Russia’s Universities Now Forced to Provide Students with Knowledge Its Secondary Schools Should Have But Don’t, Patrushev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 31 – Secondary schools in the Russian Federation have such low standards that Russia’s universities are forced to spend an enormous amount of time providing students with knowledge that the country’s secondary schools used to and should but no longer do, Nikolay Patrushev says.

            This sad fact of life, the Presidential assistant who head the country’s Maritime Board, told a meeting devoted to improving the quality of mathematics and natural science training in Russia, isn’t reflected in test scores but in life itself first in the universities and then in the professions (nakanune.ru/news/2026/3/31/22865093/).

            According to Nakanune journalist Yevgeny Chernyshov, Patrushev was likely basing his argument on the basis of a study which showed that “the majority of students” at St. Petersburg’s Mining University “possess virtually no familiarity with physics” when they arrive and thus have to be brought up to speed by the university itself.

            Pastrushev said that he is convinced that “it is already too late to try to fix things at the university level. Instead, the schools must be improved rather than praised, something that will require that “teachers have the opportunity to focus on teaching rather than on having up to two full-time loads just to make ends meet.”

            Specifically, the Putin aide called for “salary increases for mathematics, physics and chemistry teachers, warning that as a result of a lack of proficiency in these subjects among graduates, Russia will soon find itself with absolutely no specialists left to serve the shipbuilding industry and the navy.”

            What Patrushev did not say but what is likely on his mind and even more on those of his listeners is that the sad state of pre-university education in the Russian Federation is to a large extent the result of Vladimir Putin’s educational optimization programs and shift of money from schools to finance the war in Ukraine. 

‘Tatar Lobby’ in Moscow Plays Key Role Now and Could Play Larger One in the Future, Three Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – What is often called “the Tatar lobby” in Moscow -- the numerous officials and businessmen both ethnic Tatar and ethnic Russian who work in the Russian capital -- have long attracted attention there and in other republics for their role in promoting and defending the interests of Tatarstan there, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

            (For background on this group, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/bashkirs-upset-by-power-of-tatar-lobby.html, prufy.ru/news/kazan/176823-ot_mordovii_do_khabarovska_kak_tatarskoe_lobbi_vozglavilo_ministerstva_i_regiony_v_8_subektakh_rf/ and realnoevremya.ru/articles/193598-v-moskve-vse-familii-izvestnyh-tatarstanskih-upravlencev-na-sluhu.)

            The IdelReal portal asked three experts –Ruslan Aysin, a Tatar political émigré and activist, Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter and now Putin critic who earlier worked in Bashkortostan, and Irina Busygina, formerly at the HSE and now at Harvard’s Davis Center, for their views on the Tatar lobby and its future (idelreal.org/a/tatarskoe-lobbi-i-predely-loyalnosti-gotova-li-kazan-k-samostoyatelnosti/33714210.html).

            Aysin says that Tatarstan’s political leadership posses “significant lobbying capabilities” but ones that tend to be concentrated in specific areas of importance to the republic such as construction. Their role there has become possible because “Moscow views the Tatarstan elite as highly effective and sufficiently loyal.” That gives this elite “a special value.”

            Sometime the lobby is successful in promoting a cause or delaying the implementation of a Moscow decision but that its position is “behavioral rather than strictly political” and in any case reflects the views of Kazan rather than being an independent actor in its own right. That could change, however, if Moscow weakened and could no longer eliminate rivals.

            Gallyamov says that neither the Kazan elite nor its lobby will push for secession anytime soon but instead will seek to maximize Tatarstan’s influence and freedom of action within the Russian Federation. Both groups resent much that Moscow does but recognize that too actively expressing such views would be dangerous.

            And Busygina observes that the Tatar lobby is an intriguing object for study because she does not know of any other region or republic which has anything like it -- although all have permanent representations in Moscow that may provide something similar. (On these, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/embassies-of-non-russian-republics.html and indowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/apparently-on-moscows-order-functions.html.)

            She says that there is discontent with Moscow in both Kazan and among the Tatar lobby and that “A weakening of Moscow could serve to expose it. But it is definitely there. However, to openly demonstrate this discontent right now would be tantamount to political suicide. It would be an absolutely irrational move."

She says that what she means by the "weakening of the center" would be Putin’s loss of his current ability to mediate among various groups in the center and have the last word. At present, none of these groups is capable of challenging him.”  But that could change; and if it did, these groups which “loathe one another” and have different visions of the future could act.

In that event, regional and republic capitals and their representatives in Moscow could play a dramatically expanded role in determining the direction Russia will take given the likelihood that some of the competitors for power in the Russian capital will seek them as allies in that struggle.

