Russia Needs a State Ideology so Its Soldiers Will Know What They are Fighting and Dying For, Veteran Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – Ever since Russia adopted its 1993 constitution which among other things banned the declaration of a state ideology, there have been voices in Russia urging that Moscow amend the country’s basic law so as to put in place a formal declaration of what Russia is about.

            Because of the Soviet experience, most have been reluctant to take that step; and because those of a liberal persuasion believed that the best chance for their values to remain in place was not to amend the constitution, something that would be difficult and raise more questions about the direction Putin is taking Russia.

            But the idea of having a formal state ideology may now be gaining wider support because one Russian veteran of Putin’s war in Ukraine says Russians in general and Russians fighting and dying for it in particular need to know what their country is about, something they believe only a state ideology can supply (svpressa.ru/politic/article/536357/).

            Lt.Col. Ivan Berstovsky, a Hero of Russia, called for the constitution to be amended so as to make cleaer to all that Russia is a country “based on traditional values” with “a unique identity” and won’t change with the winds at some time in the future as could happen if there isn’t such an ideological statement.

            That kind of appeal is likely to influence many around Putin and thus could prove to be the event that opens the door to yet another revenant of the Soviet past, an official state ideology with all the features it would have and all the institutions that would have to be charged with promoting it.

Abortion Tourism on the Rise in Russia with Regions Where Abortions are Restricted Now Surrounded by Those where Abortions have Increased in Number, Sakevich Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – Abortion tourism, widely known in the United States, is now on the rise in Russia, leading to a situation in which those federal subjects which have restricted access to abortions are increasingly surrounded byregions where the number of abortions have risen, according to Viktoria Sakevich.

            The Higher School of Economics demographer says that it is thus very unlikely that restricting abortions region by region as the Putin regime has been doing will have the demographic consequences the Kremlin wants (“Abortion Policy and Abortion Prevalence Globally and in Russia” (in Russian), Demografichekoye obozreniye 2026 13: 3: 4-28.)

            The leaders of regions where abortions have gone up and thus their own standing with the Kremlin has gone down routinely complain about this development, but even were Moscow to ban abortions  for the country as a whole, that would not depress their number as much as many assume.

            Instead, in that event, Russia women would either travel abroad to get thisprocedure if they could afford to, Sakevich says; or, as the experience of other countries shows, they will turn to illegal providers with horrific consequences for the women, their children, and Russian society as a whole.

To Restart Finno-Ugric Movement, Estonia, Finland and Hungary Should Convene a World Congress and Involve Diasporas, Leaders of Finno-Ugric Capitals Body Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – On the Day of Related Finno-Ugric Peoples in Estonia, four leaders of the Finno-Ugric Capitals organization have called on colleagues in Estonia, Finland and Hungary to convene a world congress of Finno-Ugric peoples and to include representatives of Finno-Ugric peoples who have fled Russia among its participants.

            Such a meeting, Oliver Loode and Liisa Sabolotni of Estonia, Aleksi Palkangas of Finland and Peter Aranyi of Hungary argue will help restore the movement to where it was before 2022 when Putin’s war in Ukraine cut off many Finno-Ugric peoples from each other and from the three Finno-Ugric countries (capitals.uralic.org/news/call_to_revitalize_ru/).

            The reason the four are convinced that this is the best way forward is that it would restore the efforts the three Finno-Ugric countries made before World War II, efforts that involved emigres from Finno-Ugric groups still living under Soviet control and inspired those peoples by offering such unity.

            The four call on the three Finno-Ugric countries to “carefully examine the history of Finno-Ugric cooperation before World War II with the goal of operating on it and adapting it to the realties of the 21^st century,” including involving Finno-Ugric diasporas around the world and especially those including representatives of people within the borders of the Russian Federation.

            Such an effort promises much greater success than attempts to revive the network of arrangements that existed before Putin launched his expanded war of aggression against Ukraine.

Siltification of Caspian Could End Container Trade Across that Sea By 2028 Unless Massive Dredging Begins Now, World Bank Study Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – The drying up of the Caspian Sea as a result of climate change and increased human use has already reduced container shipping across that body of water between Central Asia and the Caucasus and could end it altogether by 2028 unless the littoral countries begin massive dredging campaigns to keep the sea lanes open.

            That conclusion is suggested by a new World Bank study which urges such dredging lest the sea stop being and east-west trade bridge and become instead an obstacle to such trade and has been played up by Moscow commentators as a reason countries should avoid the middle corridor route and instead send such trade through Russia.

            (For the World Bank study which was released at the end of September, see worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2026/09/28/trans-caspian-transport-corridor-investments-spur-growth-and-create-millions-jobs; for Russian interpretations of it, see bugin.info/detail/vostochnyi-ekspress-24-tr/ru.)

