Lukashenka has Repressed at Least 500,000 Belarusians Since 2020, Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 22 – “The number of politically motivated criminal  cases [in Belarus] exceeds the number of those freed or serving time behind bars,” Vladimir Zhigar says in a new report which shows that since 2020, the Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenk has actively repressed 500,000 of his country’s citizens, not the few thousand many speak of.

            Zhigar, who represents the organization of former force structure employees who now cooperate with the BelPol opposition, made these remarks at a congress concerning such people at a conference in Vilnius (rfi.fr/ru/европа/20260522-belpol-с-мая-2020-года-в-беларуси-репрессировано-полмиллиона-человек).

            There, he presented a report BelPol has compiled about repression in Belarus since 2020. According to him, at least a half million Belarusians have been subject to repressive actions by the state, a figure that his group has compiled because Lukashenka stopped publishing data on this issue two years ago.

            This figure includes both those who Belsians who have been harassed without being arrested, others against whom charges have been brought and who have been imprisoned for various lengths of time, and a third group consisting of those who have subjected to harassment and various restrictions after they are released, according to the report.

            As large as the figure of 500,000 is, BelPol continues, the true dimensions of repression in Belarus are much larger if one includes the families and friends of those subject to repression in the narrow sense and all Belarusians who suffer from Lukashenka’s authoritarian policies. 

            Other speakers at the Vilnius conference, including Belarusian Nobelist Ales Ales Bialiatski, agreed and said that Lukashenka’s continuing campaign against the population is designed to intimidate all Belarusians to keep quiet and to force those who can’t to leave the country and not return.

Grozny's ‘Embassy’ in Kazan Quite Active but Typically Below the Radar Screen

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – At the dawn of Soviet times, regions and republics routinely set up representative offices in Moscow and also in other regions with whom they had lots of business to compensate for the lack of adequate communication. While many were eliminated later, some continue to work to this day.

            The permanent representations of the union republics became the basis for the formation of embassies when these countries became independent, with the embassies often located in the same buildings and consisting of the same people as the permanent representations had had earlier.

            Some non-Russian republics and predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays also set up offices not only in the Russian capital but also in their counterparts elsewhere in Russia or even abroad. Most have shut down since 1991, but some remain and a few new ones have opened -- although they seldom get much attention, despite being “proto-embassies” as it were.

            (For background, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/01/non-russian-republic-embassies-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/embassies-of-non-russian-republics.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/apparently-on-moscows-order-functions.html and the sources cited therein.)

            To avoid making Moscow suspicious that they have some nefarious purpose, these representative offices generally operate below the radar screen and seldom call attention to themselves by talking about what they do. That makes a new article about the Chechen office in Tatarstan especially important (tatar-inform.ru/news/predstavitel-glavy-cecni-v-tatarstane-eli-kagarbekov-k-nam-obrashhayutsya-po-vsem-voprosam-my-otkryty-6024738).

            In it, Eli Kagarbekov, head of Grozny’s office in Kazan which opened in July 2024 and himself a native of Tatarstan and local businessman, says that he and his team “deal with a very large spectrum of issues beginning from simple questions ones and ending with economic and even political ones.

            The Chechen office in Kazan is particularly interested in assisting and promoting business cooperation between the two republics, he says, pointing to plans for a large Chechen business mission to Tatarstan in the hopes of expanding ties among the major firms of the two republics, Kagarebekov continues. Earlier this year, a smaller delegation already came.

            There are approximately 1200 Tatars in Chechnya and 1,000 Chechens in Tatarstan, the permanent representative says; and one of his most important tasks is to help each develop and to expand ties between the two in all aspects of life, including tourism, although that became more difficult when direct air connections between Kazan and Grozny were suspended not long ago.

            Perhaps the most intriguing comment Kagarbekov made was his statement that other north Caucasians living in or visiting Tatarstan often turn to  him for assistance because their own republics do not yet have similar permanent representations and they can count on the Chechen one to help.

