Moscow Patriarchate Acts as If the USSR Still Existed, Creating Unnecessary Problems for Itself and the Kremlin, Religious Affairs Specialist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 26 – There have been some significant personnel changes in the hierarchy of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations which manages ties with Orthodox communities outside the Russian Federation and serves as the foreign policy arm of the Russian church.          

            The current patriarch and most of his predecessors sprung from this body, and it is out of it that key ideas which define the Moscow Patriarchate’s thinking about the proper relationship between Moscow and the former Soviet republics, Anastasiya Koskello, a graduate student at the Institute of Europe, says (ng.ru/kartblansh/2026-04-26/3_9483_kb.html).

            These ideas, which the scholar says can be summed up under the notion that “we must live as if the collapse of the USSR never occurred” and include the idea of “canonical territory” which does not exist in canon law. Instead, it was dreamed up by the External Relations Department to justify claims of exclusivity across the former Soviet space.

            Because of the way Moscow has acted on the basis of these ideas, the ROC MP has created problems for itself and for the Kremlin that could have been avoided had the church diplomats performed more “diplomatically.” And now there are signs that it may be taken even more directly under the state than has been the case.

            According to Kostello, the Department “in its current form faces either abolition or comprehensive reform for one simple reason: its diplomatic apparatus proved professionally incapable of navigating the post-Soviet era effectively.” It has lost Ukraine and is leading other republics whose Orthodox never thought about breaking with Moscow to do just that.

            There is already on the horizon a group of experts who are ready to take over or at least play a much larger role in the Department: The Higher School of Economics has created a new master’s program entitled “Religious Diplomacy in the Modern World” whose first students are to be admitted this year,

            Prospective students, Koskello continues, have been promised employment as “international relations specialists within religious organizations, including their offices outside the Russian Federation.” That is a clear attack on the Moscow Patriarchate’s diplomacy and would have been unthinkable as recently as two years ago.

            Patriarch Kirill can be counted on to resist the injection of such people into his foreign relations body, but he has been so weakened by failures in Ukraine and elsewhere that he may not be able to do so successfully. And if he fails, more than just the External Relations Department of the ROC MP will be changed. Instead, the entire hierarchy will as well.

Russians Increasingly Turning to Fortune Tellers in Quest for Certainty Their Lives under Putin Lack

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 27 – Eighty-five percent of Russians now turn to fortune tellers or tarot card readers (wciom.ru/analytical-reviews/analiticheskii-obzor/mistika-gde-to-rjadom), a dramatic rise from before 2022 (vedomosti.ru/society/news/2026/01/28/1172246-atol-spros-rossiyan).

According to specialists on this form of public behavior, Russians are turning to fortune tellers because they believe that those who offer information from the other side as it were can provide them with reassurance and predictability that their lives currently lack under the rule of Vladimir Putin (currenttime.tv/a/v-rossii-rastet-populyarnost-gadaniy-i-magicheskih-obryadov/33741111.html).

Among the most prominent of these experts is Nataliya Shavshukova, a Moscow State University-trained political scientist who now teaches in Warsaw, says pointedly that “ by turning to magicians and fortune tellers, Russians are seeking new sources of support during unstable times.”

She suggests that something similar happened at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, another “period also characterized by a high degree of uncertainty.” Russians apparently believe that fortune tellers can give them if not “clear answers, at least ‘some’ kind of answer,” something that Russian officials increasingly don’t even try to provide.

Digitalization of Data Making Possible Return of a Planned Economy in the Best Sense, Putin Aide Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 26 – The autonomation of management processes and the widespread digitalization of economic relations is leading to the return of an updated version of the planned economy that operated in the USSR for more than 70 years, Maksim Oreshkin, a former economic development minister and now an aide to Vladimir Putin, says.

            He made that comment during a talk to a Moscow conference on Higher Education in the New Technological Era, and it is far from clear just how far he wants to go in that direction                                  (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/26/pomoschnik-putina-zayavil-o-vozvraschenii-planovoi-ekonomiki-a193757).

            But three things are clear: First, Oreshkin believes that computerization can address one of the biggest problems of the planned economy in Soviet times, the inability of planners to come up with plans given the complexity of economic activity and the uncertainties that such shortcomings inevitably produced.

            Second, the Putin aide mentions prices for taxi rides as a place where such planning could occur, an indication that if a move in this direction is made anytime soon, it is likely to be applied not across the economy as a whole but only in limited segments of the economy as a kind of test drive.

            And third, however that be, any suggestion of this kind by someone near the center of power is going to send shockwaves through the Russian economy and undermine international confidence in that economy still further given that the rise of the market in place of planning remains one of the chief victories of the end of the USSR as far as many are concerned.

Russians Now So Pessimistic They’ve Cut Back on Purchases to Have Funds If the Situation Gets Even Worse, ‘Important Stories’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 27 – Russians are now so pessimistic about the future that they’ve cut back on purchases so as to have funds if the situation gets even worse and they either lose their jobs or have their hours cut back, according to a variety of surveys and expert interviews reviewed by the Important Stories portal.

            But such behavior is making the situation even worse because even though incomes are rising and inflation makes purchases sooner more rational, flat or even declining consumer demand makes any recovery less likely (istories.media/opinions/2026/04/27/pochemu-rossiyane-ekonomyat-yesli-ofitsialno-ikh-dokhodi-rastut/).

            Russians are now worried that the country’s economic decline will either cost them their jobs or their paid hours and that they won’t be able to respond by getting new positions. In many cases, there are already more applicants per position than was the case only a few months ago.

