A Russian Invasion of Baltic Countries ‘Now a Likely Scenario,’ Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 30 –A year ago, Vladimir Pastukhov said that there were there possible scenarios for Moscow’s moves regarding the Baltic countries and eastern Europe more generally – mobilization, hybrid (subversive) war or invasion – and that the last of these was the most unlikely of all.

            But now, the London-based Russian analyst says, the situation has changed because of how the Kremlin leader views the situation; and he argues that an invasion seems to him to have become “a likely scenario” for what Putin will do next (echofm.online/opinions/vtorzhenie-kazhetsya-mne-dostatochno-veroyatnym-sczenariem).

            Pastukhov says that it many ways the current situation in Moscow parallels the situation in Washington at the time when Ronald Reagan came to power. He formed two groups, Team A, which consisted of government experts, and Team B which was made up of university experts and was headed by Richard Pipes.

            The first team, the Russian analyst says, argued that “the USSR would eventually be more and more like a ‘normal’ European state and its aggressive energy would fade. Because of the likelihood of that, the West’s strategy should be not to take any steps that would interfere with this evolving convergence.

            Team B, led by Pipes, came to “the exact opposite conclusion.” Focusing on communist ideology, they argued that “aggression is an essential feature” of those who accept this ideology and that Washington and the West must therefore adopt a strategy of “’strategic deterrence’” to prevent disaster.

            Reagan was convinced by the arguments of Team B and launched a program designed to contain and weaken the USSR. “Ultimately,” Pastukhov says, “this accelerated the collapse of the USSR although in my opinion, that was not the cause” of what Putin calls “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20^th century.”

            The London-based analyst suggests that a debate has been taking place behind the scenes in Moscow much like the one between Team A and Team B almost half a century ago and says that Putin has accepted as the basis of his actions the view that aggression is not only necessary but useful whatever Russian government experts say.

            Because that is so, the Kremlin leader is likely to launch more aggressive actions against the West in general and the Baltic countries in particular as long as he believes that he is winning in Ukraine. Unless he loses there and loses convincingly, that won’t change as long as Putin is in office in the Kremlin.

Many Russians Untroubled by Abuse of Prisoners Because They Believe ‘Criminals Must Suffer,’ Titayev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 1 – Most Russians don’t think about prisons very much, independent criminologist Kirill Titayev says; but when they do because someone prominent is behind bars, they often are untroubled by reports of the mistreatment and even torture of prisoners because they believe that “criminals must suffer.”

            As a result, the prison system, which censors the letters of prisoners often does not remove reports about such things because guards consider this normal and know that a many outside the walls agree with them (istories.media/opinions/2026/10/01/prestupniki-dolzhni-stradat-muchitelstvo-kak-osnovnoi-printsip-ispolneniya-nakazanii-v-rossii/).

            That is why the flood of reports of abuse of prisoners in Russian jails and camps do not generate the kind of response one might expect to such brutality and why the loss of the European Human Rights Court as a final place of appeal is going to have such tragic consequences for Russian inmates.

            In many countries, some believe that prison should involve harsh conditions; but most national prison systems have now moved beyond that recognizing that allowing such treatment will not only make the rehabilitation of prisoners unlikely but also cast a negative shadow on the entire society.

            Participants in focus groups discussing this issue that Titayev has conducted are horrified by individual stories in prisons but at the same time “are not ready to accept the idea that criminal should not be tormented” by their guards.  Until that changes, there is little chance for positive change in the Russian prison system, he says.

 

New Segments of Russian Society Turning to Drugs Not to Escape Reality but to Cope with It, Moscow Institute of Sociology Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 30 – Russian government officials have been celebrating the decline in the number of those abusing drugs and alcohol; but behind these figures, the Moscow Institute of Sociology says, are others which are seldom counted by the authorities but are becoming increasingly worrisome.

            The Russian government has focused on those who use opiods and alcohol to escape reality, the institute says; but Moscow has largely ignored those who use synthetic drugs not so much to escape reality but rather to adapt to it, people who have jobs, good incomes, and families (club-rf.ru/theme/731).

            The Moscow sociologists say that these people tend to be those “with higher educations, are members of the creative professions, and office workers who take drugs that in themselves are not illegal and thus whose use helps them to adapt to the tensions they increasingly feel in Russia life.

            According to the sociologists, this upsurge in the consumption of such drugs is the result of “the sharp deterioration in the mental state” of Russian society, a community which roughly half suffer from depression and a third from anxiety. The most vulnerable are young people between the ages of 25 and 34.

            Stimulant drugs, the scholars continue, have “become a tool to cope with this condition not a means of getting away from it.” But this creates “a vicious cycle” for an ever larger group: “growing anxiety promotes ‘controlled’ use and that in turn “provokes psychosis and aggravates other mental disorders.”

            Most of the people who use drugs of this kind in this way do not turn to doctors, violate the law, or appear all that different from those who don’t use drugs. As a result, “this new wave” of drug abuse has remained “invisible”to statisticians and the Russian government.

Kremlin Fighting Statistical War Against Its Own Country and the West and All Too Often Winning There, Voronenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 29 – One of the most important fronts in Putin’s war against his own people and the outside world is the statistical one, a front that the Kremlin leader has had numerous victories because both Russians and outsiders are all too ready to accept statistics as somehow inherently true, Dmytro Voronenko says.

            That allows Putin to convince Russians that things are better overall than they may appear to individuals and too cause foreign governments to adopt policies he favors because his cooked statistics to hide the truth about Russia, the independent Ukrainian analyst says (ridl.io/ru/sem-oshibok-pri-analize-dannyh-iz-rossii-i-kak-ih-izbezhat/).