Putin’s Rewriting of History All About Shifting Responsibility for Past Crimes Away from the State, Shor-Tchudnovskaya Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 22 – Putin’s rewriting of history all about shifting responsibility for past crimes away from the state, Anna Shor-Tchudnovskaya says; and it is succeeding because even many of that state’s victims are more than willing to accept the idea that the Russian state is innocent even as far as their suffering is concerned.

            The Russian sociologist who now works at Vienna’s Sigmund Freud University, says this pattern shows how “naïve” many Russians and others have ben in thinking that Russia “was just a step away from ‘a normal society’” (sapere.online/vsem-kazalos-chto-my-v-shage-ot-normalnogo-obshhestva-eta-naivnost-sygrala-zluyu-shutku/).

            While much has been written about the new Russian law concerning “the genocide of the Soviet people,” some aspects of it and especially “several other intriguing amendments that were quietly introduced alongside it,” the sociologist says, “slipped in amidst the general commotion” but in fact prove at least as significant.

            “For instance,” she says, “the concept of state policy for perpetuating the memory of victims of political repression,” a document that has been in place for a decade, was “completely rewritten” and effectively replaced “one group of victims” with another, and eliminated any suggestions that the Russian state was to blame.

            According to Shor-Tchudnovskaya, “this was done with a very specific objective in mind: to ensure the very notion of an "internal" genocide—a genocide perpetrated against one's own people—would never even cross anyone's mind.” The document’s provisions about perpetuating memory and the mass nature of these repressions were dropped.

            Moreover, in the new edition, “working regarding the necessity of ‘condemning the ideology of political terror” was also deleted; and replaced by d references to the Soviet period have by talk about “the achievements of the Russian state,” with emphasis placed “toward highlighting just how excellent our state is.”

            All this has been done, the sociologist suggests, in order to shift attention away from domestic problems to “the victims of ‘an externally organized genocide’” and to “rehabilitate the state” in the eyes of the population.

            “One potential consequence of this shift,” she continues, “is that resistance movements in the occupied territories following World War II could come to be perceived as ‘resistance to denazification.’  That has not happened yet, but such an interpretation remains entirely plausible.”

            But more generally, Shor-Tchudnovskaya says, in the new version of the document, “particular pride is placed upon the role of the state—a state which, if it ever did anything wrong, was merely experiencing ‘tragic chapters’ which means that “no one bears the blame for it; it is simply how fate unfolded, or how higher powers intervened.”

            Unfortunately, many Russians, even many who themselves or whose relatives were the victims of Soviet crimes are all too willing to accept this approach, something that sets them apart from the way Germans who suffered under the Nazis view their situation and condemn the Nazi state as a whole.

            Russians, the sociologist says, overwhelmingly want people to acknowledge that their mistreatment was “unjustified” but “a random error” and that they see no need to condemn the state for what happened. Blaming the powers that be, some of them have told Memorial, “is unnecessary and goes too far.”

Russia has Been Very Slow to Publicize Location of Bomb Shelters

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 22 – Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in February 2022 and even since Ukraine began to attack Russian cities with drones, only 25 federal subjects of the Russian Federation have released information about the location of bomb shelters – and independent analysts say two-thirds of those identified are in poor condition.

            According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, three regions released information on the location of bomb shelters in 2022, five more did so in 2023, five in 2024, three in 2025, and seven so far this year (/novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/05/22/za-chetyre-goda-voiny-tolko-25-regionov-rossii-raskryli-adresa-bomboubezhishch-podschitala-novaia-evropa-news).

            Elsewhere, information about where bomb shelters are located remains classified, even though Ukrainian drones have reached far more federal subjects than the 25 that have identified where such facilities are located but at least in part because at least two-thirds of the shelters are unfit for use.

            In June of last year, Moscow said that a map of all shelters would be posted on the State Services portal by December 2025; but that hasn’t happened; and many Russians not surprisingly are outraged by this all-too-obvious evidence that the powers that be in the Putin regime don’t care nearly as much about the population’s safety as they routinely claim to be.

