Some Russian Libraries May See as Much as 70 Percent of Their Books Removed Because of Moscow’s Laws on ‘Foreign Agents’ and ‘Undesirable Organizations’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 10 – Rsusia’s Ministry of Digital Development says that new laws may require libraries across Russia to remove from their shelves from 15 to 70 percent of their books so that the don’t run afoul of regulations about handling those by “foreign agents” or “undesirable organizations.”

            The hardest hit, the ministry continues, will be municipal public libraries, whereas academic libraries are likely to suffer the smallest number of removals (nemoskva.net/2026/06/10/do-70-knig-mogut-izyat-iz-bibliotek-rossii-iz-za-zakonov-ob-inoagentah-i-nezhelatelnyh-organizacziyah/).

            And it warns that unless the laws are changed or simply not enforced, even Russian classics like Lermontov and Pushkin may find books of their works published by “undesirable organizations” among those taken from the shelves and thus away from public circulation among Russians.

            On the one hand, the ministry report appears to be directed at getting the laws changed; but on the other, the fact that it had to be prepared and has now been released shows just how much of a crackdown the Putin regime is carrying out on its libraries, one as absurd as those the Soviet authorities did earlier.

Kyrgyzstan’s Lake Issyk-Kul May Die as Aral Sea has Unless It Gets More Water from River in China, Bishkek Experts Say

Paul Goble

              Staunton, June 10 – The rapid melting of glaciers in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan has seriously reduced the flow of water into Lake Issyk-Kul and put it on course to follow the Aral Sea into oblivion, according to Kyrgyz scholars. The only salvation they see is to get more water from a river whose waters now go almost exclusively into China.

              Diverting some of the flow of the Sary-Dzhas river is an idea that arose “already in Soviet times,” these experts say. Indeed, at that time, “a detailed plan” was worked up but never carried out (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-06-10--kirgiziju-vserez-trevozhit-sudba-ozera-issyk-kul-88266).

              “Today,” they suggest, “this initiative again is being considered as one of the most effective means of resolving the problem” of Lake Issyk-Kul’s falling water levels, with experts saying dams could be build and the electricity generated sent to China in exchange for the water.

              Whether China will agree to that is not clear, but unless Bishkek and Beijing can reach some sort of agreement, it seems likely that the water levels of Lake Issyk-Kul will continue to fall – and the amount of water

Pechenga on Border with Finland and Norway Seeks Status of a Russian Closed Military Town

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 9 – Pechenga, a municipality on the border with Finland and Norway, is joining as the 29^th member the Russian Association for the Promotion of the Development of Closed Military Towns and thus benefit from the military investment that other such sites now enjoy.

            But Atle Staalesen of The Barents Observer says that Moscow adopted a list of such locations in 2001 and Pechenga is not on it and thus may be a member of the association without getting the benefits others do (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/novosti/pecenga-prisoedinaetsa-k-gruppe-zakrytyh-voennyh-gorodov/452283).

            Moreover, there are two reasons to think that it isn’t going to get the injection of military money local officials hope for. On the one hand, the actual number of troops there has fallen since 2022, the result of many units being sent to fight in Ukraine and then now returning to Pechenga. (On those losses, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/11/closed-military-towns-in-russian-north.html.)

            And on the other, satellite photography does not show the kind of construction one might expect if more troops were going to be brought in soon, although this may be deceptive if Moscow wants to build up and then use expanded military units for a campaign against one or both of its neighbors.

            For background on Russia’s closed cities and what goes on in them, see the discussion of an unusual study of them as discussed at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/11/closed-military-towns-in-russian-north.html.

Russians have Little Interest in Books about Putin’s War in Ukraine, Publishers Tell ‘Vyorstka’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 10 – Since Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian publishing houses have released 259 books about that situation; but most in extremely modest print runs of 3,000 copies or fewer because Russians aren’t that interested in such books and publishers don’t see such books as a profit center.

            That is what publishers, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Vyorstka portal (verstka.media/kto-v-rossii-pishet-i-chitaet-knigi-o-vojne-v-ukraine), a report that has now been discussed by The Moscow Times (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/06/10/rossiyane-otkazalis-chitat-patrioticheskie-knigi-o-voine-protiv-ukraini-a197844).

            Indeed, the only way publishers can make money on such books is by selling them to schools or public libraries which likely feel compelled to buy them, although there is little likelihood that Russians read such books even when they are on the shelves of such public institutions.

Moscow Patriarchate and Christianity More Generally Losing ‘Commanding Heights’ in South Caucasus to Islam, Moscow Scholar Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 9 – For the last three decades, Anastasiya Koskello, says, the Moscow Patriarchate “has steered political processes in the Caucasus through key allies, the Armenian and Georgian churches as well as via its own branches, the Baku and Yerevan dioceses, and church structures in Abkhazia and South Ossetia that are de facto linked to Moscow.”

            But that system, the Moscow Institute of European Studies graduate student says, which “allowed officials to act as if the collapse of the USSR had never happened has now collapsed across the South Caucasus and ceded the influence of Christianity on politics there to Islam (ng.ru/ng_religii/2026-06-09/7_9513_christianity.html).

