Surviving Soviet Mosaics Send Messages Fundamentally at Odds with Putinism, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 2 – Many of the mosaics which were installed at the end of Soviet times but continue to be maintained contain messages very much at odds with the ideology of Putinism, promoting as they do peace, internationalism, and the future rather than war, Russian nationalism, and the past, Vadim Shtepa says.

            The editor of the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal says that in fact, many of the messages from the past which survive in these murals are so at odds with Putinism that their authors if they appeared now would be subject to criminal sanctions of one kind or another (arvamus.delfi.ee/artikkel/120621668/vadim-stepa-ei-sojale-maailmale-rahu-tanaseni-pusivad-noukogude-loosungid-arritavad-kremlit-taiega reposted at region.expert/mosaic/).

            Indeed, Shtepa continues, “inside Russia, it is absolutely impossible to create new mosaics on the topics of world peace, friendship of the peoples and a future in space now.” That has had an unanticipated result: many advocates of these things are now trying to restore the Soviet-era mosaics lest attention to such values disappear under Putin’s onslaught.

Telegram Channels Now Surpass TV as Source of News for Uzbeks, First All-Uzbekistan Study of Media Use Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 2 – A joint EU-Uzbekistan government study of media use in that Central Asian republic, the first all-Uzbekistan poll of its kind, finds that Uzbeks are now more likely to turn to telegram channels than to television for news but they are still far more likely to trust TV than either telegram channels or social media.

            According to the representative sample of 1440 Uzbeks, 66.2 percent of them turn to telegram channels, 44.6 percent to television, and 41.6 percent to social networks for news; but 44.3 percent trust TV while only11.3 percent trust telegram channels and only 7.4 percent news sites.

            (For the study as a whole in Uzbek, see https://massmedia.uz/oz/news/h2rdxffx-duacoky7-eedktvj9-nmcr-uzb; for a discussion of its findings in Russian, see podrobno.uz/cat/obchestvo/telegram-operedil-televidenie-po-populyarnosti-sredi-istochnikov-novostey-v-uzbekistane/.)

            Despite these low levels of trust, Uzbeks are active users of social networks and telegram channels, with 64.8 percent saying they use social networks regularly and 86.1 percent saying the turn to telegram channels. Television attracts fewer and radio broadcasts even less, with more than 70 percent of Uzbeks saying they don’t use it at all.

            The differences between younger and older Uzbeks, those living cities and those living in villages, and those more educated and less educated parallel findings of media consumption in other post-Soviet states.

Deforestation of Siberia to Sell Wood to China a Primary Driver of Bear Attacks, Environmental Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 1 – In order to cut enough wood to sell to China, Russian officials have allowed lumber firms to clear cut far larger areas than can easily be reforested and that together with the impact of climate change and widespread distribution of photographs of bears on social media have stoked fears this year that Russia is facing an explosion of deadly bear attacks.

            That is the judgment of environmental activists east of the Urals who point to deforestation as a primary driver, experts in Moscow, and the natural resources ministry which says that Russians taking pictures of bears to share online is attracting more attention to the problem (currenttime.tv/a/medvedi-napadayut-na-lyudei-pochemu/33887431.html).

            In fact, the ministry says, the number of bear attacks has not gone up dramatically during the past season at least as compared to the last few years. But the fact that selling lumber to China is part of the cause may lead those much-photographed attacks to trigger a rise of political environmentalism in Russia east of the Urals.

            That is all the more likely to be true because it is now widely known that China itself has restricted deforestation within its borders but is all too happy to purchase wood harvested that way in Russia, something corrupt and/or greedy Russian officials are all to happy to accommodate Beijing’s growing demand for wood.

Kazakhstan and Russia Suffering Most Immediately from Declining Water Level of Caspian Sea

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 1 – Kazakhstan and Russia are suffering the most from declining water levels on the Caspian Sea because, while the surface of the sea has falling relative to sea level by almost exactly the same amount everywhere, the depth of the sea is far lower in the ports and sea lane in the waters off those two countries than elsewhere.

            All of Kazakhstan’s ports and sea lanes require constant and expensive dredging to keep them open. In the case of the Russian Federation, the major port at Astrakhan and sea lanes leading from it are now at risk as well, although Moscow can and does have a better option in the case of Makhachkala (casp-geo.ru/v-kazahstane-iz-za-snizheniya-urovnya-vody-v-severnom-kaspii-poyavilis-novye-ostrova/).

