Denunciation of Some Russians by Others has Tripled Over the Last Year – and Many are about Settling Scores Rather than Exposing Real Threats, Karpitskaya Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 18 – The number of denunciations of some Russians by others that were filed with the government’s communication agency tripled between 2024 and 2025, from 86,000 to 252,000, at least in part because of the Putin regime’s encouragement of the population to turn in those people are calling attention to violations of the law.

            Many of these complaints are legitimate and have led officials to investigate and bring charges, journalist Dina Karpitskaya says; but a large share of them reflect public paranoia, petty vindictiveness or a desire to “get on the nerves” of those co-workers, bosses or neighbors (kp.ru/daily/277783.5/5249794/).

            In a Komsomolskaya Pravda article entitled “Informants or Vigilantes? Russians File Hundreds of Reports against One Another,” Karpitskaya suggests that a large share of these denunciations cross the line from civic duty into slander based on no evidence or simple paranoia.

            The journalist calls particular attention to the emergence of companies offering services to those who want to file denunciations. She tested one of these companies and was offered its services to “’thoroughly vet’” the social media accounts of the person she was complaining about and for a fee to force those attacked to “run around police stations and other agencies.

            Unless Russians are encouraged to be more restrained, Karpitskaya says, the problem is likely to grow because “the system doesn’t always distinguish between genuine threat” and made up ones, a real problem given that “we certainly knowhow to put people behind bars for a single ear of grain.”

Declining Birthrates in Russian Villages Mean Rural Areas Can’t Compensate for Even Larger Declines in Russian Cities, Rosstat Figures Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – Russian commentators and officials have comforted themselves for many years with the idea that birthrate in Russian villages are sufficiently high that they will cushion the country from the dramatically declining figures on that metric in Russian urban areas and even prompted some to call for “de-urbanizing” Russia to solve its demographic problems.

            But figures released by the Russian government’s statistical arm Rosstat show that in 2025 the fertility rate for Russia’s rural population had fallen to 1.464, slightly above the all-Russian figure including city residents but the lowest figure for rural Russia in 35 years  (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/05/21/1198799-summarnii-koeffitsient-rozhdaemosti-v-selah-stal-minimalnim).

            The rural figure is far below the 2.2 children per woman per lifetime needed to keep the population of the country as a whole level and, even more than that, also mean that rural Russia now can do little to help compensate for the overall decline that is led by urban residents where the fertility rate is approaching 1.0 in some of the largest.

            The only time since the end of the USSR where rural population fertility rates were even as high as 2.2 was in 2014, when Rosstat reports that it reached 2.272. Since then it has fallen by almost one child per rural Russian woman per lifetime, a decline that tracks with what is going on in Russian cities.

            Two other developments Rosstat reports now are also likely to be worrisome to Moscow officials. First, the only federal subjects where the fertility rate is still above 2.2 are where there are non-Russian majorities such as Tuva where it stands at 2.56; and second, the decline in fertility rates in rural areas fell from 2024 to 2025 at twice the rate of urban areas, 0.06 compared to 0.03, in part because of Putin’s optimization program that has closed rural hospitals.

 

Ukraine Can Win Unless Moscow Uses Nuclear Weapons or Sparks a Revolution in Kyiv, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – As Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine grinds on into its fifth year, ever more people are asking whether Ukraine can win. According to Vladimir Putin, it can do so as long as Russia doesn’t use nuclear weapons in a wholesale manner and as long as no revolution takes place within Ukraine itself.

            The London-based Russian analyst argues that “it is already clear what such a [Ukrainian] victory might look like” and even how it could be achieved (t.me/v_pastukhov/1910 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/kak-pobeda-ukrainy-mozhet-vyglyadet-s-uchetom-vseh-realij).

            “Provided that Ukraine does not overextend itself to the breaking point,” Pastukhov says, “it will with European support slowly and steadily drive up the cost of the war for Russia until that cost become politically untenable.” That would open the way for a Ukrainian victory and a Russian defeat.

            If the war does end with a Ukrainian victory, it is still “unlikely that Russia would lose Crimea … but it might well be forced to ‘regurgitate’ some of the territories it has occupied.” Instead, and “most likely,” he says, “the outcome would involve a ceasefire along the actual line of demarcation.”

            For Putin and the Russian elite, that would be “tantamount to defeat” because Putin loyalists “would not be able to accept the ruins of a half-conquered Donbass as adequate compensation for the rupture of normal relations with the West, four years of crippling sanctions, and the loss of several hundred thousand killed and maimed Russians.”

            Pastukhov says that he believes that “this reality is understood above all within the Kremlin itself and that Moscow’s future efforts in Ukraine will be “concentrated in two specific directions: the simulation of nuclear weapons use and attempts to eliminate Zelensky,” the latter being in the Kremlin’s mind “tantamount to a revolution in Ukraine.”

            Russia’s “actual use of weapons still appears to be a highly risky undertaking” and “the temptation to ‘do something’ about Zelensky and to try to install a different figure in his place for ‘negotiations’ will grow stronger with each passing day,” Pastukhov says, especially with the image of the US moves in Venezuela in the minds of the Kremlin.

            “If Zelensky should manage to survive such an ordeal in both a political and strictly physical sense,” the Russian analyst says, “then the time to ‘count one’s chickens’ will arrive in a different coop entirely, one where quite inconveniently for it, elections happen to be on the schedule in the near future.”

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.