FSB Now ‘Main Operator’ of Repressive Policy and Its Focus has Shifted from the Capitals to the Russian Periphery and Occupied Territories, ‘Re-Russia’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 30 – The Judicial Department of the Russian Supreme Court has restricted its release of details about politically sensitive cases but the Re-Russia portal has examined the data available and has concluded that the FSB is now in charge of repression and its focus has shifted from the capitals to the Russian periphery and occupied Ukrainian territories.

            While many observers have concluded that the number of politically motivated cases was roughly the same in 2025 as in 2024, the Re-Russia portal says that its own figures show that there was a rise of about 70 percent, most of which can outside of the capitals of Russia and within occupied Ukraine (re-russia.net/analytics/0467/).

            Growth in the number of politically sensitive cases in those two areas reflects the FSB’s decision to focus on occupied areas of Ukraine in order to support the Russian war effort there and on regions and republics far from Moscow which it had ignored earlier but where other forms of political actions are now on the rise. 

After Protests Brought Arrests, Azerbaijanis who Support Right to Wear the Hijab have Shifted How They are Resisting with Some Teaching Their Daughters at Home, Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 30 – In early October, the Azerbaijani authorities insisted that pupils and teachers in state schools could no longer wear the hijab because in their view that represents a threat to the secular nature of the Azerbaijani system. Such protests have stopped but resistance is continuing, with some families pulling their daughters out of school, Kavkaz-Uzel reports.

            That resistance underscores just how committed many Azerbaijani parents are to having their daughters wear the hijab and how much anger the decision of the authorities have stirred up (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/427925; for background on these protests, see jamestown.org/bakus-hijab-ban-sparks-protests-in-azerbaijan-and-creates-problems-with-turkiye/).

            While parents can pull their children out of school as long as they provide alternative instruction in private schools or at home, teachers who wanted to wear the hijab have no such fall back position: they must either give in to the official rules or face dismissal from their jobs, something that appears to be happening in an increasing number of cases.

            What makes this worrisome is that many of these parents may be far more inclined to listen to and even follow underground religious leaders who defend what the parents want but who have even larger agendas regarding secular Azerbaijan. To the extent that happens, what may seem to some like a tempest in a teapot may become something far larger in the future. 

Of 25 Memorials to Victims of Soviet Power Destroyed Since 2022, 21 were Devoted to Non-Russian Victims, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 30 -- That Russian officials and Russians on a private basis have been defacing and destroying monuments to the victims of Stalin’s terror since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine in 2022 has received a great deal of attention, but Horizontal Russia reports that 21 of the 25 destroyed in this period were devoted to non-Russian victims.

            Among the groups whose monuments were destroyed are the Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Germans, Latvians and Hungarians, with the Poles lone being identified (in most cases along with others) in 18 of the monuments desecrated or demolished in the last five years (semnasem.org/articles/2026/10/29/oni-ubivayut-nas-potomkov).

            As the news agency which covers developments in the Russian Federation beyond Moscow’s ring road points out, this deprives these peoples of a way to maintain their memories and thus identities and is a conscious policy of the center rather than being some accident as some might think.

Since 2022, Russians have been in a Kind of Memorial Service for the Passing of Everything Making Them Fully Human, Kolesnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 28 – In an article provocatively entitled “A Panikhid for Humanity, Andrey Kolesnikov argues that since Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine five years ago, Russians have been part of a memorial service for the passing of everything that makes them fully human – morality, statehood, and a rejection of independent thinking.

            Crying for the deceased, the Russian commentator says, is where humanity begins because it makes the individual the center of life and underscores just “how important a single and unique person is on this side of the grave” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/10/28/panikhida-po-cheloveku).

            “Totalitarian systems do not know the human self, they only know the ‘we’  in which you can dissolve, become invisible and accept for yourself “the yoke with the rattles yes scourge”. And there is only one ‘’” that equates itself with the country, the Motherland, the people, the state, society, and the mass “we” should agree with this only ‘I’ in everything.”

            That is what Stalin achieved and it is what a small group of intellectual recognized near the end of Soviet times, Kolesnikov says; now, it is what Putin and his regime have sought to recreate again, by destroying the central figure of humanity, the individual, and subordinating him to the mass, opening the way to mass crimes.

            In the 20^th century, the most horrific crimes are “mass crimes, those in which not only the victims are in the millions but the criminal is an organized mass,” he continues. What has been happening over the last five years is that that approach from which Russians had begun to turn away is being restored.

            Understanding what is going on is the first step to opposing and overcoming it, he says. “This psychology of subordination and self-justification in one group of accomplices works on the example of large communities, it explains everything in the mechanisms of conformity of the masses, besides protected from the torment of conscience and shame by distancing from the fact that violence occurs somewhere.”

            Kolesnikov continues: “Today, the semi-totalitarian system has entered a new quality: it has become much more open in demonstrating brutality: the militant dialect of the central television talk show and the logic of destroying the enemy have become the language of pro-Kremlin experts and even state policy.”

“No one will now refute Stalin’s “right”, on the contrary, state repression is justified by positive historical experience. It is no longer a legacy of late Soviet, it is the heritage of 1937, 1938, 1949 and other terrible years. Totalitarian practices of subordination and self-justification are reproduced in an impeccable way.”

