that there is little or no chance for Russia to become a free and democratic country.
    By arguing that position, the émigré opposition in effect serves those it says it is fighting, something, Podrabinek says, will become ever more obvious when the Putin regime is overthrown and the archives of its security services are opened.  

Kremlin Foolishly and Unnecessarily Creating Grounds for Separatism in Russia, El Murid Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 14 – The Putin regime is busily fighting the manifestations of separatism like the display of regional flags even as it foolishly and unnecessarily creates the grounds for separatism by its own policies, according to Anatoly Nesmiyan, who blogs under the screen name El Murid.
    “Separatism arises as an extreme reaction to the actions of a government which oppresses its regions, deprives them of the chance for independent development, and sucks the resources out of them  -- that is, when it acts as a metropolis to colonies,” El Murid argues (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/22918 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=678760380E05F).
    In almost every country, there are some people in the regions who call for separatism, he continues; “but in a normal country, they are always marginal and do not have any serious support so there is no particular point in banning them because the absence of such support means that they are no threat.”
    However, “if ‘the central government’ creates the conditions for separatism, then it will arise regardless of prohibitions” about its superficial manifestations. Indeed, “at some point, it and no other position “will become the defining idea” and that state as an integral whole will come to an end.
    Under Putin, El Murid suggests, “the Russian government has lost the ability to govern. Moscow can still control through prohibitions, terror and repression, but it can no longer manage. Control achieved by these means will work for a time; but as soon as it weakens, the situation will change quickly and dramatically.”
    Russia should be “a natural federation, a natural union of regions,” the commentator argues; and “attempts to create a centralized administration on its territory” have made sense only when Russia was growing territorially or when it was undergoing a radical shift from one kind of socio-economic-political order to another.
    The Kremlin may imagine that it is doing both, but its military expansion is costing it more than it can afford to pay and it has no development project for the country’s transformation. Hence, its hyper-centralization is an increasingly dangerous mistake in a country that should be by its diverse nature a federation.
    Russia’s problems, despite what the Kremlin seems to think, are not with the flag of the Urals Republic which it has now banned but with Moscow policies that are forcing ever more people in the regions to think about separatism if genuine federalism remains an impossible goal under the current ruler, El Murid says.
    And he reminds his readers of something most of them have forgotten: “Today’s Russia arose precisely because of the actions of separatists led by Yeltsin who was behind the declaration of Russian sovereignty. That day is now a national holiday” not only of Russia but of the power of separatism if the center misuses its powers.

Aleksandr Shchipkov – Soviet-Era Dissident who is Now Chief Ideologist of the ROC MP

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 14 – Few Russian Orthodox figures have undergone as great an evolution as Aleksandr Shchipkov who in Soviet times attacked both the Moscow church and the Soviet state and worked as a correspondent for Britain’s Keston College but now serves as a propagandist for the hardest of hard liners among the ROC MP and its allies in the government.
    Born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1957, Shchipkov grew up in a liberal Orthodox family and was a follower of Father Dudko. He has said that at that time, his slogan was “Christianity, freedom and anti-communism” but now he celebrates the Soviet system as consistent with Orthodoxy (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/01/14/kresty-i-lampasy).
    Moreover, he serves not only as an advisor to the patriarch but to leading Russian officials but also as a spokesman for the church. In both capacities, he goes far beyond even the official line: he insists Russia has had an ideology for a decade despite constitutional bans and that Europe as a whole and not just Ukraine has become a bastion of re-Nazification.
    Because of Shchipkov’s background as a dissident, some in the West are inclined to see him as a bridge to the Orthodox leadership in Russia today; but that is almost certainly a mistake. He is now more Orthodox than the Patriarch and likely will remain so given that his positions are close to what the Kremlin really thinks but has not yet been ready to articulate publicly.
    The article in Novaya Gazeta tracks his evolution which seems to reflect less something driven by intellectual reflection than about seizing the main chance for career advancement and a willingness to use the kind of repressive measures against his opponents that some in the Russian church as yet have been less willing to engage in.
    Almost certainly, Shchipkov’s views, as presented at websites he controls --  religare.ru and shchipkov.ru – serve as an indication of the direction the thinking of the Kremlin and the Patriarchate in the years of mature Putinism not only is proceeding now but is likely to go in the future.  

Ukraine and Moldova Too May Soon Cease to Exist along with Other States that Mistreat Russians , Patrushev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Jan. 14 – Nikolay Patrushev, the former secretary of the Russian Security Council who now is a Putin assistant and confidant, says that Ukraine may cease to exist already this year, that Moldova may do the same shortly thereafter and that other states which mistreat ethnic Russians may ultimately share the same fate.
    In a brief interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, the Russian hardliner suggests that these countries have no one to blame but themselves and says that their policies rather than Russian pressure and in the case of Ukraine direct attacks are responsible  for the destruction of “once flourishing” cities (kp.ru/daily/27651/5036217/).
    The fate of Ukraine and possibly the others should be discussed in talks “between Russia and the US without the participation of other countries of the West,” Patrushev continues. The reason is simple: Neither London nor Brussels has the right to speak for Europe because many European countries now agree with Moscow rather than with Washington.
    But in any such talks, he says, Moscow is not going to make any territorial concessions. The only thing these conversations will be about is getting the West and Ukraine to accept the rules of the game that Vladimir Putin has repeatedly outlined, rules that will “de-Nazify” Ukraine and keep it out of Western alliances.
    Patrushev is not the only Kremlin advisor who has the ear of Putin, but he is among the most influential and his hardline position likely gives the Kremlin leader confident that those around him are quite prepared to do whatever is necessary to achieve their ends and reject any American or Western efforts to deprive Moscow of a victory.