New Organization Focusing on Russia Outside of Moscow Registered in US

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 5 – Russia and Eurasia as a whole are going through “one of the most important historical moments since the end of the USSR,” Askat Dukenbayev says; but many are missing the most important aspects of this development because they are focused on Moscow alone rather than on the multiplicity of regions and republics within the borders of that country.

            To overcome that problem, the scholar, originally from Kazakhstan but now living in the United States, has registered with the Ohio government a new organization, “The Bell Center for Russian and Eurasian Research,” in the hopes of changing the primary focus of research on that part of the world away from Moscow alone (region.expert/kolokol-center/).

            In an interview he gave to Vadim Shtepa, the editor of the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal, Dukenbayev says the new center will seek to devote its attention to “the problems of Russian federation and the cases of its continuing degradation as well as issues of regional development and post-imperial transformation.”

            Dukenbayev says that he is confident of success in raising funds and sponsoring research on such issues because as a result of Putin’s war on Ukraine, there is a growing interest in what is happening in the Russian Federation beyond the  ring road, an interest that is no longer confined to the non-Russian nations but also to predominantly ethnic Russian regions.

            The independent scholar says he and his colleagues are “at the very beginning of the project’s development and that in the short term, we plan to focus on monitoring current political, social and economic processes in Russia” and plan to focus on crises and transformations being driven by both internal and external factors.

            Dukenbayev concludes: “Our goal is to build a knowledge and competency base, as well as an expert-analytical platform, focused on regional development in Russia and Eurasia, bringing together researchers, analysts, and experts from various countries and disciplines.”

An Inspiration for Others – Russian Environmental Activists Win Record 175 Victories in 2025

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 5 – Many Russians do not take part in protests of any kind because they assume that they will accomplish nothing besides falling victim to repressions by the Putin regime. But that is far from the case in at least one embattled sector – environmental protection.

            According to the Ecology Crisis Group, Russian environmentalists and activists won a record 175 victories over business and government during 2025, a record and one that show protests can be effective (https://semnasem.org/news/2026/06/05/rossijskie-ekoaktivisty-oderzhali-v-2025-godu-rekordnye-175-pobed-v-borbe-za-prirodu).

            According to the monitoring group, 89 of these victories came when activists protested efforts by businesses or governments to violate rules governing specially protected nature preserves and parks, cases where the environmentalists demanded that those in power live by laws and where the courts agreed.

            Unfortunately, of course, the activists did not win all their battles or even most of them; but in the increasingly dark picture presented by Putin’s Russia, it is important to remember that protests can work, one of the major reasons that the Kremlin works so hard to ensure that they do not even take place. 

Ukrainian Drones Transforming Russia’s Enormous Size ‘From an Asset to a Liability,’ Sergey Medvedev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 4 – Ukrainian drones have not only embarrassed Putin by spoiling his celebrations this year but also and more importantly called into question the long-standing assumption that Russia’s enormous size is an asset that represents “the ultimate guarantee of the state’s invulnerability,” Sergey Medvedev says.

            In fact, the Radio Liberty commentator says, as the drone attacks have highlighted, “Russia’s immense territorial bulk … is transforming from an asset into a liability [because] it is virtually impossible to shield or defend” all of it (svoboda.org/a/drony-protiv-imperii-sergey-medvedev-o-territorialjnom-proklyatii/33771956.html).

            Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure, its transportation routes, and its defense industries are all dispersed and all are now at risk, Medvedev says. Exclaves like Kaliningrad are even more so, but “even heavily protected areas like Moscow and St. Petersburg are no longer invulnerable.”

            “As a result,” he continues, “we have a country burdened with excessive, unprofitable and indefensible territory which it can’t continue to drag further into the 21^st century” and like the dinosaurs in the past, “Russia will not survive to the end of this century with its heavy and clumsy territorial body.”

            Putin’s war in Ukraine did not begin this process, but it has “only accelerated this process of decolonization and loss of control over space,” Medvedev says. And thus, “having begun the war by seizing territories, Russia will eventually lose them – and not only those it occupied in 2014 and 2022,” but many it occupied centuries earlier.

For Russia to Catch Up with Advanced Countries, It Needs Concrete rather than Asphalt Highways, Duma Member Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 4 – Only 34 percent of Russia’s federal highways and only four The m over them, Artyom Kiryanov says. As a result, Russia has to spend enormous sums repairing them each year and cannot build the new highways it needs.

            If Russia were to shift to using concrete rather than asphalt as countries like China and the US have done, it would not need to repair its roads as often and they would survive longer, the deputy chairman of the Duma economics committee says (octagon.media/ekonomika/betonnyj_argument.html).

            At present, Kiryanov continues, only two percent of Russian highways and only 0.08 percent of all roads are concrete, something that requires they be repaired every year or two and would increase the period between major overhauls from a few years to as many as 12 to 15.

