‘Chief Task for Belarus is Not to Become Part of Russia After Putin’s War in Ukraine Ends,’ Babariko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 11 – The chief task of Belarusians today is to ensure that Belarus does not become part of the Russian Federation after Putin’s war in Ukraine ends, a real risk in that the Kremlin dictator may try to cover his own failings in Ukraine by annexing Belarus, Viktor Babariko says.

            Speaking to  Belarusian emigres in Lithuania, the former presidential candidate in 2020 who now lives in Berlin says that the threat of Russia absorbing Belarus is greater than it was in 2020 and that Belarusians must devote all their efforts to preventing that from happening (rfi.fr/ru/европа/20260511-виктор-бабарико-сейчас-главная-задача-для-беларуси-на-стать-частью-россии).

            Despite what Lukashenka and Putin have done, Belarusians won a major victory six years ago because “before 2020 there was never before such a growth of national self-consciousness in Belarus.” Indeed, one may say that “it was precisely then that the Belarusian nation was born.”

            Babariko who himself was a political prisoner before being released and then expelled and whose son is still behind bars in Belarus as a hostage says that he favors all forms of resistance to Lukashenka and Putin except for taking up arms. That would prove counterproductive, he suggests.

Yerevan Will No Longer Set Up Polling Stations Abroad for Armenian Diaspora

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 11 – Armenian officials say they won’t be setting up polling stations abroad for Armenians living there, although they will allow diplomats and military personnel on assignment there to vote, a decision likely to have profound consequences not only in the June parliamentary vote but beyond.

            This decision was announced by Seda Gukasyan, press spokesperson for the Armenian Central Election Commission, who said that this decision was the result of changes in election law in that country first introduced in 2012 (vz.ru/news/2026/5/11/1417972.html and vz.ru/world/2026/5/11/1418037.html).

            The Armenian diaspora not only is large but is more committed to the idea that their homeland must rely on Russia to defend it against Turkey and Azerbaijan while Armenians in Armenia and especially the government of Nikol Pashinyan believe Armenia’s future depends on ties with the EU rather than Russia and on cooperation with its Turkic neighbors.

            Yerevan has not released figures on just how many Armenians abroad with the right to vote will find it more difficult to do so because they would have to travel to Armenia itself to exercise that right, but even if it is a relatively small share of all Armenians abroad, this restriction could tile the elections in favor of those who share Pashinyan’s views.

Kremlin Narratives Preclude Not only Calling War in Ukraine a War but Conflicts among Nationalities Conflicts, Abramenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 9 – It is universally recognized that Putin propagandists insist that no one must call Russia’s war in Ukraine a war; but it is less widely understood that there are other issues where these same propagandists insist that other things must not be called by their own names, Olga Abramenko says.

            According to the Russian commentator, one of the most significant of these concerns the relationships between the dominant Russian ethnos and the non-Russian minorities which the Kremlin insists must never be referred to as “conflicts” (svoboda.org/a/pryamoy-uscherb-oljga-abramenko-o-sledah-kolonizatsii/33745160.html).

            That not only distorts reality but makes it far more difficult for those involved to talk about what is going on  and then address the problems that this verbal sleight of hand seeks to conceal, Abramenko says; and it is one of the first things that representatives of the non-Russian nations must fight to overcome.

            One of the places where this conflict has been most in evidence is at the UN’s Permanent Forum on the Issues of Indigenous Peoples, which has just held its 25^th annual session. There, representatives of Russian officialdom continue to deny there are any conflicts, while representatives of the non-Russian minorities argue just the reverse.

            The officials typically get more attention, but the minority representatives have the far better argument because their position not only is congruent with reality but also with the way in which most participants in these forums discuss issues concerning the relationship between dominant groups and minorities.

            According to Abramenko, “for those peoples who now live in the Russian Federation, there are several aspects of conflicts in the sense in which it is understood at the UN. There is the war of Russia against Ukraine which has disproportionately involved the indigenous peoples, the continuing impact of the colonial policy of the Russian Empire, the USSR, and present-day Russia and the thieving activities of extraction companies.”

            In addition, she says, peoples in the Russian Federation “who do not belong to the ethnic Russian majority experience racism and xenophobia which in recent decades has become a part of social life and, in the  assessments of experts, is growing; and the numerically small peoples … remain one of the most vulnerable and impoverished groups in the population.”

            This year’s meeting of the UN forum focused on health issues in particular. Representatives of the Russian government argued that any problems the minorities were experiencing in that sphere were the result of Ukrainian actions and those of other outside powers rather than the Russian state or Russian society.

            But non-Russian experts pointed to the consequences of Russian actions and insisted they were not directed solely at activists, as many outsiders assume, but at the non-Russian peoples as a whole. Abramenko offers as an example a recent statement by Eskender Bariyev of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center who makes that point (adcmemorial.org/statyi/vystupleniya-uchastnikov-diskussii-golosa-korennyh-narodov-protiv-repressij-so-storony-rossijskih-vlastej/ ).

With Widening Drone Attacks, Ukraine Driving ‘Wedge’ between Moscow and Federation Subjects, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 7 – Many had expected that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s far-flung regions and republics would generate support for Moscow and demands across the country for a massive Russian response to what Kyiv is now doing, but the reverse is in fact the case, according to Abbas Gallyamov.

            The former Putin speech writer and now Putin critic says that as he at least expected, by attacking Russia’s regions, “the Ukrainians are driving a wedge between Moscow and the federal subjects (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/10415 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/odno-iz-samyh-uyazvimyh-mest-putinskogo-rezhima).

