Russian Veterans ‘Simply Don’t Fit into Existing Political Machinery,’ Kremlin has Concluded

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 19 – Despite Putin’s constant suggestions that veterans of his war in Ukraine represent “the nation’s new elite,” there are ever more signs that in the view of the Kremlin, these people “simply do not fit into the existing political machinery,” according to Olga Churakova, a journalist with the Important Stories portal.

            As the 2026 Duma elections approach, she says, “the Russian authorities are as a result are wrestling with a dilemma: they need to bring war veterans into parliament” as Putin wants “without letting them coalesce into a genuine political force” that might challenge the Kremlin leader and his regime (istories.media/opinions/2026/05/19/ne-vremya-geroev/).

            In fact, Churakova continues, “the political system itself has no idea what to do with the veterans” when it comes to making them part of the elite.  Consequently, the Kremlin has scrapped plans to bring into the Duma as many as 150 veterans with insiders saying “you can’t bring people” in such numbers as “they are completely non-systemic.”

            First, the Kremlin reduced the number of veterans it planned to have in the Duma to 50 to 70 and more recently, it has cut them back further to about 40. According to Churakova, “the prospect of a new bloc of military deputies clearly makes the Kremlin uneasy;” and the Presidential Administration is trying to figure out how to ensure it controls them.

            One thing is clear, she continues, for the Kremlin, “the less consolidated this group remains, the easier it will be to manage them.” And there are other problems: “even at lower levels, the integration of veterans is already floundering” with many veteran-candidates having lost their primaries.

            Moreover, “despite the high level of societal respect for  war participants, there is no reliable public data indicating how this reverence translates into actual votes at the ballot box, Churakova says. As a result, “for political parties, running a veteran is a gamble that by no means guarantees victory.”

            “All this is unfolding against the backdrop of rapidly deteriorating social sentiment,” she says, and so “the authorities are being forced to maneuver carefully: they are already purging radical deputies from the public sphere to avoid inflaming domestic tensions.  As a result, “the prospect of introducing an unpredictable bloc of veterans suffering from PTSD into the new Duma looks quite risky.”

Churakova concludes: “The Russian authorities have backed themselves into a tight corner of their own making: these “war heroes” are desperately needed as ideological symbols, but they are far too dangerous to be empowered as real political actors.” This is leading the Kremlin to “lose face and quietly retreat from its declared principles.”

Siberia Offers Few Opportunities for Profitable Investments and So is Unlikely to Get Them, Verkhoturov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 19 – Many officials and commentators in Moscow talk about Siberia as the place where Russia’s future economic growth will take off, Dmitry Verkhoturov says; but such predications clearly exaggerate Siberia’s economic position and especially its attractiveness as a place for new investment.

            The Siberian journalist who has long focused on economic issues in Russian areas east of the Urals draws that depressing conclusion on the basis of a newly released 65-page report by Rosstat entitled The Socio-Economic Situation of the Siberian Federal District in 2025 (sibmix.com/?doc=21237).

That report shows, Verkhoturov says, that last year, the Siberian Federal District accounted for 12.9 percent of Russia’s mineral extraction; 9.8 percent of manufacturing output; 12.8 percent of energy production; and 10.4 percent of agricultural output; but only 8.2 percent of total profits and a miniscule 2.9 percent of financial investments.

Thus, he writes, “Siberia’s contribution to the Russian economy is, in reality, not particularly large. Admittedly, Siberia still fares reasonably well compared to the Southern—and especially the North Caucasian—Federal Districts; but taken as a whole, the Northwest, Volga, and Ural Districts carry significantly more weight.”

According to the journalist, “the most intriguing insights are found in the section detailing the financial results of business organizations for the period of January through September 2025. Although not covering a full calendar year, they nonetheless accurately reflect the relative profitability of the economies within the various federal districts.”

Specifically, Verkhoturov says, “out of a total net profit for the country as a whole amounting to 19.2 trillion rubles, the Siberian FD accounted for only 1.5 trillion rubles or 7.8 percent.” Given that investments tend to follow profitability, that points to serious trouble ahead for those who want to increase investment in Siberia.

Indeed, he says, “Siberia is not a particularly attractive platform for economic development,” with return on every ruble invested less than half of what it is in the Central FD. “Investing there is simply unprofitable: profits are lower, and the investment payback period is longer—not to mention the host of region-specific challenges.”

And Verkhoturov concludes: “No profitability means no investment, and consequently, no economic development. Capital flows toward those regions where it can be deployed to generate significantly higher returns—where it can grow at a faster pace … and that is why no economic development strategy for Siberia has gained traction.”

Russian Penal Officials Isolating Deserters and Those Convicted of Political Crimes from General Prison Population in Magadan, Grishin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – Russian prison officials have always faced a difficult choice: isolating those prisoners they consider most dangerous often leading to explosions or allowing them to be part of the general prison population and seeing the influence of their views spread to other groups.

            Now, in Magadan, a place synonymous with the GULAG for most Russians, jailors are isolating both those who have deserted from the Russian military and those convicted of political crimes from other groups, according to Andrey Grishin, a journalist from there who fled abroad in 2023 and now faces charges.

            He reports on the continued existence of this special isolation camp on the basis of his own knowledge of the region, conversations with two victims who have since been released from it, and the reports of family members of others who remain incarcerated in this special zone (nemoskva.net/2026/05/18/barak-dlya-politicheskih/).

            The decision to create such an isolator, Grishin says, obviously came from Moscow; but given the ways in which such prisoners incarcerated there are being mistreated is especially worrisome given that what the authorities are likely to do elsewhere, they have begun in the symbolically loaded Magadan region. 