Russian Nationalities Agency Collects Enormous Range of Data on Ethnic and Religious Relations and Passes It to FSB and Law Enforcement, New ‘Arctida’ Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 29 – Compared to siloviki agencies, the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (FADN) attracts remarkably little attention, but it plays a key role in the work of the FSB and Russian law enforcement agencies by gathering and then passing along data from its countrywide monitoring system of ethnic and religious relations, a new Arctida study says.

            The FADN monitoring system tracks online content, news coverage, and social media posts, and the agency want to expand this to include messaging aps, Arctida says.  Most commentaries on this suggest that what the FADN monitoring system is for is helping formulate policy rather than bringing charges (arctida.io/en/projects/russias-peoples).

              But in fact, a major part of the FADN’s monitoring is devoted to identifying those who may be in violation of the law, something that should not surprise anyone because most of the senior FADN officials involved are either FSB officers, married to them, or served in the FSB earlier.

              Having these FSB links has given FADN a certain amount of defense against those who would transfer the monitoring function to the FSB’s second department; but there are signs that the FSB’s patience may be running thin and that FADN will lose this function, one that dominates much of its activity. In that event, its overall role will be reduced.

              But the Kremlin may prefer that FADN keep this monitoring service because there will be less sensitivity in some groups if a nominally apolitical group is doing it, even if it is immediately handing over any information it does collect to the FSB and law enforcement bodies.

Development of Siberia between the Yenesei and Lena Wouldn't Benefit Moscow or Investors Foreign or Domestic, Verkhoturov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 27 – Many like to talk about “Siberianization” and “the mastering of Siberia,” Dmitry Verkhoturov says; but most do so without considering the real costs involved in doing so and thus overstate what one or another project will cost and what it will bring in return.

            To compensate for the overly optimistic projections of such people, the Siberian economist says, it is worth considering the development of just one portion of Siberia, the lands between the Yenisei and Lena rivers, the site ofc enormous natural wealth and almost no infrastructure (sibmix.com/?doc=23297).

            If one calculates the costs involved of developing the resources and then transporting them out for foreign sale, one can easily see, Verkhoturov says, that “under prevailing conditions,” development of that region “will not benefit investors either domestic who are currently suffering under huge debts and losses or foreign ones either.    

            There are indeed enormous deposits of natural resources in that region, he continues, including potash salts, iron, copper, coal and other minerals as well. But for these to be economically viable, mines must developed with populations brought in and housed to support them and transportation infrastructure created where none now exists.

            The transportation infrastructure that will have to be built includes the construction of a railway and connecting roads (about 4.8 trillion rubles), a pipeline costing 1.6 trillion ruble with annual operating costs only adding to those totals. Building mining and population infrastructure will require another 5.6 trillion rubles.

            Moreover, Verkhoturov says, those estimates are likely low given the extreme conditions of the Evenk region; and so assessments of cost must begin at 15 trillion rubles and will likely to much higher, and the maintenance of both the mine, human and transportation infrastructure will add trillions more.

            Assuming price stability, lack of sales restrictions, and low inflation, Verkhoturov says, the mining industry from that region would be about 900 billion rubles a year, leading the paying off of the investment cost in 16.6 years. But if prices fall as China is pressing to take place, it would take 46.8 years for the project to recover investment costs.

            The problems these costs imposed are exacerbated by the difficulties of finding the necessary capital. If Moscow borrowed the 15 trillion, it would have to pay three billion a year in interest alone, something that by itself would make the project anything but profitable for the foreseeable future.s

            Foreign investors would like face similar challenges and thus would make demands for the kind of side payments that would make such a development even more unprofitable, the Siberian economist says, adding that what he has described for one region of Siberia would be multiplied many times for the entire space to be developed. 

At a Time of Crisis, Estonians Again Turning Ever More Often to Their Distant Roots, Prozes Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 27 – Estonians are showing an ever greater interest in the Finno-Ugric roots of their culture as they seek to reaffirm the uniqueness of their identity at a time of growing international crisis, according to Jaak Prozes of the Fenno-Ugric movement in that Baltic country says.

            “Without the native Finno-Ugric context,” he says, “the history of Estonia would look like a simple borrowing from the Baltic Germans, the Swedes and the Russians,” but “the ancient linguistic community gives the culture of Estonians a true identity” (kultuur.postimees.ee/8571021/kultuurimaja-pikk-kriisiaeg-on-pannud-eestlasi-oma-soome-ugri-identiteedist-enam-tuge-otsima and mariuver.eu/2026/10/26/krizis-vernul-estoncev-k-finno-ugorskim-istokam/).

            Other Estonians say that the turn to the Finno-Ugric world happened a half century ago and played a major role in the drive to the recovery of independence; but with independence, attention to those roots weakened. Now, however, it is strengthening again because of uncertainties in the world.

            This trend of interest in the distant past is found throughout the former Soviet space, with Russians looking back to Rus, Kazakhs to the Golden Horde, and others to historically distant but psychologically close communities from which they sprung and that continue to give them meaning.

              Thus, the Estonian case is not unique except in its details but rather a reflection of a broader and deeper trend that is likely to become more rather than less important as the world crisis of today deepens.