Non-Russian Activists Now Focusing on Telling the World Russia is an Empire which Must Be Decolonized, Latypova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 25 – Many of the most active groups in Russia since Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine were anti-war organizations in the non-Russian republics from which the Kremlin has drawn a disproportionate number of soldiers to fight and die in that war, Leyla Latypova says.

            But the failure of these groups to force an end to the war combined with repressions at home and the forced emigration of the leaders of these organizations, The Moscow Times who specializes on the non-Russian republics says, has prompted these groups to change their focus (themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/25/russias-exiled-anti-war-movements-are-learning-to-play-the-long-game-a92049).

            While none of them has dropped its opposition to Putin’s war, ever more of them are focusing on cooperating with each other and promoting the view that Russia is an empire and will continue to threaten its own people and the world until it is fully decolonized, another uphill struggle because many in the West assume everything will be fine once Putin leaves.

            Latypova draws this conclusion on her observations of and conversations with the leaders of non-Russian groups in the emigration, including those from Tyva, Sakha, and Buryatia. She notes that some ethnic Russian emigres have also made that shift, but overwhelmingly, Russian émigré groups still focus on the war in Ukraine rather than on the need for decolonization.

            The shift The Moscow Times journalist points to is important for three reasons. First, it is a sign that Putin’s effort to suppress non-Russian groups has backfired because it has made them more nationalistic than they ever were before. Second, it has deepened the divide between these non-Russian groups and their ethnic Russian counterparts, making cooperation more difficult.

            And third – and this is by far the most important – it has become the basis for a new unity among the non-Russian movements and likely among non-Russians themselves who now see their task as the dismantling of the Russian empire rather than just stopping the war and who are working to reach out to governments around the world to deliver that message.

Putin Earlier won Support by Promising Stability and Predictability, but His War in Ukraine has Destroyed Both, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 24 – With his war in Ukraine that is now entering its fifth year, Vladimir Putin has undermined the stability and predictability that for the first two decades of his rule had been the basis of his popular support among Russians, Abbas Gallyamov argues (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/9775 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/proshhaj-stabilnost-2).

            “People used to know what a waited the country tomorrow and the day after,” the former Putin speechwriter turned anti-Putin commentator. “Now all that remains is a memory; and if there is no stability, then there is no reason for people to cling to Putin” as they have in the past.

            According to Gallyamov, Russia “has suddenly become so unsettled that it seems things can’t get any worse;” and it is that sense which is “the main domestic political outcome” of his war in Ukraine, a situation which in the final analysis is of Putin’s own making. Had he not started the war,  he could have continued in unquestioned power for far longer.

Russian Housing Most Built in Soviet Times Now Facing Collapse and Under Law Can’t Be Fixed

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 25 – One in every 15 buildings where Russians live is now so old that under Russian law, any repairs are considered “economically unfeasible,” thus leaving millions  of Russians in a gray area where their residences have not yet been declared unsafe but that they need repairs that the authorities are not willing to authorize because of the buildings’ ages.

            Such housing stock is set to grow to 54 million square meters by 2030 and 216 million square meters by 2040, according to a study by the Moscow Institute of Economic Forecasting (forecast.ru/_ARCHIVE/Analitics/OM/REK_12_09_23.pdf and newizv.ru/news/2026-02-25/sovetskie-doma-ruhnut-cherez-10-let-kuda-uhodyat-dengi-na-kapremont-438832).

            Most of these aging buildings were erected in Soviet times with a projected lifespan of 25 to 30 years. But many have remained occupied for as much as 60 years and haven’t seen any major renovations for more than half a century. There simply isn’t enough money budgeted or being collected from residents to change that.

            And officials are hiding behind the law that they say prevents them from throwing good money after bad and requires that these aging housing blocks be torn down and replaced with new housing, something that isn’t happening rapidly enough to keep people from remaining in housing that is on the verge of collapse.

            One especially worrisome aspects of this problem is that elevators in multi-story housing in major cities are rapidly reaching the end of their lifetimes and aren’t replaced. In 2025, for example, 70,000 elevators in Russia reached the end of their working life, but the 2026 government plan calls for replacing only 19,000 to 21,000 of them.

            That means that the number of elevators likely to fail will continue to increase, making access to housing in the upper stories even more difficult than it is now for many Russians. 

‘Being Dark-Skinned in Today’s Russia Can Be Dangerous,’ Udmurt Now in Emigration Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 25 – The Horizontal Russia portal features its latest interview with a non-Russian about his experiences in Russia. This time it is with an Udmurt with Mari roots who grew up in his homeland, moved to Moscow and then emigrated and who says that “being dark-skinned in today’s Russia can be dangerous.”

            Artyom, aged 40, grew up in Izhevsk where he says he encouraged xenophobia “only during celebrations of the Day of the Great Fatherland War, but when he moved to Moscow, he came to feel that  being dark-skinned in Moscow could be dangerous because the police singled him out for harassment (semnasem.org/articles/2026/02/25/nerusskij-mir-kak-rossijskim-silovikam-ne-ugodil-cvet-kozhi-udmurta-artema).

Neither his parents nor his grandparents spoke with him in either Udmurt or Mari; but when he was a young child, his parents sent him to live for a time with his grandmother in a Mari El village. There he fell in love with Mari songs and dances and learned some of the language those who engaged in them used.

            But when it was time for him to enter school, his parents brought him back to Izhevask. In the first three classes, he studied Udmurt but then began using only Russian and forgot his native language because “to be from a village and to know his native language was considered ‘not prestigious’ and almost no one would speak with him in it.

