Moscow’s Difficulties in Defining Who is ‘a People of Russia’ Intensifying Conflicts among Russia’s Parties as Duma Elections Approach

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 8 – Putin has proclaimed 2026 to be the Year of the Unity of the Peoples of Russia,” but officials and politicians are now locked in a fight over defining which groups are on this list and what rights they should have, issues two Nezavisimaya Gazeta journalists say are sharpening divisions among Russia’s political parties in advance of the Duma elections.

            Russian officials and politicians have been debating this issue since the 1990s when most believed that “a people of Russia” was any ethnic minority inside Russia without an independent state of its own abroad. Such a definition was not unproblematic but has become unsustainable as Moscow has given those classed as “a people of Russia” greater rights than those without it.

            The latest such conflict, Darya Garmonenko and Ivan Rodin of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, say involves the Russian government’s decision that the 1996 law governing national cultural autonomies needs to be updated and handed that task to the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (FADN) (ng.ru/politics/2026-04-08/1_9471_law.html).

            Many Russian nationalists, the KPRF and the For Justice Party do not want to allow national territorial autonomies based on immigrant groups from Central Asia and the Caucasus to have the right to demand that local governments set up special educational arrangements for them as it now the case.

            In its draft, either because it is poorly written or because it reflects the intentions of someone in Putin regime, FADN has offered language that appears to retain the 1996 provisions even though its language has changed. Thus, the government agency is on a collision course with the opposition parties.

                The situation is exacerbated not only because of the upcoming election but because under other Russian legislation, it is FADN which maintains the official list, such as it is, of which nations are “peoples of Russia” and which are not, thus raising the stakes about the future not only of migrant NCAs but of all others.

            Often in the past, observers have suggested that elections can be the occasion for a sharpening of ethnic tensions in the Russian Federation. This year, the Russian government has made that a certainty by its talk about “the peoples of Russia” and simultaneously calling for a redraft of the legislation one of the most important components of its nationality policy rests.

With 11 Percent of Its Cargo Cars at Risk of Falling Apart, Russian Rail an Accident Waiting to Happen

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – The Moscow Institute on Natural Monopolies says that 11 percent of the cargo cars on Russian railways – 158,000 – are in bad shape and need immediate repairs, a figure that is almost twice as many as last year, a reflection of the fact that the number being repaired each month fell from nearly 40,000 a month in 2024 to 20,000 per month in 2025.

            Because the number of cars needing repair is so large, the railways now don’t have the reserves they did to replace cars that should be taken offline immediately. And that in turn means accidents are becoming ever more likely (vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2026/04/09/1188967-na-seti-rzhd-viroslo-chislo-neispravnih-gruzovih-vagonov).

            There is little hope for a turnaround anytime soon. Because of reductions in earnings and government subsidies, the number of new cargo wagons coming online to replace the aging ones at risk of accidents was down by almost 50 percent in the first two months of 2026 as compared to the same period a year earlier.

            Many but of course far from all of these problems are a direct result of the Kremlin’s shifting of funding from services like railroads to the needs of the Russian military now fighting in Ukraine. 

Vilnius Stepping Up Pressure on Russian Orthodox Church There, Moscow Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 10 – Relations between the Lithuanian government and the Russian Orthodox Church in Lithuania have been far less fraught than those between the Estonian and Latvian governments and Orthodox hierarchies in those two Baltic countries, at least in part because the share of Lithuanians who are Orthodox is so small, less than five percent.

            But since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, relations between the state and the Orthodox Church in Lithuania have deteriorated, at least in part because the church remains canonically linked to the Moscow Patriarchate and its leaders usually but not always follow that patriarchate’s line.

            (That has led some Orthodox priests there to appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople to form an alternative Orthodox see in Lithuania and take them under its protection. On that, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/04/vilnius-expects-constantinople-to.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/lithuania-may-soon-have-two-orthodox.html.)

            Now, the situation in Lithuania may becoming more tense. Earlier this year, the Lithuanian government’s Department of State Security issued a report identifying the Orthodox church in that country to be “a national security threat,” a statement that was somewhat softened by other officials but has provoked a sharp response by the Orthodox Church there.

            On March 17, the Diocese of Vilnius and Lithuania declared that statements like those of Lithuanian officials “foster a negative attitude toward Lithuania’s second-largest traditional religious community” and ignores that the church’s links with Moscow “do not “hinder use from remaining law-abiding citizens and patriots of Lithuania.”

            In reporting this development, Moscow commentator Vsevolod Shimov says that this exchange suggests that tensions between the state and the Orthodox Church in Lithuania are nonetheless likely to deteriorate (fondsk.ru/news/2026/04/10/litovskie-vlasti-obvinyayut-pravoslavnuyu-cerkov-v-ugrozakh-nacionalnoy).

Ever More Russia’s Federal Subjects Imposing Fines on Firms that Don’t Hire Enough Veterans of Putin’s War

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 8 – In yet another sign of how difficult it is going to be to reintegrate veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine into the Russian economy, firms across the country are refusing to hire enough veterans to meet Moscow-set quotas; and ten regions so far have responded by announcing plans to impose fines on companies that don’t hire enough veterans.

            Such measures are now at the stage of discussion but many appear to be near passage in many of the regions including Moscow, predominantly ethnic Russian regions and krays and in the Altai and Tatarstan republics (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/08/10-i-rossiiskii-region-nachnet-shtrafovat-biznes-za-otkaz-brat-na-rabotu-uchastnikov-svo-a192109).

            Most of these proposed laws require firms with more than 100 employees to reserve up to two percent of their vacancies for veterans of the war in Ukraine. That such legislation is necessary reflects the fact that many firms don’t want to take these veterans on, with the push to do so coming not from the center but the regions.