Kremlin Plans to Declare Memorial Extremist ‘Part of General Trend’ to Crush All Independent Groups and Normalize Repression, Cherkasov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 29 – On April 9, the Russian Supreme Court will hear a suit by the justice ministry to call Memorial and all its branches an extremist organization. There can be little doubt what the decision will be because this is “part of a general trend” to destroy independent social organizations and normalize repression, Aleksandr Cherkasov says.

            This can best be described as a reversal of perestroika and of the work of dissidents at the end of Soviet times who sought to create a societal consensus that “Soviet power  was based on repressions and that such a basis of governance is something abnormal and must not exist,” the longtime Memorial activist says (vot-tak.tv/92349158/zapret-memoriala-v-rossii).

            Russian government efforts to break the consensus the dissidents had created began in the mid-1990s as part of the Yeltsin regime’s efforts to “seize he agenda of the communists and national patriots” and involved both regular celebrations of victory day and the launching of the first Chechen war.

            When Vladimir Putin came to power, he expanded this effort to reverse the memory of the past, a change, Cherkasov says, most prominently symbolized by the shift in how Russians thought about the Great Patriotic War. Earlier, most believed that memory of that conflict meant that it must never happen again. Now, Putin promoted the notion that “we can do it again.”

            Then, the current leader pushed for laws that allowed his regime to declare whole groups extremist or worse and then take action against anyone cooperating with them without having to show that the individual charged had actually done anything. That is the method Stalin used; and now Putin is using exactly the same today.

            “Such changes of the conception of memory regarding the past Soviet terror are part of the politics of the normalization of repression as a method of rule now,” Cherkasov continues. New laws about fakes about the army represent precisely a return to Soviet laws about disseminating false information or conducting anti-Soviet propaganda.

            But what is especially worrisome, the Memorial activist says, is that such an approach normalizes repression now as a means of rue. “’Yes, under Stalin or under Brezhnev,’ it is possible that someone was falsely arrested, but on the whole everything was done correctly!” – that is the message this transformation of memory of the past sends.

            According to Cherkasov, the Putin regime much like its Stalinist predecessor is going through four stages in describing its opponents: first as foreign agents, then as undesirables, then as extremists, and finally as terrorists. “We now are between the third and the fourth,” with movement continuing in the wrong direction.

            Such categorizations not only save time for investigators, prosecutors and judges but make it easier and easier for the regime to crush anyone who doesn’t hew to its line, Cherkasov says, again, just as was the case in Stalin’s time. Everyone needs to recognize what is happening; and those who can must resist in ways that do the least harm to those who oppose such things. 

Kremlin Reducing Support for Population Groups which Can’t Provide Workers or Soldiers More than for Those who Can, Orekh Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – Putin has reduced social spending across the board to finance his war in Ukraine, but he hasn’t done so equally. Instead, Anton Orekh says, he has cut programs for groups that can’t provide workers or soldiers far more deeply than he has for those groups which can do so.

            No one says that people who can’t help the economy or the military are “superfluous,” commentator Anton Orekh says. Instead, the Kremlin talks about fiscal responsibility and national security. But the regime’s message is clear: some Russians are more worthy of support and survival than others (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/30/optimizatsiia-naseleniia).

            This difference helps explain why government spending for young people who won’t be able to be workers or soldiers anytime soon and for the elderly who no longer can serve in those capacities suffer more than others and thus why Russia’s demographic numbers are tanking, the commentator adds.

            He concludes his jeremiad on this point by quoting Russian satirist Mikhail Zhvanetsky’s observation that “patriotism is a precise, clear and well-argumented explanation of why we must live worse than others.” Tragically, Putin’s Russia is not the only country on earth whose government is following his short-sighted and morally indefensible approach.

Putin’s War in Ukraine has “Killed” TV Because Moscow’s Inability to Win has Undermined Russians’ Trust in It, ‘Re-Russia’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 25 – Data from polling by the Public Opinion Foundation and the Levada Center show that Putin’s war in Ukraine has “inflicted the latest powerful hit on the influence of television” in Russia after the Kremlin leader had used it to build his authoritarian system, the Re-Russia portal says.

            According to data from both polling organizations (fom.ru/SMI-i-internet/15312 and levada.ru/2025/09/11/istochniki-informatsii-v-avguste-2025-polzovanie-i-doverie/), the analytic portal says, “the share of those who consider TV their primary source of information declined noticeably during 2024-2025” (re-russia.net/review/810/).