            Artyom says he almost never encountered xenophobic attitudes in Izhevsky; but once he was attacked by some other boys who didn’t like him because he was dark-skinned. But the situation deteriorated after he moved to Moscow where both the police and ordinary people singled him out for mistreatment. But that led him to again study Udmurt.

            When he emigrated to the US with his family, he was surprised that no one singled  him out for mistreatment and that many were delighted to find that he was doing all he could to preserve the ethnic identity of himself and his children, teaching them the language he had learned only incompletely earlier.

            Artyom’s story calls attention to a distinction that is not often made by outside observers. Xenophobic attitudes and actions among Russians are not directed at all non-Russians but rather at those who look or speak differently. Those non-Russians who look like Russians and speak Russian generally escape such hostility.

            Thus, in many cases what is described as “merely” xenophobia is in fact openly racist and should be recognized and fought on that basis. For background on this phenomenon and the ways it is manifested in the Russian Federation, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/07/in-rf-members-of-nations-who-physically.html.

Etkind Sees a Dangerous Continuity in American ‘Russian Studies’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 26 – Aleksandr Etkind, a Russian cultural historian at Vienna’s Central European University, sees a dangerous and even self-defeating continuity in “Russian studies” in the United States since the end of World War II and one threatening to extend into the future as well.

            He makes this point by offering what he calls on his Facebook page “a brief history of American ‘Russian studies’” as that discipline responded or failed to respond to changes in the USSR, Russia and the post-Soviet world (echofm.online/opinions/kratkaya-istoriya-amerikanskoj-nauki-o-rossii).

            In the 1950s, during the Cold War, America’s Russianists said that “the people are wonderful, the Kremlin is to blame for everything, we will hold back, and no change is needed.”

            In the 1980s, at the time of perestroika, these US specialists said that “let them be angry but we won’t give them any money” and expressed hopes that the USSR would not break apart, again insisting “we will hold back and no change is needed.”

            In the 1990s, with the collapse of the USSR, many of these specialist said that this was “a pity,” but added that “let’s give them money and we’ll make some for ourselves.” But again underlying that, “we will hold back and no change is needed.”

            In the 2000s, many of these people said that it was “too bad” that they couldn’t earn money,” arguing that “’Russia is a normal country’” and insisting that “America is to blame for everything.” And then adding as always “we will hold back and no change is needed.

            In the 2010s, they said “it will be a pity if Russia doesn’t disintegrate; but then these specialists added “we must restrain ourselves and no change is needed.”

            In the 2020s, many of these experts expressed the wish that Ukraine not win, arguing that the current Russian regime is “no worse than others” and that things were “so good there when I was young … We will hold back and no change is needed.”

            And in the 2030s, Etkind predicts, these same people will be forced to acknowledge that Russia as broken up, although that is too bad because “it was the norm.” And they will again say: “let’s give them money and we’ll make money for ourselves,” adding only that “we will hold back and no change is needed.”

Small Business in Russia Suffering from Oligarchs ‘No Less’ than Wage Earners, Novichkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 25 – Russians are so used to thinking almost in Marxist terms about the clash between workers and capitalists that they are failing to notice that in Russia today, small businessmen are suffering from the actions of the oligarchs “no less” than are wage earners, according to economist Nikolay Novichkov.

            The Just Russia Duma deputy argues that it is critically important “not to confuse the capitalist and the entrepreneur,” given that the former seeks ties with the government and state capitalism while the latter seeks competition and the development of the market (mk.ru/economics/2026/02/25/predprinimateli-protiv-kapitalistov-kak-zashhitit-ot-oligarkhov-malyy-biznes.html).

            Novichkov points to the political divisions that this difference produced at the end of imperial Russia, and he cites the words of Chinese communist reformer Deng Xiaoping to the effect that “socialism is a market and competition while capitalism is monopolies and oligopolies.”

            In Russia today, “the role of small and mid-sized entrepreneurship in society is colossal,” the deputy says, involving some 25 million people and paying a large share of taxes. But the oligarchs work with the state against small business and nowhere more successfully than keeping other Russians from recognizing that small business suffers from the oligarchs as much as they.

            Unfortunately, Novichkov says, unlike in 1917 when the SRs did so, there is no Russian political party representing small business and the workers who benefit from that stratum of the economy; and consequently, the oligarchs combined with the state have almost a free hand to set the economic course in Putin’s Russia.

Draft Duma Law Bans All Face Coverings in Public – Except for Siloviki and Members of Russian Community

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 24 – A group of 20 KPRF deputies has introduced a draft law that would ban the wearing of wearing niqabs, balaclavas, and any other head coverings that prevent facial recognition but exempts from that restriction siloviki and members of the Russian Community organization that often works with the police.

            The proposal (rtvi.com/news/protiv-nikabonosczev-v-gosdumu-vnesli-zakonoproekt-o-zaprete-nosheniya-masok-na-ulicze/) is the latest Moscow effort to ban niqabs worn by many of Russia’s Muslim women, but its ban on all other head coverings by others while exempting the police and the Russian Community is certainly the more important.

             On the one hand, many Russians given the cold climate in which they live regularly wear balaclavas and won’t be happy about the adoption of such a ban; but on the other, those concerned about human rights and especially those of dissenters and minority groups will be alarmed, especially by the exemption for the Russian Community.

            That is because the Russian Community, which poses as a defender of the Russian legal system, often violates the law in doing so; and this new proposal even if it is not adopted – and the absence of United Russia backing makes that outcome likely – is a signal that the powers that be are quite interested in using masked men without official IDs to intimidate Russians.

            As such, what the KPRF deputies are proposing represents yet another step down in the direction of bully boy tactics against the opponents of the Kremlin and the further degradation of any pretense that the Russian Federation under Putin is a law-based state – even if the powers are using “laws” to achieve that end.