After Putin, Russia Must Either Modernize Quickly or Face Disintegration, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – The editors of Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta warn that “every prolonged historical period over the last century and a half has ended in a state of stupor and paralysis of central authority and has been accompanied by the disintegration of the country.”

            “Often,” the editors say in a lead article, these two developments “have been attended by military defeats or the absence of a clear military victory;” but there have been exceptions – and Russians can avoid disaster if they recognize the threat and work to counter it (ng.ru/editorial/2026-05-21/2_9500_21052026.html).

            When Russians have not done so -- and that has been more often than not, the editors suggest -- “fragments of the disintegrating Russia have instigated wars among themselves or against the remaining central core of the country, a pattern observed in both the 20th and 21st centuries).”

            The most obvious example in recent Russian history where the leadership at least recognized the threat and acted expeditiously came after Stalin’s death in 1953. Then, “the ossifying Stalinist regime rapidly transformed into a system of collective leadership exercised by members of the Politburo.”

            That was possible because Moscow had a powerful army and was making “rapid social and technological progress, the kind of developments many around the world at the time viewed as a model worthy of emulation.” As a result, “Russia weathered a succession crisis … without suffering territorial disintegration.”

            What this means, the paper’s editors say, is that “Russian history offers only two possible scenarios: It may navigate its current historical situation by following the pattern of disintegration or by pursuing the pattern of rapid transformation.” There are no other alternatives, they write.

            And they conclude by pointing out that “These same history textbooks also suggest that, to avoid territorial disintegration, Russians must now avoid a military defeat or even a contentious stalemat in the war [they say] currently being waged by NATO nations against Russia” via a Ukrainian proxy.

            “Any attempt to obscure this historical choice from contemporary Russian society is a poor strategy in the ongoing conflict with the West,” they conclude, given the risk of stagnation of the country and then its disintegration as in 1918 and again in 1991.

Tokayev’s Praise for the Golden Horde Gives Moscow a Taste of Its Own Medicine and Moscow Doesn’t Like It

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 22 – Earlier this month, Kazakhstan President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev gave a speech in which he praised the Golden Horde and said it was a proper guide for the Kazakhs in the future, a position that echoes Moscow’s talk about an ancient Russian tradition but offends many there by challenging Russian views on the Horde.

            Speaking at an Astana symposium on the Golden Horde on May 19, Tokayev did not simply mention the Golden Horde but argued it was a major Eurasian power in its own right, a civilizational model for the Great Steppe and as such had its own institutions, laws, military and financial system (altyn-orda.kz/vystuplenie-glavy-gosudarstva-kasym-zhomarta-tokaeva-na-mezhdunarodnom-simpoziume-zolotaya-orda-kak-model-stepnoj-tsivilizatsii-istoriya-arheologiya-kultura-identichnost/).

            Every part of his remarks represented a challenge to the Russian imperial tradition that Putin represents. Now as in the past, Moscow treats the Golden Horde as “a yoke,” “a dark age,” and a symbol of Russia’s enslavement and the cause of its suffering.

            For Russians who think this way, “the Steppe was not a civilization but a threat, not a state but a mere raiding party, and not a system of governance but of chaos,” the Altyn-Orda portal says in summing up Tokayev’s remarks. Not surprisingly, many in Moscow are furious (altyn-orda.kz/rech-tokaeva-o-zolotoj-orde-vyzvala-nervnuyu-reaktsiyu-v-rossii/).

            What is especially infuriating from Moscow’s point of view, of course, is not the mere mention of the Golden Horde but that fact, the portal continues, that “Kazakhstan is beginning to construct its own historical narrative—one in which the Ulus of Jochi and the Golden Horde are viewed not as ‘a foreign invasion’  but as an integral part of the history of statehood in the Kazakh Steppe.”

            With his words, Tokayev is “declaring to the world that the Steppe is not some void situated between China, Rus’, and Europe but rather an independent center of power in its own right, a conduit for trade routes, diplomatic ties, cultural exchanges and political models” for now and the future, the portal continues.

