More than Half of Russia’s Pensioners Can’t Work Because of Their Health or Family Responsibilities, ‘To Be Precise’ Portal Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, April 23 – Given Russia’s intensifying labor shortage and the desire of many Russians to reduce the influx of migrants, many Russian officials are n now looking at pensioners as a potential source of additional workers, either by raising the pension age or encouraging those who have retired to return to the workforce

But this resource is smaller than many think, according to new research by the To Be Precise portal. It finds that “almost 50 percent of pensioners who are not now employed can’t work either because of their own state of health or because they must take care of family members (rbc.ru/society/26/03/2026/69c50b1f9a794785925a5dc3 and  tochno.st/materials/ne-mogut-rabotat-iz-za-zdorovia-ili-semeinyx-obiazannostei).

Moreover, few pensioners currently in good health or without the need to take care of other family members want to work after taking a pension: Only five percent of those with higher educations and only five percent with incomplete secondary educations or less tell To Be Precise that they want to work.

And even among those pensioners who say they do want to work, 75 percent are only prepared to do so part time, while nine percent say they would be willing to work if they could work from home. Consequently, there is little chance that the share of pensioners at work will rise much beyond its current level of 18 percent of the 40.5 million pensioners in Russia.

Yet another limiting factor on pensioners working is that the Russian government reduces pensions of those who do by more radical amounts than is the case in many other countries.

Putin is Conducting an Ethnic Russian War in Ukraine, Not a Soviet or Civic Russian One as Some Suggest, Shusharin Argues

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 19 – Like Stalin before him, Putin has only “one objective: power,” and he is conducting his war in Ukraine on the basis, realizing as the Soviet dictator did before him that “the manipulation of stereotypes and cliches regarding Russian identity is the simplest and most reliable method of governance,” Dmitry Shusharin says.

            The Russian historian and commentator says that neither Putin nor Stalin “actually ‘dumbed down’ or ‘brainwashed’ the Russian people. To the contrary, these rulers merely capitalized on what fell effortlessly into their hands: the self-perceptions of Russians and their concept of their proper places in the world” (kasparovru.com/material.php?id=69E4BCE91BF24).

            From Stalin’s toast to the Russian people at the end of World War II to Putin’s statements in the lead up to and since the beginning of the latter’s expanded war in Ukraine, Shusharin says, there has been no real change “as long as the fundamental core of Russian identity remains intact.”

            That identity holds that Russia is fated to be a great power and to impose its will on others. If they fail to do so, the commentator says, “the Russians would not only cease to be ‘Russian’ in their own eyes, but in fact cease to ‘exist at all’ and thus forfeit their place in both the world and history.”

            This perception of the independent agency of other countries as an inherent threat to their own, of course, arises “from a fundamental lack of such subjectivity” within the Russian nation itself. Unless that changes, Russia will engage in “endless wars waged solely for the purpose of destroying the subjectivity and agency of others.”

Kyiv Moves toward Coexistence with What Many Ukrainians Still Call the Moscow Church, Soldatov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 18 – Following international criticism of its approach to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which until 2022 was part of the Moscow Patriarchate and controlled by Russia but which since that time has become pro-Ukrainian, Kyiv appears set to accept coexistence between that church and the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

            That is the judgment of Novaya Gazeta journalist Aleksandr Soldatov on the basis of a recent statement by General Kyrylo Budanov who heads the Office of the President of Ukraine. He recently said that “coercive methods don’t work in the religious sphere” and that Kyiv should give the UOC time to fully integrate itself into Ukrainian life (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/04/18/moskovskaia-tserkov-vybiraet-ukrainu

            According to Soldatov, this shift in Kyiv’s position “cannot fail to cause alarm in Moscow where the theme of ‘the persecution of canonical Orthodoxy’ has been actively used to define the objectives of the Special Military Operation including at the very highest levels.” But it will also worry those Ukrainians who don’t see the UOC as having fully broken with Moscow.

            Most Ukrainian Orthodox leaders both in the UOC and the autocephalous OCU do not believe that the UOC can ever return to the role it played as an agency of Russian influence in Ukraine, however; and they are confident that each of these churches will survive, a likely indication that church life in Ukraine will be both freer and more diverse well into the future.

Plan to Build Toll Roads without Free Alternatives Seen Separating Russian Far East from Rest of Country and Sparking Protests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 21 – The Association of Infrastructure Investors and Creditors is urging Moscow to build toll roads between the Russian Far East and the rest of the country even when there are no free alternatives. Some Russians see these separating that region from Europe, and Sergey Mironov, head of the Just Russia Party, promises protests.

            According to the party leader, if the Russian government agrees to build such toll roads without free alternatives, that will contribution to the disintegration of Russia because large parts of the country will be able to reach others only if they pay tolls, something few will want to do (iarex.ru/news/153175.html).