            The advantages of concrete roads have already been recognized by other advanced countries: Cement covers 45.8 percent of the length of roads in the US, 47.2 percent of those in China, and 10 to 40 percent in European countries. They thus spend less on repairing existing roads and more on building new ones.

            Some Russian officials remain trapped in the past, convinced that the weather in Russia and the damage done to road surfaces by winter tires make a change impossible. But they are wrong: others are building concrete roads in even worse climates and concrete has now been developed to withstand even winter tire damage.

            The main problem lies elsewhere, Kiryanov says. “There is no legally enshrined mechanism for mandatory comparison of rigid and non-rigid pavement options that requires the calculation of full life cycle costs at the design stage.” Were one introduced, Moscow would recognize how much it could benefit from a shift to concrete. 

Violent Attacks in Russian Schools Reach All-Time High, Prompting Calls to have Veterans of Putin’s War in Ukraine Guard Them

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 4 – The number of violent attacks in Russian schools rose by 80 percent between 2024 and 2025 and reached an all-time high last year, with the numbers so far in 2026 making it likely that this year the figure will be even higher. In response, Russian politicians are calling for Moscow to deploy veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine to defend Russian schools.

            There were “at least” 25 violent attacks on schools last year, in which 38 people were injured and four killed, Novaya Gazeta Europe reports. Both numbers were all-time highs (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/06/04/chislo-napadenii-na-rossiiskie-shkoly-v-2026-godu-dostiglo-istoricheskogo-maksimuma).

            Most occurred in schools rather than university-level institutions; and overwhelmingly, they took place in federal subjects outside of the capitals of Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the past, attackers used mostly knives; but ever more often, officials say, they are using handguns or other weapons.

            Some observers place the blame on popular culture or on the schools themselves which have a massive shortage of psychologists who might be able to identify and help those thinking about committing such crimes and which often have extremely inadequate perimeter defense systems.

            Russian politicians are calling for units of the National Guard to be deployed around schools or even to use veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine to guard Russian educational institutions and prevent further incidents of violence against Russian young people.

Last Year, 96 Percent of Russians Moscow Called ‘Foreign Agents’ Didn’t Get Any Funding from Abroad

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 4 – In 2025, 206 of the 215 Russians Moscow called “foreign agents” --  a staggering 96 percent -- did not receive any foreign funding, a radical shift from the period before Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine when that was the only basis for classifying people that way and one that means any Russian potentially can be so charged.

            According to an OVD investigation, Russian officials insist that those charged as being foreign agents who in fact did not receive any funding from abroad were nonetheless under “foreign influence” (istories.media/news/2026/06/04/v-2025-godu-96-inoagentov-poluchili-svoi-status-ne-iz-za-zarubezhnogo-finansirovaniya/).

            That change has been conceded by Russian Deputy Justice Minister Oleg Sviridenko who argued that foreign influence takes many forms and restricting it to financial support as Moscow did before 2022 had put the security of the country at risk and that many who never receive such payments thus deserve to be identified and restricted as “foreign agents.”

Russia under Putin ‘an Information Dictatorship, Not a Totalitarian State’ and Humor There Reflects That, Arkhipova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 4 – In Russia today, Aleksandra Arkhipova says, “there is an information dictatorship not totalitariansm.” That is, unlike in Stalin’s time, very few Russian residents are repressed because they are members of a particular group and that repressions are carried out randomly with the intention to intimidate rather than incarcerate.

            The Russian anthropologist who now lives and teaches in Paris tells Ilya Azar of the Cherta portal that this difference between 1937 and now along with the fact that people can still leave the country helps to explain both the way Russian humor has changed and the way Moscow officials respond to it (cherta.media/interview/politichesike-anekdoty/).

            Among the most intriguing observations she makes in the course of a long and wide-ranging interview are the following five:

·       The form of anecdotes in Russia has changed. In Soviet times, they were textual and told. Now they often involve pictures with memes and so many, not hearing what they had come to expect, assume there are fewer. That isn’t the case.

·       Anecdotes have changed in other ways as well. Now, there are fewer about Putin or the war and more about daily life and fewer with those featured in them being members of the intellectual elite, like Rabinovich, and more often ordinary people

·       That makes such stories less threatening to the regime, and it also means that the powers that be monitor them less closely. The E Center, for example, focuses almost exclusively on texts rather than on reels and so misses much of the humor now circulating.

·       That means Instagram and video sites are increasingly where Russian humor is located and why portals like anekdot.ru can continue to operate. They feature subjects and people the Putin regime isn’t especially concerned with.

·       After Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine, there were many anecdotes about him and that conflict. Now, there are far fewer, not because Russians have stopped having negative views about both but rather because humor is a way of coping with change. Now, both Putin and the war are the new normal and less often laughed about.