Ukraine’s Attacks on Russian Shipping via Black Sea Creating Cascading Problems for Moscow

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 1 – Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian ships on the Black Sea have forced Moscow to reroute its exports of grain eastward to the Caspian and northward to the Baltic and Arctic seas, an exercise that has highlighted serious bottlenecks in both places that are restricting the export of Russian grain.

            Not only has the redirection of grain shipments overloaded Russian railroads and the capacity of the Volga-Don canal to carry cargo in these new directions, but it has highlighted the fact that most of the ports Moscow wants to use as alternatives lack the onloading equipment needed to function (istories.media/news/2026/11/01/rossiya-perevozit-zerno-cherez-arktiku-i-kaspiiskoe-more-iz-za-obstrelov-v-chernom-more/).

            As a result, Russian shipping companies say, these routes will not be able to compensate for much of the export volume lost with the closure of the Black Sea routes, where shipping has declined and the costs of using what remains have risen dramatically, another example of the ways in which Ukraine has achieved more against Russia than many think.

Death of Aral Sea has Left ‘a Toxic Desert’ Behind

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 1 – The death of the Aral Sea has created “a toxic desert” from which more than 100 million tons of dust are spreading to neighboring countries and causing illness and death, according to the United Nations body responsible for tracking desertification and responding to this threat.

            Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are seeking to remedy the situation by planting trees to hold the former seabed in place, and the other Central Asian countries have started monitoring programs. But these efforts have done remarkably little to reduce the dust, much of it extremely toxic, from spreading with the winds (centrasia.org/news.php?st=1793469240).

            The spread of this dust has not only harmed people living nearby but also fallen on glaciers in the mountains of the region and reduced their reflection of the light and heat of the sun. As a result, the glaciers are melting more rapidly, exacerbating the shortages of water that the original death of the Aral signaled in the first place.

            The impact of this echo of the death of the Aral is important both in its own right given the problems it is creating for the Central Asian region and for what it means elsewhere around the world where lakes and seas are drying up. Soon, others, like the Caspian, will also be the source of such dust flows and thus creating similar or even larger problems than the Aral has. 

FSB Now ‘Main Operator’ of Repressive Policy and Its Focus has Shifted from the Capitals to the Russian Periphery and Occupied Territories, ‘Re-Russia’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 30 – The Judicial Department of the Russian Supreme Court has restricted its release of details about politically sensitive cases but the Re-Russia portal has examined the data available and has concluded that the FSB is now in charge of repression and its focus has shifted from the capitals to the Russian periphery and occupied Ukrainian territories.

            While many observers have concluded that the number of politically motivated cases was roughly the same in 2025 as in 2024, the Re-Russia portal says that its own figures show that there was a rise of about 70 percent, most of which can outside of the capitals of Russia and within occupied Ukraine (re-russia.net/analytics/0467/).

            Growth in the number of politically sensitive cases in those two areas reflects the FSB’s decision to focus on occupied areas of Ukraine in order to support the Russian war effort there and on regions and republics far from Moscow which it had ignored earlier but where other forms of political actions are now on the rise. 

After Protests Brought Arrests, Azerbaijanis who Support Right to Wear the Hijab have Shifted How They are Resisting with Some Teaching Their Daughters at Home, Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 30 – In early October, the Azerbaijani authorities insisted that pupils and teachers in state schools could no longer wear the hijab because in their view that represents a threat to the secular nature of the Azerbaijani system. Such protests have stopped but resistance is continuing, with some families pulling their daughters out of school, Kavkaz-Uzel reports.

            That resistance underscores just how committed many Azerbaijani parents are to having their daughters wear the hijab and how much anger the decision of the authorities have stirred up (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/427925; for background on these protests, see jamestown.org/bakus-hijab-ban-sparks-protests-in-azerbaijan-and-creates-problems-with-turkiye/).

            While parents can pull their children out of school as long as they provide alternative instruction in private schools or at home, teachers who wanted to wear the hijab have no such fall back position: they must either give in to the official rules or face dismissal from their jobs, something that appears to be happening in an increasing number of cases.

            What makes this worrisome is that many of these parents may be far more inclined to listen to and even follow underground religious leaders who defend what the parents want but who have even larger agendas regarding secular Azerbaijan. To the extent that happens, what may seem to some like a tempest in a teapot may become something far larger in the future. 