Russians Wounded in Ukraine Face Unhappy Fate with Many Sent to Overcrowded Hospitals or Forced to Return to the Front Too Soon, ‘Novaya Gazeta Europe’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 19 – Russian troops wounded in Putin’s war in Ukraine face an unhappy fat, with many sent to overcrowded hospitals where they do not always receive the treatment they need and others returned to the front lines before they recover from their injuries, according to two articles in Novaya Gazeta Europe.

            The number of wounded flooding back for treatment in hospitals military and otherwise has increased dramatically in recent months, overwhelming military hospitals and increasingly forcing civilian ones to close services to non-soldiers, thus adding to the number of Russian victims of Putin’s war (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/05/19/svoshnikov-nastolko-dofiga-chto-voennye-gospitali-ikh-ne-vmeshchaiut).

            But perhaps the fact that many wounded soldiers are now being sent back into the front lines before their treatments are completed or even without more than superficial attention to their wounds is a larger problem, given that such men are more likely to die as a result (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/05/18/on-zhe-u-vas-muzhchina-spravitsia).

            Because commanders need soldiers to fill in for losses, they want their men back as soon as possible, Novaya Gazeta Europe reports; and doctors are thus under pressure to declare such wounded soldiers fully recovered even if the men don’t feel that way – and Russian courts typically side with the commanders and doctors rather than the soldiers.

            Because statistics are lacking and because each case appears different at r on superficial examination, such problems have received relatively little attention; but the two reports in Novaya Gazeta Europe provide sufficient detail that other articles about these problems may surface soon, eroding still further remaining Russian support for Putin’s war. 

Regional Expressions in Russian Far East Frequently have Chinese Roots

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – Vkontakte and Gramota.ru have examined more than 1000 regional terms from various parts of the Russian Federation and compiled a list of the most frequently mentioned. Perhaps the most intriguing are regionalisms from the Russian Far East, many of which are borrowed from the Chinese.

            According to Gramota.ru, among the words Russians in that region often use but which are meaningless to outsiders are kuksa which refers to instant noodles and chifanka which refers to a small Chinese café or restaurant, “a term derived from the Chinese expression chi fan, meaning to eat or have a meal” (nazaccent.ru/content/45485-nazvany-samye-populyarnye-regionalizmy-rossii/).

            Neither the diversity of regional dialects nor Chinese influence is surprising given the size of the Russian Federation, but discussions of dialects within Russian remains a politically sensitive matter given that the Kremlin increasingly seeks to impose the language spoken in Moscow on everyone else.

            Consequently, Russian speakers in regions beyond the ring road are at least implicitly engaging in a kind of political protest when they use words they themselves have developed either because these have local roots or because they reflect the impact of other neighboring language communities.

            For background on Russian regionalisms, their spread and official opposition, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/06/russian-increasingly-divided-by-ever.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russians-from-provinces-need-to-speak.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/regionalization-of-russian-language-now.html.

Russian Historians Tell Kyrgyz Scholars to Replace Term ‘Colonialism’ with the Word ‘Administration’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – From a country where a current war is called “a special military operation” and those who suggest otherwise are punished, it should come as no surprise that Russians will try to solve other political problems with analogous verbal sleight of hand. But as with the case with the war in Ukraine, such attempts are likely to backfire.

            The Russian Military Historical Society which is led by Putin loyalist Vladimir Medinsky held its first meeting with Kyrgyzstan’s expert advisory council on history and tried unsuccessfully to attack discussions of Russian colonialism by calling it something else (https://amp.rbc.ru/rbcnews/politics/18/05/2026/6a0b0d679a7947e252c6f2f5).

            At the meeting, Andrey Bykov of Moscow’s Institute of Oriental Studies called for replacing the terms “colonialism” and “colonial policy” with the terms “administration” and administrative measures” in an 11^th grade Kyrgyzstan history textbook. The Russian scholar said any failure to do that was “a tribute to fashion” and at odds with the facts.

            The Kyrgyz side wasn’t having any of this. Abylabek Askanov, head of Bishkek’s Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnology, responded that doing so would be “extremely difficult” given what is generally understood by the term colonialism. Changing words won’t do anything about that.

            Bykov replied that “Russia has no intention of dictating to Kyrgyzstan,” although it is virtually certain that his audience knows that Moscow did just that in the past and that it has one so on occasion since Putin became president, most prominently in 2024 when Russian scholars attacked an Armenian textbook for “calling into question the special role of the Russian Empire.”

 

Putin’s War in Ukraine will Eventually End and Sanctions are Likely to Be Lifted, but Russia will Not Soon Get Back the Markets It has Lost, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – Many commentators are comforting themselves that Putin’s war in Ukraine will eventually end and that at that time the sanctions Western countries are likely to be lifted, Abbas Gallyamov says. But that will not be the magic elixir that so many now expect because Russia will not soon get back the markets it has lost because of this conflict.

            Countries that had been Russia’s best customers have changed their approach, selecting other suppliers for what they need, the former Putin speech writer and now Putin critic says (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/10489  reposted at echofm.online/opinions/vojna-zakonchitsya-i-dazhe-sankczii-snimut-a-vot-uteryannye-rynki-ne-vernyosh).

            Such countries will have little reason to go back to Russia unless Moscow slashes prices – and if it does that as China is now demanding, that will be just one more way why Putin’s war in Ukraine is going to cast a long dark shadow on Russia, however much so many think otherwise.