            The death of longtime Georgian Patriarch Iliya last month, the defeat of pro-Russian political forces in Armenia this week, and tensions between Moscow and Baku mean that the Russian church can no longer act with the effectiveness it did earlier, something that affects both the church itself and Russian policy more generally.

            This weakening of Moscow’s position via the Armenian and Georgian Orthodox churches is already clear, Koskello says; what is now increasingly “in doubt is the position of the ROC MP’s dioceses in Yerevan and Baku where the governments view them as ‘organizations’ controlled from abroad.’”

            As a result, the Moscow scholar says, “it is possible that in the foreseeable future, they will face the same fate as the Estonian Church of the Moscow Patriarchate” and be ordered by the courts to change their subordination from Moscow to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Turkey.

            That is especially likely in Azerbaijan where Russian Patriarch Kirill has offended local officials by his insistence that he does not need to seek a compromise but can continue to act as he has in the past, a position that has only made Baku increasingly angry.

According to Koskello, “the fate of the unrecognized church structures in Sukhumi and Tskhinvali also hangs in the balance: local elites have grown weary of the long-standing ecclesiastical games played between Russia and Georgia, and of their attempts to turn Abkhaz and Ossetian Orthodoxy into a bargaining chip.”

“In religious terms,” Koskello says, “the outcome of all these processes is the same: a weakening of the position held by all forms of Christianity in the South Caucasus,” something that has opened the door to the near certainty that “Muslim Azerbaijan is destined to become the leading political force in the coming decades.”

Indeed, she concludes, “the influence of Islam is growing in every single South Caucasian republic, including even in South Ossetia where historically not a single mosque had ever existed. And that in turn further serves to strengthen the influence of the Turkish-Azerbaijani bloc in the region.”

One in Every Four Russian Veterans of Putin’s War in Ukraine has Lost One Leg or Two, Moscow Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 8 – The human costs of Putin’s war in Ukraine are increasingly visible on the streets of Moscow in the form of Russian veterans of that conflict who have lost legs or arms. According to the government agency helping veterans, 22.8 percent of veterans have lost one leg, 2.4 have lost both, and 5.6 have lost one or both arms.

            Yuri Khabrov, head of that agency, told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that 2.6 million veterans of the war in Ukraine had turned to his group, a number that indicates just how many have such serious injuries (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/06/08/1204045-bolee-polovini-veteranov-svo-s-raneniyami-poluchili-i-i-ii-gruppi-invalidnosti).

            He said that 24,000 veterans were now getting medical rehabilitation, 8,000 are in sanatoria, and 54,000 are being supervised by doctors.  As large as Khabrov’s figures are, they may be understating the problem, to judge from reports now coming in from the federal subjects (e.g., svoboda.org/a/v-bashkortostan-vernulisj-pochti-chetyre-tysyachi-uchastnikov-voyny-protiv-ukrainy-iz-nih-tretj-s-invalidnostjyu/33776602.html and svoboda.org/a/vlasti-chuvashii-zayavili-chto-57-vernuvshihsya-s-voyny-v-ukraine-voennosluzhaschih-trudoustroeny/33775775.html).

            But however that may be, Khabrov’s numbers are large enough to project that Russians will be seeing in their daily lives for many years the results of Putin’s war and that governments at all levels will be compelled to spend far more than they planned taking care of these victims.

More than 95 Percent of News Stories have Potential to Affect Inter-Ethnic Relations in the Russian Federation, Russian Government Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 9 – During 2025, the Russian government told the Duma in its report on the implementation of the state’s ethnic policy that “more than 37,000 of the almost 38,500 newsworthy events recorded could affect inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations and that “almost 1200” of these could provoke conflicts.

            This remarkable admission by the government is highlighted by columnist Dmitry Popov on the Absatz portal in the course of his upbeat treatment of the state of ethnic relations and solidarity in Russia (absatz.media/mneniya/166723-duhom-okrepli-v-borbe-pochemu-za-12-let-nevidanno-vyrosla-splochennost-rossijskogo-naroda).

            Three things make the impact of news stories on ethnic and religious relations and even more the government’s decision to call attention to them. First, it is a sign of just how much ethnicity and religion are embroiled in almost all issues and how something apparently distant from them can come out of nowhere as it were and cause problems.

            Second, it is why no amount of censorship can block all the stories that might cause trouble in this area given that different people will read into different stories their own ideas and then act on them, often in ways completely at odds with what the authorities, their censors or their writers try to do

            And third, it is yet another indication of why no Soviet or Russian government has been able to form an effective nationality policy agency. The issues involved are so broad that were an effective one to be established, it would have to be almost as powerful as all the other ministries taken together, something no government would be willing to concede.

            Consequently and now by its own admission, the Russian government at least on this occasion recognizes that nationality problems are something that will always be with it however much Kremlin leaders proclaim that they have “solved the nationality question” or unified the population into a single nation.