            Moreover, the portal says, “while the history of the Great Steppe was previously often written by those observing it from the outside, Kazakhstan has now begun to write it from within. In essence, Tokayev’s speech is not a dispute with Russia regarding the past; it is a declaration regarding the future. “

            That is, Tokayev’s argument about the Golden Horde show that from now on Kazakhstan will be “grounding its identity not in the Soviet legacy or in the role of Moscow’s ‘junior partner’ but rather on the basis of a far deeper historical foundation,” one at least as old or more likely older than the Russian tradition.

            In Tokayev’s vision, the portal says, “the Golden Horde is not ‘a yoke,’ but a civilizational bedrock—not a dark stain on history, but a grand Eurasian project;” and that is “precisely why the Russian reaction has been so agitated. When Kazakhstan reclaimed the Golden Horde, it is reclaiming not just its history but it true self.”

But a curious coincidence, Tokayev’s speech came only four days after Kazakhstan and the Turkic world marked the 90^th anniversary of the  birth of Kazakh writer and philosopher Olzhas Suleimenov  (https://ru.euronews.com/culture/2026/04/15/90-let-olzhasu-sulejmenovu-pisatel-stavshij-golosom-antiyadernogo-dvizheniya ).

Suleimenov’s 1975 book, Az i Ya also challenged the Russian understanding of the Horde and was almost immediately suppressed by the Soviets and has been an underground classic for Turkic and other ethnic groups in the Russian empire ever since . (For background, see  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/09/kazakh-authorities-confiscate-paper-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/01/pandemic-testing-leaders-and-countries.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/09/window-on-eurasia-putin-doesnt-know.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2012/10/window-on-eurasia-cis-continuing-and.html.)

Moscow Arrests Ten Senior Muslim Leaders, Sending New Chill through Russia’s Islamic Community

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – The Russian authorities have arrested on a variety of charges ten senior Muslim leaders, an action that some are linking to a recent suggestion that Muslims are ready to take power in Russia and that others say is directed at undermining an even more senior mufti who in the Kremlin’s view has taken a too independent line.

            On the arrests, see  t.me/agentstvonews/15450, echofm.online/news/v-rossii-zaderzhany-kak-minimum-dva-muftiya, meduza.io/feature/2026/05/21/v-rossii-zaderzhali-dvuh-muftiev-duhovnogo-upravleniya-musulman-odnogo-zapodozrili-vo-vzyatke-vtorogo-v-nepovinovenii-politsii, https://t.me/OstashkoNews/213428 and sova-center.ru/religion/news/harassment/intervention/2026/05/d53798/.

            Neither the arrests themselves nor the specific reasons for them have been confirmed by Russian officials. On the one hand, that means that these actions may be the beginning of a general crackdown on the Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSD) that oversee most of the Muslim parishes in the Russian Federation or a one time action.

            And on the other, because that is so, speculation is rife about what is going on. Most observers suggest it is Moscow’s response to suggestions by Ruslan Kutayev, the head of the Assembly of Peoples of the Caucasus and one of the five non-Russians on the Russian Platform at PACE, that Muslims are ready to take power in Moscow (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/27/mibudem-kontrolirovat-moskvu-bivshii-vitse-premer-chechni-zayavil-chto-musulmane-gotovi-vzyat-vlast-vrossii-a193864).

              That is certainly plausible, although it is worth noting that Kurayev has made a variety of radical statements like this over the last decade and was not subject to arrest although he was forced to emigrate (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-north-caucasus-republic-will-emerge.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/north-caucasians-aspire-to-have-one-of.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/04/best-option-for-north-caucasian-peoples.html).

            Others have suggested that this is a Moscow move against Gainutdin (https://t.me/rybar/80400) and that the Kremlin may finally have decided to crush dissent within the Muslim community and make it as loyal to itself as is the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

              If that is the case, the Russian authorities will have to do more than arrest a few dozen Muslim leaders given that Islam does not have clergy or a clerical hierarchy that Moscow can hope to control. Consequently, if these arrests do presage a new Moscow move against Islam, they are likely to presage widespread resistance.