            Among the many surveys the portal sites is a report prepared by the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences which found that this pessimism now touches all socio-economic groups and thus casts a dark shadow on the entire economy rather than just particular segments (ecfor.ru/publication/kvartalnyj-prognoz-vvp-vypusk-69/).

Ingushetia Head Admits What Everyone Knows: Regions and Republics are Cutting Back on Programs for Their Residents to Pay for Putin’s War in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 27 – Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, head of the Republic of Ingushetia, has freely admitted what everyone in Russia certainly knows: their federal subjects have been forced to cut back on programs for their own residents in order to pay for Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine.

            Most regional and republic heads are extremely cautious about making this link explicit, but Kalimatov is blunt: “In the conditions of the Special Military Operation … it is sometimes necessary to put off some projects so that other more important tasks can be carried out” (fortanga.org/2026/04/vlasti-ingushetii-priznalis-chto-vynuzhdeny-otkladyvat-byudzhetnye-proekty-v-svyazi-s-tratami-na-vojnu-v-ukraine/).

            Ingushetia, he continues, has sent nearly 500 million rubles (6 million US dollars) in humanitarian help, to rebuilding a region in Zaporozhye Oblast, and to provide summer camps for children displaced by the fighting. This is no small sum for a small republic that has lost several hundred dead in combat there.

            What makes remarks like Kalimatov’s so important is that they will make it easier for others to connect the dots and complain about what the war is costing them not only in lives and treasure but in their daily lives as money for basic needs disappears to fuel Putin’s military aggression.

Putin’s Repression has Shifted Center of Protest Activity from Better Off Strata to Poorer Groups and Kremlin Should Be Worried, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 24 – Something dramatic, even revolutionary, has happened in Russia in recent months, Abbas Gallyamov says. The center of protest activity has shifted form the major cities where the educated and well-to-do are concentrated to poorer groups outside the metropolises.

            These “less privileged groups in the provinces have typically been far more loyal,” the former Putin speechwriter and now Putin critic says. But repressive measures of recent years have drastically altered this dynamic, and now it is the poorer segments of society rather than the wealthier ones who are most inclined to voice their discontent” (pointmedia.io/story/69eb64b175d0d3346a25cb0c).

            “One reason for this,” Gallyamov says, “is the decline in living standards. In keeping with the logic that "proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains," those strata of the citizenry that have been driven to utter destitution are now turning toward dissent. Another factor stems from the sharp escalation in state repression.

The commentator continues: “The resident of the metropolis—who, until recently, was still openly critical of the authorities—has now developed a palpable sense of dread … and so he takes great pains to mask his true sentiments, providing both pollsters and his superiors with the answers he knows they want to hear.”

At the same time, “the resident of the provinces—who, until recently, remained steadfastly loyal—has not experienced any significant increase in fear as a result of these repressive measures. He does not perceive them as being directed against him personally” as he comforts himself by saying that he’s “voted for Putin all along.”

Such poorer rural groups do not consist of heroes, Gallyamov continues. They retain “a certain level of fear toward authorit] … but [in sharp contrast to the situation among urban groups] that fear has not intensified significantly of late. His level of irritation, however, has begun to rise.”

Such former loyalists instead “feel that the authorities have deceived them: they promised one thing but delivered something entirely different in return.” As a result, they feel “ in voicing discontent, they are somehow ‘within their rights’ in demanding things from the authorities.” In contrast, urban groups never believed the regime and are now more afraid.

“By unleashing repression” as they have, the commentator says, “the authorities thus intimidate one segment of society while simultaneously forfeiting the support of another—a far larger one. The problem, however, is not merely a matter of numbers: An intimidated populace constitutes a deeply unreliable social base.”

And even if this larger group does “’sincerely’ internalize the narratives of the powers that be, “they nonetheless remain broken, spineless individuals. At the slightest sign of adversity, they buckle.” After all, Gallyamov concludes, as history shows, “you cannot construct a stable political edifice upon such a foundation. It will be nothing more than a rickety shack.”

Turkmenistan’s Military in Crisis

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 26 – For most of the period since 1991, Turkmenistan lived in a kind of splendid isolation with its repressive government preventing most people from finding out what was taking place there. In the last several years, it has opened up; and problems that Ashgabat had hidden are gaining attention.

            One of the most serious that has now been revealed concerns the situation in the country’s military, a situation that is now so bad that it raises questions about the government’s ability to counter foreign threats from neighboring Afghanistan or even defend itself against a rising by its own hard-pressed population.

            According to a report on the Asia-Today portal, “A surge in suicides among conscripts has compelled the Turkmen military command to restrict personnel’s access to weapons. Units have had keys to armories confiscated, bayonets replaced with batons, and live-fire training exercises cancelled” (asia-today.news/27042026/8132/).

            But the portal continues, “these measures fail to address systemic issues: the army remains plagued by hazing and impunity for violence,” with “the situation further complicated by mass desertion. Servicemen are going AWOL to take on illicit side jobs, leaving themselves without identification documents or any means of leaving the country.”

And it reports, “official complaints regarding service conditions are ignored, while appeals submitted to state agencies are frequently bounced back into the system without ever being reviewed. The crisis has also impacted the military’s personnel pipeline” at all levels.

“Due to the declining prestige of military service,” for example, “military academies are facing a severe shortage of applicants, forcing draft boards to go door-to-door in a desperate search for recruits. This has led to a decline in selection standards and a further deterioration of the country's defense sector.”