            There, the decline in the depth of the sea is less; and that may be one of the reasons why Moscow relocated the main base of its Caspian Flotilla there from Astrkhan, although that highlights the problems the Russian navy will have if it seeks to move ships from the Caspian via the Volga-Don canal to waters off Ukraine.

            Russia also faces the problems arising from the fact that Dagestan, the most Muslim of all the federal subjects of the Russian Federation, is also one of the most restive, raising questions about security in the sea lanes and ports there and in transit across that region northward into Russia proper.

            The three other Caspian littoral states – Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkmenistan – also face problems with siltification, but these threats are longer term, and the three countries have more time to address the situation. There, the shallowing of the Caspian in the north makes them relatively more important transportation routes.

Beria, Stalin’s Notorious Secret Police Chief, Making a Comeback in Putin’s Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 29 – The city of Cherepovets has proposed and Vologda governor Georgy Filimonov has promised to consider the creation of a mural showing among others Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s notorious secret police chief who was arrested and shot by Stalin’s successors.

            Filimonov praised Beria as “an outstanding historical figure” but said that the decision about whether to have a mural memorializing him would be made next year not now (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/novosti/v-cerepovce-hotat-narisovat-mural-s-dzerzinskim-i-beriej/460527).

            Opponents of the idea point out that the Russian Supreme Court has ruled that Beria is among those not subject to rehabilitation for his crimes and that putting up his picture as a hero is an insult to his victims and a threat to the future of the country. But they are likely to be ignored.

            On the one hand, Putin is pushing the idea of a single stream of Russian history and cherry picking from the lives of past figures positive developments while ignoring their crimes. And on the other, the Kremlin dictator is known to be an admirer of Beria (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/07/putin-admires-beria-one-of-stalins-most.html).

            Efforts like those of Cherpovets to memorialize Beria raises a larger question: where will the rehabilitation of those guilty of the crimes of the Stalin era and other periods of Russian history stop. If a mural featuring Beria does go up, there would seem to be little possibility those who want to memorialize other notorious figures will not try to do the same.

With All the Money Going to Putin’s War, Cancer Treatment Collapsing across Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 1 – To finance his war in Ukraine, Putin has cut back on healthcare in general and in cancer care in particular, with the latest budget figures showing that Moscow will spend 91 percent less on cancer diagnosis and treatment in 2027 than it did in 2026, with most of the cutbacks hitting not Moscow and St. Petersburg but the poorest federal subjects.

            In many federal subjects, Russian experts say, there are few oncologists and only 10 to 14 percent of any of the recommended anti-concern drugs. In 15 of the 48 federal subjects the National Institute of Cancer monitors, cancer screening does not meet government requirements (currenttime.tv/a/rossiyskie-regioni-massovo-urezayut-rashody-meditsina/33885002.html).

            As a result, patients can’t get the drugs they need even if they have their own funds; and some of them, the Russian Movement against Cancer says, are simply removed by officials from expensive therapies because the medical system doesn’t allocate enough to pay for what they need. The result is brutal: all of them suffer and many of them die prematurely.

            Many observers focus on the combat losses of the Russian military in Ukraine as the best measure of the suffering Russians are undergoing because of Putin’s war; but those suffering and dying from the lack of necessary cancer treatments are just as much losses that must be laid at his door.

Ukraine’s Attacks on Russian Shipping via Black Sea Creating Cascading Problems for Moscow

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 1 – Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian ships on the Black Sea have forced Moscow to reroute its exports of grain eastward to the Caspian and northward to the Baltic and Arctic seas, an exercise that has highlighted serious bottlenecks in both places that are restricting the export of Russian grain.

            Not only has the redirection of grain shipments overloaded Russian railroads and the capacity of the Volga-Don canal to carry cargo in these new directions, but it has highlighted the fact that most of the ports Moscow wants to use as alternatives lack the onloading equipment needed to function (istories.media/news/2026/11/01/rossiya-perevozit-zerno-cherez-arktiku-i-kaspiiskoe-more-iz-za-obstrelov-v-chernom-more/).

            As a result, Russian shipping companies say, these routes will not be able to compensate for much of the export volume lost with the closure of the Black Sea routes, where shipping has declined and the costs of using what remains have risen dramatically, another example of the ways in which Ukraine has achieved more against Russia than many think.