            Voronenko gives seven examples of Putin’s statistical sleight of hand, although he stresses that these are neither ranked nor comprehensive. Rather, he suggests, they are the tip of a very dangerous iceberg that Russian society and Western governments all too often Titanic-like risk running into. These include:

1.     Treating official figures as market prices when the state can set them thus contributing to the idea that Russia is really a market economy rather than an increasingly command one.

2.     Citing international sources which use Russian ones without mentioning that fact, thus giving more credence to Moscow’s figures and reducing the chance people will question them.

3.     Failing to mention Russian government laws and decrees that have changed what the numbers mean, leading people to compare apples and oranges without recognizing that fact.

4.     Changing the definition of categories so as to be able to leave out key components that are moving in a different direction than Moscow wants to advertise.

5.     Routinely changing the time frame data covers and thus presenting data sets “as if the last four years had not happened” and thus the impact of Putin’s war is concealed.

6.     Ignoring the ways in which Moscow counts stockpiles as part of production and thus buys time for itself when production falls.

7.     And last but far from least, pointing to special actions by the government as just a normal way of doing business and proof that the state is in control and that all is well.

The best way to protect oneself against such attacks by Putin on the statistical front, Voronenko concludes his detailed discussion of each of these, is to be aware of what Putin is doing and question his statistics just as much as would be the case if the numbers came from others, something that all too often now is not the case.

Russians and Europeans Must Recognize and Openly Declare that Putin’s Russia is a Fascist State, Skobov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 29 – For Russia to recover and for its threat to the rest of the world eliminated, both Russians and Europeans must recognize and then openly declare that Putin’s Russia is a fascist state and that only by its defeat can that crime and threat be overcome, Aleksandr Skobov says.

            The Soviet and Russian dissident now in prison for calling for Ukraine’s victory against Putin’s aggression says that it is time for Russians who have recognized this reality to create a new party that will openly declare that its  goal is to overcome fascism in their country (forumfreerussia.org/articles/opinions/2026-09-29/programma-partii-skobova).

            At the same time, Skobov says, it is critically important that Europeans recognize this reality because “modern Europe was born in the fight against fascism” and thus is threatened by what Putin represents and how he acts.  Unfortunately, both in Russia and Europe, there are many who “very much do not want to believe that we are again faced with this evil.”

            According to Skobov, “Putin’s Russia is the most dangerous evil for modern civilization. The suppression of its aggression and the elimination of Putin’s tyranny is therefore the common cause of all civilized humanity.” And a Russian party that understands this must convince Europeans of the same before it is too late.

            Once that position again becomes the common view of people in Russia and Europe then it will be possible for the kind of joint actions that will be necessary not only to defeat Putin but to reverse the damage he has done in the first instance to Russia and Ukraine but even more broadly to Europe and the values on which the continent has striven to put in place.  

Enormous Gap in GDP Per Capita among Russian Regions has Increased Even More since 1991, ‘Club of the Regions’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 29 – Since 1991, the GDP per capita has increased in all the federal subjects of the Russian Federation; but the gap between the richest and poorest has increased as well, with the richest being the two capitals and oil and gas producing regions and nine of the ten poorest being non-Russian republics, the ‘Club of the Regions’ reports.

            The wealthiest on this metric is the oil and gas-rich Nenets Autonomous District which has a GDP per capita of 538,965 US dollars, the portal says. The poorest is Ingushetia with a GDP per capita of 10,429 US dollars, less than two percent of that of the richest (club-rf.ru/theme/729).

            As horrific as that difference is, even more disturbing is the fact that the Russian government has done little or nothing to address this imbalance and that as a result, while the wealthier regions have gotten richer on this metric, the poorer ones have fallen even further behind than they were at the end of Soviet times.

            This imbalance in the Russian Federation is far worse than in other major countries, the portal continues. In China, the difference between the richest and poorest areas differs between five and six times, in Germany by three or four times, and in the United States by only two or three times.

            That has two major consequences, the Club of the Regions analysis says. On the one hand, it is leading to uncontrolled migration from the poorest to the richest regions; and on the other, it is sparking calls in the poorest regions for a new deal or even independence, thus threatening the territorial integrity of the country.

Water in Russia’s Major Rivers ‘Polluted’ and ‘Dirty,’ Government Report Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 29 – As if the Russian Federation did not have enough problems, the government’s ministry of nature says in a draft report that most of the largest rivers of the country including the Volga, the Ob, the Yenisey, the Don, the Amur, and their tributaries have water that is “polluted” and “dirty.”

            The main sources of this pollution are waste waters from urban areas and industries that are not treated adequately, the report says; but there is little prospect for cleaning them up given how many heavy metals have sunk to the bottom of these rivers (nemoskva.net/2026/09/29/minprirody-voda-v-krupnejshih-rekah-rossii-priznana-gryaznoj/).

            In the surface waters of these rivers, concentrations of iron, copper, organic waste, petroleum products and nitrates all exceed maximum permissible concentrations, few of which are adequately reduced by existing water treatment facilities. Consequently, the rivers are making Russians sick.

            The report does not address another aspect of this contamination, the international one. Many of these rivers, such as the Volga which flows into the Caspian Sea and the Amur which is on the Chinese border, affect neighboring countries; and so Russia’s failure to clean up its rivers is an international problem.

            It is likely that the Russian government will seek to modify the draft report to try to convince people that things are not that bad; and so it is fortunate the NeMoskva portal has provided not only a link to the draft report but also a discussion of just how much of the pollution of rivers is becoming.