            Before Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, the portal says, “approximately 60 percent of Russian respondents cited television as their primary source of news; but by 2024-2025, this figure had dropped to roughly 55 percent and now, it stands at 47 percent.”

            “Conversely, the proportion of those who say they never watch television and/or do not own a TV set rose from 18 percent” at the start of the war “to 33 percent by March 2026,” with the changes even more dramatic among the young: “only 16 percent of them view TV as their most important source of information and an even smaller percentage who trust it.”

            Re-Russia concludes: “TV appears to have irretrievably lost its status as one of the primary instruments of authoritarian control; and despite having played a pivotal role in justifying the war and fostering patriotic mobilization as recently as 2022-2023, it lost its propaganda potency during 2024-2025 largely because of the protracted and unsuccessful war.”

Turkmenistan Announces Plans to Build Its Own Patrol Boats for Caspian Duty

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 28 – Of all the Caspian littoral states, Turkmenistan has attracted the least attention for efforts to build a fleet to protect its ports, coastal waters, and offshore oil and gas wells. But with the Israeli attack on the Iranian port last week, that is certainly going to change; and Ashgabat has taken a noteworthy step.

            Turkmenistan’s Şanly mekan company, which has produced yachts and small fishing vessels in the past, has announced that it will be building patrol boats almost certainly for use by the government to defend Ashgabat’s interests on the Caspian (httpscasp-geo.ru/turkmenskaya-kompaniya-planiruet-proizvodstvo-patrulnyh-katerov/).

            After a slow start reflecting its self-isolating policy of neutrality, Turkmenistan in 2020-2021 began to build up its shipping capacity on the Caspian, which included only some 20 merchant ships and 16 naval vessels, many inherited from Soviet times  (turkic.world/en/articles/turkmenistan/283953 and jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-no-longer-only-force-that-matters-there/).

            Last year, Ashgabat contracted with a Dutch company to modernize its Caspian port of Turkmenbashi; and it has asked South Korean yards to build more ships for its fleet (casp-geo.ru/kompaniya-van-oord-gotova-k-modernizatsii-porta-turkmenbashi/ and casp-geo.ru/turkmeniya-i-koreya-rasshiryayut-sotrudnichestvo-v-sudostroenii/).

            Now that Turkmenistan is going to build at least some ships on its own, that will make Ashgabat a more credible force on the Caspian and at the very least mean that Turkmenistan’s navy and merchant marine should no longer be ignored in any discussion of the balance of forces on that body of water. 

Even Before Becoming Veterans, Russian Soldiers Increasingly Engage in Violent Crimes against Civilians, ‘Vot-Tak’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – Many Russians are terrified that veterans returning from fighting in Putin’s war in Ukraine will spark a serious rise in crime. They have good reason to be worried to judge from the results of a study of crimes committed by Russian soldiers still in uniform that has been conducted by Vot-Tak TV.

            Russian soldiers in Ukraine and even in units stationed elsewhere “kill, rape, and rob Russians, often outside the zone of military actions,” the study says; and it notes the most explosive growth in the number of such crimes took place in 2025 (vot-tak.tv/92314740/territoriya-bezzakoniya-prestupleniya-rossiyskikh-voennykh).

            During last year, military courts tried 352 soldiers for murder, “a third more than a year earlier,” Vot-Tak TV says. Relatively few of the crimes involved soldiers killing other soldiers – less than 20 percent – but rather soldiers killing friends, acquaintances or people they happen to encounter.

            The number of murder charges brought in military courts against Russian soldiers was not only 1.5 times as large as in 2024 but 16 times more than in 2022, the year when Putin launched his expanded war against Ukraine. For the period since then, military courts have brough 729 cases against Russian soldiers for murder.

            These cases cannot be explained, the investigation says, by the increase in number of troops. That figure is only 1.5 times larger than the expansion of the Russian army as a whole, a figure by the increases not only in murder but in rape and other serious crimes, including crimes against property.

            Up dramatically have been the number of Russian soldiers charged with rape. Since 2022, there have been 549 cases involving that charge. Of these, “no fewer than 312 were crimes against minors, including 249” – almost half – against persons who had not yet reached the age of 14.”

As horrific as all these figures are, they almost certainly understate the extent of crime among Russian soldiers, some of whom of course were convicted criminals before going to Ukraine and others have become corrupted by the violence that their officers either ignore or even promote.

The report says that “the entire zone of military action is a territory of illegality.” At least some of the soldiers who return to their homes after military service in Ukraine or even in the Russian military more generally are almost certainly going to continue to act in this way and harm other Russians.