            Russia has long been underserved by highways especially in the north and to the east of the Urals; and reductions in spending on construction and repair of roads there as the Kremlin has shifted funding from such infrastructure projects to the financing of Putin’s war in Ukraine have only made the situation worse, as many older roads are becoming impassable

            The Association proposal is thus an attempt to restart construction, but as Mironov’s protest suggests, it is something that will anger many Russians not only in distant regions like the Far East but also Russians elsewhere who have concluded that toll roads alone may not tie the country together but increase the danger of disintegration. 

Politically Motivated Convictions in Russia Tripled Between 2022 and 2025 and Half Now Involve Time Behind Bars, Rights Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 18 – Russian courts in 2025 handed down three politically motivated verdicts every day, three times the rate during the first year of Putin’s expanded military operation in Ukraine, human rights activists say on the basis of court records; and the severity of sentences has increased as well, with half of those convicted last year given jail terms.

            This trend, Andrey Karyev of Novaya Gazeta says, is continuing in 2026. In less than the first four months of this year, Russian courts have handed down 198 sentences in political cases, a rate only slightly lower than in 2025 when 1100 political sentences were handed down; and they imposed prison sentences in more than half (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/04/18/tri-prigovora-v-den).

            As a result, what were earlier exceptions are now becoming the norm in Russian courts, which have become almost as in Stalin’s time “a conveyor belt” for imposing political convictions that is becoming ever more repressive in this regard by inertia and with little need for Kremlin intervention, the journalist suggests.

Corruption in Russia has Evolved Over Last Eight Years, Procurator General Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 22 – The Russian media focuses on corruption cases involving the powerful and the wealthy, but the Russian Procuracy says that the average individual charged with corrupt actions is someone who has never been charged before, a man between 30 and 49, typically a model family man with a higher education and violated the law near where lived.

            Based on an examination of 120,000 cases of corruption since 2018, the prosecutorial authorities say the most widespread forum of corruption is bribery, with 50 percent of all corruption charges involving such actions. But the share of bribery among corruption charges has risen from 48.4 percent in 2018 to 67.5 percent in 2025 (svpressa.ru/society/article/512072/).

            Fraud as a share of all corrupt actions for which charges have been brought, in contrast, has declined significantly over the same period, 21.4 percent to 12.2 percent, with the total of all corruption charges remaining roughly the same. The Procuracy report also reported that more than 80 percent of such crimes were the result of an individual rather than group action.

            Some Russian experts aren’t impressed with the reported figures. Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee and a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, is among them, as is Moscow attorney and rights activist Dmitry Agranovsky

             "I was surprised to learn,” the latter says, “that the 'average corrupt offender' is not a doctor, a teacher, or a traffic police officer for the simple reason that judging by the criminal cases I’ve seen, it is precisely these categories of professionals who are most frequently prosecuted."

            Despite this criticism, the procuracy report offers a glimpse into this aspect of criminality in Russia in the most recent Putin years, with bribery edging out other corruption crimes and fraud being significantly less of a threat or at least one the authorities choose to prosecute than many have thought.

Number of Russians Now Thinking about Emigrating has Tripled from a Year Ago, Online Searches and Passport Applications Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 17 – The number of Russians thinking about emigrating has tripled in the first quarter of this year compared to a year ago, to judge from visits to websites about how to do it and applications for foreign passports as well as from the judgments of groups that help those who want to do so.

            These figures are available at verstka.media/rossiyane-nachali-chashhe-iskat-kak-uehat-iz-strany, verstka.media/v-krupnyh-gorodah-okazalis-peregruzheny-otdely-mvd-vydayushhie-zagranpasporta and istories.media/stories/2026/04/17/v-rossii-rastet-interes-k-emigratsii-vpervie-za-neskolko-let-kuda-seichas-proshche-vsego-uekhat/.

            After the dramatic spike in emigration in response to the threat of mobilization at the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, interest in emigration among Russians fell sharply not only because it became more difficult as fewer countries displayed an interest in receiving Russians but also because the war itself was normalized.

            But increasing repression, economic decline and the Kremlin’s attacks on the Internet appear to be leading to another increase in the outflow of Russians; and that confronts the Kremlin with a new challenge about how it should respond to limit such flows without making its own situation still worse.

            Ilya Grashchenkov, the head of the Moscow Center for Regional Politics, suggests figures about interest in emigration, largely the result of the Kremlin’s economic failures and attacks on the Internet, highlight a problem that the Putin regime has not faced in anything like the same size before (t.me/kremlebezBashennik/45617).

            “Judging by the latest data,” he says, “the authorities now face a situation where their customary logic in which prohibitions automatically translate into public acquiescence no longer works” and Russians instead are seeking ways to resist or at least avoid having to comply, including such radical steps as leaving the country.

            According to Grashchenkov, Russian society “is beginning to tire—not so much of the harshness itself, but rather of the sense that restrictions are multiplying while no horizon for improvement appears.” This is most likely to lead the Kremlin to seek some kind of balance “between security and frustration,” lest the public’s mood deteriorates further.

            But of course, Putin may choose “further tightening the screws … if the logic of security remains the top priority”  and if the Kremlin leader decides that the declines in public support for him aren’t a signal of the need for a course correction but rather a justification for the imposition of even stricter controls” despite the possibility that could backfire.