            That is because people in the regions and republics are now having to an increasingly true reality: the defense of Moscow is being carried out on the backs of the federal subjects – and the center is not defending them as it should if Russia were a truly united country.

            According to Gallyamov, “the only effective defense” against such thinking “would be for Putin to make regular visits to the Russian heartland and, while there, publicly announce decisions to supply each of the regions with a new air defense system.” But “the Russian president is incapable of doing that.”

            Indeed, the commentator says, it is clear that Putin “genuinely believes and with absolute sincerity that protecting the citizens of his country does not fall within the scope of duties the president is expected to fulfill.” Instead, his business is to bomb the enemy; as for how his subjects are faring, that is none of his concern.”

            That has been true for some time, Gallyamov suggests; but what the Ukrainians have done with their drone attacks on Russia’s federal subjects is to make that obvious to ever more people there and even in Moscow but clearly not to Putin who remains oblivious to the consequences of this development.  

            Moreover, although the commentator doesn't suggest it, his reference to "a wedge" between Moscow and the regions will cause many Ukrainians and their friends to think about ethnic Ukrainian areas within the current borders of the Russian Federation, areas that many Ukrainians describe as "wedges."  

Women Remain Face of Protest in North Caucasus Even Though They’ve Lost Relative Immunity They had Earlier, ‘Daptar’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 6 – In the North Caucasus, women rather than men are the ones who speak out most publicly “against abuses of power by the security forces, abductions or violations o children’s rights,” according to experts and activists with whom the Daptar portal spoke. And this has continued even though they have lost the relative immunity they had earlier.

            The portal, which tracks the abuse of women in that region, says that women showed that most prominently in 2022 when they dominated the ranks of protests against mobilization for Putin’s war (daptar.ru/2026/05/06/mat-sestra-doch-pochemu-na-severnom-kavkaze-imenno-zhenshchiny-stanovyatsya-golosom-borby-za-spravedlivost/).

            But they have long taken the lead, sociologists who study protest in the region say, in part because they have enjoyed relative immunity from prosecution because defending the weak is viewed by many there as the proper role of women. Now, however, the Russian authorities are changing their approach and arresting more women.

            Despite that, the portal’s experts continue, women in the North Caucasus remain the face of protest in the region because they have earlier experiences in challenging officials when they believe their rights and the rights of their family members have been violated – and they are likely to continue to do so in the future.

            According to Daptar, “a woman can speak from a position of suffering and protection—pleading rather than demanding, appealing to justice rather than engaging in open conflict. This mode of expression proves to be socially acceptable and, therefore, viable.”

            One Chechen activist says that “A woman’s public voice is accepted only as long as it aligns with the image of a mother protecting her child, or an individual seeking justice. But the moment her words go beyond that boundary and become direct accusations, attitudes can shift abruptly—and the risks of facing pressure and intimidation escalate."

            Yet “even now,” Daptar’s Nailya Keldeyeva says, women remain “the most willing to assume the risks and remain active. And while earlier this might be attributable to prevailing notions of ‘female immunity,’ today it is increasing a matter of the wealth of accumulated survival experience.”

With World War II Veterans Passing from the Scene, Kazakhstan Extending Special Benefits to Others who Suffered Then or Later

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 9 – Only 57 veterans of World War II remain alive among the 20 million citizens of Kazakhstan. Astana continues to give them enormous bonuses on the anniversary of the end of that conflict. But now with their passing, it has expanded the reach of this bonus system to others.

            This expansion first involved awards to 31,349 current Kazakhstan residents who worked there during the war, but now, the Bugin news service reports, Astana has extended it to 110 children who were in concentration camps, 2900 who fought in Afghanistan, 2707 who were involved with the Chernobyl cleanup, and almost 10,000 who became invalids because of nuclear testing in Kazakhstan in Soviet times (bugin.info/detail/epokha-zakanchivaetsia-v-ka/ru).

            What this means, the portal continues, is that Kazakhstan is “establishing a unified system of historical social memory into which it is gradually incorporating all groups linked to the major traumas of the Soviet era – war, radiation catastrophes, military conflicts, the Afghanistan war, and nuclear test sites.”

            “Through a system of social benefits, the state is constructing its own historical hierarchy,” it continues. “The inclusion of Chernobyl liquidators and participants in nuclear testing in this system is particularly telling as it remains one of the nations in the world bearing the heaviest historical legacy of the nuclear age.”

            And that shows something else, Bugin says. The Kazakhstan state “is seeking to combine several eras into a single historical line: Soviet industrial heroism, military memory and present-day Kazakhstan statehood,” a move complicated by just how many different traumas its people have suffered in the past.

 

Moscow Wrestling with Multiple Dimensions of Global Warming Especially in the Far North

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 9 – Like people elsewhere, most Russians have accepted the fact that global warming is occurring; but like others, they remain divided and are only beginning to recognize that this trend does not mean that there will be an even warming of all regions but rather introduce “climate chaos” across the board.

            Not only will some regions grow warmer while others remain or even grow colder but there may be wild “swings” in temperature and precipitation both within one region and between it and its neighbors, a pattern that makes predicting what will happen increasingly difficult if not impossible, experts say (akcent.site/novosti/44822).

            In some places, warming may make some kind of agricultural activity more possible but in others, the warming trend may lead to too much rain or too little for that to take place.  And in others, the warming trend may destroy infrastructure or even lead to forest fires and desertification.

            Officials are now being forced to try to predict what they should prepare for in a situation where predictions are far more difficult to make and where errors are likely to exacerbate problems, something that will provoke anger in populations affected who do not yet understand fully how diverse the impact of global warming actually is turning out to be.