Of 25 Memorials to Victims of Soviet Power Destroyed Since 2022, 21 were Devoted to Non-Russian Victims, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 30 -- That Russian officials and Russians on a private basis have been defacing and destroying monuments to the victims of Stalin’s terror since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine in 2022 has received a great deal of attention, but Horizontal Russia reports that 21 of the 25 destroyed in this period were devoted to non-Russian victims.

            Among the groups whose monuments were destroyed are the Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Germans, Latvians and Hungarians, with the Poles lone being identified (in most cases along with others) in 18 of the monuments desecrated or demolished in the last five years (semnasem.org/articles/2026/10/29/oni-ubivayut-nas-potomkov).

            As the news agency which covers developments in the Russian Federation beyond Moscow’s ring road points out, this deprives these peoples of a way to maintain their memories and thus identities and is a conscious policy of the center rather than being some accident as some might think.

Since 2022, Russians have been in a Kind of Memorial Service for the Passing of Everything Making Them Fully Human, Kolesnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 28 – In an article provocatively entitled “A Panikhid for Humanity, Andrey Kolesnikov argues that since Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine five years ago, Russians have been part of a memorial service for the passing of everything that makes them fully human – morality, statehood, and a rejection of independent thinking.

            Crying for the deceased, the Russian commentator says, is where humanity begins because it makes the individual the center of life and underscores just “how important a single and unique person is on this side of the grave” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/10/28/panikhida-po-cheloveku).

            “Totalitarian systems do not know the human self, they only know the ‘we’  in which you can dissolve, become invisible and accept for yourself “the yoke with the rattles yes scourge”. And there is only one ‘’” that equates itself with the country, the Motherland, the people, the state, society, and the mass “we” should agree with this only ‘I’ in everything.”

            That is what Stalin achieved and it is what a small group of intellectual recognized near the end of Soviet times, Kolesnikov says; now, it is what Putin and his regime have sought to recreate again, by destroying the central figure of humanity, the individual, and subordinating him to the mass, opening the way to mass crimes.

            In the 20^th century, the most horrific crimes are “mass crimes, those in which not only the victims are in the millions but the criminal is an organized mass,” he continues. What has been happening over the last five years is that that approach from which Russians had begun to turn away is being restored.

            Understanding what is going on is the first step to opposing and overcoming it, he says. “This psychology of subordination and self-justification in one group of accomplices works on the example of large communities, it explains everything in the mechanisms of conformity of the masses, besides protected from the torment of conscience and shame by distancing from the fact that violence occurs somewhere.”

            Kolesnikov continues: “Today, the semi-totalitarian system has entered a new quality: it has become much more open in demonstrating brutality: the militant dialect of the central television talk show and the logic of destroying the enemy have become the language of pro-Kremlin experts and even state policy.”

“No one will now refute Stalin’s “right”, on the contrary, state repression is justified by positive historical experience. It is no longer a legacy of late Soviet, it is the heritage of 1937, 1938, 1949 and other terrible years. Totalitarian practices of subordination and self-justification are reproduced in an impeccable way.”

Russian Nationalities Agency Collects Enormous Range of Data on Ethnic and Religious Relations and Passes It to FSB and Law Enforcement, New ‘Arctida’ Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 29 – Compared to siloviki agencies, the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (FADN) attracts remarkably little attention, but it plays a key role in the work of the FSB and Russian law enforcement agencies by gathering and then passing along data from its countrywide monitoring system of ethnic and religious relations, a new Arctida study says.

            The FADN monitoring system tracks online content, news coverage, and social media posts, and the agency want to expand this to include messaging aps, Arctida says.  Most commentaries on this suggest that what the FADN monitoring system is for is helping formulate policy rather than bringing charges (arctida.io/en/projects/russias-peoples).

              But in fact, a major part of the FADN’s monitoring is devoted to identifying those who may be in violation of the law, something that should not surprise anyone because most of the senior FADN officials involved are either FSB officers, married to them, or served in the FSB earlier.

              Having these FSB links has given FADN a certain amount of defense against those who would transfer the monitoring function to the FSB’s second department; but there are signs that the FSB’s patience may be running thin and that FADN will lose this function, one that dominates much of its activity. In that event, its overall role will be reduced.

              But the Kremlin may prefer that FADN keep this monitoring service because there will be less sensitivity in some groups if a nominally apolitical group is doing it, even if it is immediately handing over any information it does collect to the FSB and law enforcement bodies.