            That is presumably because the Kremlin does not want to advertise either resistance to such measures, resistance that undercuts its line about broad support for the war and for helping veterans, and so thus sets the quotas but then expects the federal subjects to take the actions necessary to try to meet them.

Interest in Rare Earths Transforming Central Asia and South Caucasus from Periphery to Center of International System

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – Just as oil transformed the Arab countries from an international backwater to the c of geoeconomics and geopolitics in the 20^th century, so too growing interest in rare earth minerals is now transforming Central Asia and the South Caucasus into the center of international competition and transformation in the 21^st.

            The critical role of rare earths in the world economy and the reserves of many of them in Central Asia and the South Caucasus is attracting ever more attention to these regions and concern there about how to respond so that they don’t simply become raw material suppliers to others (eurasiatoday.ru/redkozemelnaya-revolyutsiya-pochemu-tsa-i-kavkaz-stanovyatsya-novym-tsentrom-mirovoj-sily/).

            Experts and officials across the region are now focusing on how to use the interest of the West and of China in these reserves as the way to transform the economies of their countries so that they will be able to compete at the top level with other states rather than remaining backwaters.

            Both the interest of foreign powers in their rare earth reserves and concerns about how to use that interest to promote development are now fueling regional cooperation efforts in both areas so that the countries are not played off against each other but rather work together to boost their regions, according to an Azerbaijani commentator (minval.az/news/124525157).

            Kazakhstan, which has the largest proved reserves in this part of the world according to the US Geological Survey, has taken the lead, something that will help Astana become a regional leader and also ensure that Central Asia and the South Caucasus in this  area at least will work more closely together than many now expect.

Gorbachev Wanted to Block Denunciation of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact's Secret Protocols, Tsipko Says New Memoir Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – In his recent memoirs, Igor Smirnov, who in 1985-1990 worked as an aide to Vadim Medvedev on the staff of the CPSU Central Committee, says that Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to block the denunciation of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact but was blocked by Medvedev from doing so.

            As senior Russian commentator Aleksandr Tsipko, who worked with all three, writes in a new article on the way in which perestroika evolved, says the key role Medvedev played was something the latter did not stress in his own 2015 memoirs but that is now coming to light thanks to Smirnov’s (ng.ru/ideas/2026-04-09/7_9472_leader.html).

            Tsipko points out that as Smirnov now recounts, “it was not Gorbachev but rather Vadim Medvedev who initiated the condemnation by the USSR Council of Peoples’ Deputies in 1989 of the secret protocols to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” which partitioned Eastern Europe between the two dictatorships.

            According to Tsipko, the most unexpected aspect of this for him is the fact that “Medvedev has to argue with Gorbachev for the right of the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies to condemn these secret protocols” because “Gorbachev was categorically opposed to accusing Stalin of collaborating with Hitler and did everything he could to conceal the originals of the protocols.” (On their eventual publication, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/for-first-time-moscow-publishes.html.)

            And the Russian commentator quotes Smirnov: “Valery Boldin—who at the time served as head of the General Department of the CPSU Central Committee (and later as Chief of Staff to the President of the USSR)—recalls how, at Gorbachev’s request, he effortlessly located the originals of the secret protocols within the archives of the CPSU Central Committee Politburo.”

            “Upon seeing them -- along with a map of a Poland divided into two parts, bearing Stalin’s characteristic three-letter signature, ‘I. St.’—Gorbachev remarked: ‘There is no need to show anything to anyone. I will personally inform those who need to know.’ Later, he demanded that they be destroyed; Boldin, however, refused to do so without a specific official directive.”

            According to Tsipko who is relying in this case both on Smirnov’s memoirs and his own recollections, “a similar story unfolded regarding the public disclosure of the decision made by Stalin and members of the CPSU Central Committee Politburo to organize the execution of Polish prisoner-of-war officers in Katyn.”

Kazakhstan to Modernize and Expand Highway Network to Support Domestic and International Trade

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 7 – Kazakhstan has announced plans to modernize and expand its highway network both to integrate that Central Asia country more completely and to play a key role in international trade both east-west between China and Europe and north-south between Russia and the Indian Ocean.

            Most of the countries in the former Soviet space have focused on railways and to a lesser extent on air routes. In this, they have followed the pattern of the Russian Federation which relative to the size of the country has the most under-developed highway system of any country on earth.

            But Kazakhstan has adopted a different approach, one driven both by its own domestic needs and by its recognition of the problems of intermodal trade that have slowed Russian routes where the requirement to change the gage of railways from international standards to Russian ones remains a serious bottleneck.

            Last month, Astana announced that it plans to widen existing  roads from two lane to four lane and to ensure that all of them have regular service stations and internet connectivity and to build new roads to connect existing ones (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-03-19--kazahstan-usilivaet-pozicii-na-karte-evrazijskoj-logistiki-novyj-plan-razvitija-avtodorog-do-2028-goda-86558).

            Russian commentators are impressed, an indication that Moscow too may increase the role of highways in domestic integration and international transit, thus reversing a situation in which roads like fools are two of that country’s greatest problems (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-04-07--kazahstan-zapuskaet-novyj-plan-razvitija-avtodorog-radi-usilenija-evrazijskoj-logistiki-86913).

            One of the most impressive features of Kazakhstan’s plans is its intention to upgrade and build highways with concrete rather than macadem and to ensure that the ground under the roads is far more compacted than the Soviet and Russian approach had used. If Astana succeeds, its roads will carry heavier loads and last longer than their Russian counterparts.