            Moscow writers have highlighted the study’s conclusion that four major Caspian ports – Aktau, Kuryka, Baku and Turkmenbashi – have already been silted up to the point that they can handle only about half of the container cargo they were dealing with and that if things continue, within a year or two, they will have to stop handling such cargo entirely. 

            Not surprisingly, the Russian commentators don’t mention the Russian ports, although the World Bank study does, and thus they downplay the impact of global warming and increased human use of water on those ports and the ability of Russia to continue and expand north-south trade with Iran.

            Clearly, what the World Bank would like to see is a massive dredging effort, something that is possible but will be enormously expensive, almost certainly requiring not only spending by the littoral states most immediately affected but also by countries further afield who hope to use the Caspian as part of the Middle corridor.

Russia Faces Challenge of Moving ‘From a Strong Power to a Strong State,’ Moscow Political Scientist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 13 – Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has constructed “a strong power” (vlast) but now faces the challenges of building “a strong state” (gosudarstvo), Nikolay Mironov says. Otherwise, Moscow will constantly need the intervention of the top leader to ensure that his goals are followed lest being confident that they will be.

            That is no small thing, the political scientist at the Moscow Center for Applied Research and Programs says, because otherwise however strong the vlast may be, it will be compromised by an inability to ensure that its decisions are implemented without the individual leader in charge constantly intervening (ng.ru/ideas/2026-10-13/8_9602_state.html).

            In well-designed modernizing states, Mironov argues, “political leadership sets the long-term direction for development and retains the capacity to ensure that decisions are implemented. But day-to-day management requires a degree of autonomy for the professional administrative apparatus.”

            “Without a political impetus, a bureaucracy may eventually succumb to inertia,” he continues; but “at the same time, if constant interference from above leads the bureaucracy to wait for instructions in situations where it could perfectly well make decisions on its own,” that can compromise the ability of the strong state to act.

            “Different countries have struck this balance in different ways, and not always successfully,” the political scientist continues. He makes his points by talking about countries other than the Russian Federation, but it is obvious that he intends his conclusions about the need for this balance to be applied there.

             Mironov suggests that finding this balance is ever more important because it is ever more a challenge to the political leadership: “As an economy grows more complex, an increasing number of decisions must inevitably be delegated to the professional administrative apparatus.”

But “at the same time, every policy area must have a clearly designated person in charge, vested with sufficient authority. The role of the political leadership is to monitor whether the chosen course is yielding the expected results. If the initial concept does not work, the system should allow for it to be adjusted or abandoned altogether.”

Once this is understood, he suggests, it will be obvious to all that “the strength of a state is ultimately determined not by the scale of its intervention but by its capacity to transform a chosen priority into a functional mechanism—and to modify that mechanism when necessary” Because that is how “a strong government evolves into a strong state.

Migrant Workers in Russia Rely on Family and Friends to Find Work and Housing, Russian Government’s Migration Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – Migrant workers in Russia rely on family and friends to help them find work and housing because they do not trust either government or other private sources of information about such things, according to RosMigratsiya, the Russian government’s portal about migration.

            That was just one of the characteristics of migrants in Russia today that the portal released in the course of preparing a portrait of the average worker migrant there (https://росмиграция.рф/опросы/кто-он-сегодня-трудовой-мигрант-в-россии-актуальный-портрет-по-данным-опроса).

            Other key findings include the following: the average migrant from Central Asia is 32, is not accompanied by members of his immediate family, has a secondary education and is employed almost exclusively to perform physical labor in construction and other related branches.

            In addition to a lack of trust in Russian sources of information, migrants said that they faced problems with the language barrier, bureaucratic procedures, preparing documents, and frequent failures of employers to pay them their wages on a timely basis, especially in cases where they had not signed any official agreement.

Nearly 20 Percent of Articles in Russian Media Now Contain AI Generated Content, Study Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – The share of articles in the Russian media with AI generated content has grown from les than 0.1 percent at the end of 2022 to 18 percent in the second quarter of 2026, according to Kirill Pshinnik who examined more than 250,000 articles from 174 Russian publications.

            The co-founder of the Zerokoder online university used two open AI-text detectors, OpenPangram-2B and Qwen3-4B-Detect and then combined their findings to identify which articles showed the presence of AI-generated materials (forbes.ru/tekhnologii/570361-neceloveceskim-azykom-pocti-20-statej-v-rossijskih-smi-imeut-priznaki-ii-generacii).

            According to Pshinnik, articles with AI-generated content were on average significantly shorter than articles not including such content, less likely to include quotations from anyone, and less commonly found in major news stories than in those about everyday life, although they have been increasing in number in the former as well.

            He and others expect the share of articles with AI-generated content to continue to increase and suggest that such content will allow publications to do more with less and therefore is not always the danger that many think. At the same time, however, journalists, editors and readers need to be aware that this content is different and limit its negative impacts.