Moscow Now Using Artificial Intelligence for Censorship of Books to the Point of Ridiculousness, Orekh Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 9 – “Judging from everything,” Anton Orekh says, “the texts of books are passing through artificial intelligence algorithms because real censors already aren’t in a position to intensify the checking of all printed production. Machines are tireless but stupid,” and this leads to absurdities in the system.

            These algorithms, which sometimes classify books as fit for publication or as restricted to certain age groups, are sometimes based on a single word or phrase that may be used very differently in different situations, a possibility reliance on algorithms ignores (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/09/kniga-opasna-dlia-vashego-zdorovia).

            That leads to absurdities when an algorithm concludes that a book should be banned or listed as only for adults without any consideration of context, something human censors usually could be counted on to do and thus classifications of books in such a way as to make the entire censorship system in Russia absurd on its face.

Ever More Russian Regions Slashing Healthcare Spending as Putin’s War in Ukraine Continues

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 10 – In 2025, five federal subjects cut spending on healthcare by more than ten percent; this year, the number that have slashed spending on that critical sector has increased to 19, nearly a quarter of all subjects and the largest number and largest total cut in medical spending since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022.

            Hardest hit so has been the Vologda Oblast where spending on medical operations fell by 39 percent year on year. Irkutsk and Kemerovo oblasts cut their spending by more than 30 percent; and Moscow and Volgograd each cut their by more than a quarter, the Important Stories portal says (istories.media/stories/2026/03/10/v-2026-godu-rekordnoe-za-vremya-voini-chislo-regionov-sokratili-raskhodi-na-zdravookhranenie/

            “Even in regions where budget cuts are smaller,” the portal says, “the primary healthcare sector is struggling,” especially outside the regional capitals. And that means among other things that Russians on average are getting less medical care than they need or even the amount that they had before Putin launched his expanded war.

            Some regional leaders have tried to keep the cuts from being too deep by borrowing from banks, but the Kremlin frowns on this – and has even made the amount of such debate a key performance indicator in its rating of governors, a fact of life that is keeping ever more governors from trying to do so.

            That means the healthcare of Russians is declining and likely will continue to do so as long as the war continues, something neither regional leaders nor the population have any control over but that both recognize is the result of a Moscow policy that is increasing their suffering at a rapid rate. 

Kazakhstan Portal Says Chinese Analysts have Concluded Russia Today Resembles the USSR in Its Final Years

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 9 – Analysts around the world have reported about the way in which Chinese scholars have studied the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union, suggesting that Beijing hoped to learn from that event and thus being in a position to avoid something similar happening to China.

            But they have devoted less attention to Chinese commentaries suggesting that what is happening in Russia today resembles what happened three decades ago. An exception to that is a Kazakh commentary which suggests Chinese analysts now believe that the Russian Federation could follow the USSR into the dustbin of history unless it changes course.

            According to Kazakhstan’s Altyn-Orda portal, analysts in China believe that Russia once again suffers from the two key factors which brought down the USSR: an overreliance on earnings from the export of raw materials, the price of which it does not control; and deteriorating relations with foreign states that are stronger than Russia (altyn-orda.kz/kitajskie-analitiki-vsyo-chashhe-sravnivayut-rossiyu-s-pozdnim-sssr/).

            “If  Russia isn’t able to reduce the raw-materials dependence of its economy and at the same time continues its course of harsh confrontation with the West,” Chinese analysts believe in the Altyn-Orda account, “then the country may encounter still more serious consequences than even those which the Soviet Union suffered at the end of the 20^th century.”

            The Kazakhstan article says that Chinese analysts are not saying that Russia is on the brink of disintegration now but rather is behaving in ways that unless changed make that or some other disaster possible in the coming years unless Moscow makes progress in changing one or both of these policy lines.

New Moscow Study Suggests 2022 Protests against Mobilization Far More Widespread than Reported at the Time

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 9 – The Russian government’s Academy of Economics and State Service has released the results of a study it undertook in response to the 2022 protests against Putin’s partial mobilization in various parts of that country. Its findings suggest these protests were even more widespread than has been acknowledged.

            The study examined what it calls efforts by outside actors to influence the situation among young people at that time in 39 federal subjects, just under half of the total. Given that blaming “outside agitators” is Moscow’s preferred way of explaining protests, that suggests that significant anti-mobilization protests took place in these but not other places.

            For discussions of this study and what it may say about Moscow’s perception of the state of protest activity, see verstka.media/v-ranhigs-zayavili-o-vneshnem-informaczionnom-davlenii-na-molodyozh-v-45-regionah and kavkazr.com/a/dagestan-nazvali-glavnoy-tseljyu-informatsionnyh-atak-na-molodezhj-severnogo-kavkaza/33699641.html.

            Two things support this conclusion about how widespread the protests were at that time. First, the list of problem regions in the new study includes many predominantly ethnic Russian federal subjects where protest activity was slight or not reported at all when the mobilization was declared.

And second, in the North Caucasus, the list includes Dagestan where protests were massive and widely reported but not Chechnya, Ingushetia, Karachayevo-Cherkesiya and Kabardino-Balkaria where protests were smaller or even non-existent at least to judge from reportage at the time.

If this interpretation is correct, then it appears likely that the Academy’s study was ordered by the Kremlin in anticipation that Putin may feel compelled to announce another partial mobilization and that officials are now trying to anticipate just how much opposition there would be given how much there was four years ago. 

Only about Half of Moscow University Students Committed Patriots, New Academy of Sciences Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 10 – Only just over half -- 52 percent -- of Moscow university students are committed patriots above all, according to a new survey of 1,000 of them carried out by sociologists at the Russian Academy of Sciences, while 28 percent are less fully oriented toward patriotic values and 24 percent are largely indifferent to them.

            The study which appears in the current issue of the Moscow Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology (jourssa.ru/index.php/jourssa/article/view/2650/2557) had the students express their support or opposition on a seven point scale in response to various statements about patriotism and loyalty (discussed at nakanune.ru/articles/124433/).

            While 89 percent of the sample said that they considered themselves patriots, obviously the preferred answer, “in all three groups, those who feel a sense of responsibility for their families dominated over a sense of responsibility for the future of Russia which was in each case in the last place.”

            In part, of course, the sociologists said, in the words of Nakanune, “this can be explained by the fact that each individual is oriented to a greater degree on those around him that on the country as a whole.” But it is worrisome that a quarter of Russian students say they don’t feel responsible to work for Russia, worry about its future, and aren’t interested in its history.

            Perhaps even more interesting and perhaps disturbing to the Kremlin were the answers of the students as to what they believe patriotism to be. They were asked to choose among eight different definitions. The idea that “patriotism is a relic of the past” received the least support, but the notion that “patriotism hinders cultural development” was second from the bottom.

            At the other end of the scale, the students as a whole gave their highest agreement to the proposition that “patriotism is an integral component of Russian culture;” but just below that, the students said that patriotism was “a strictly personal matter. And in the middle of the rankings, 40 percent said that “patriotism is a technique of state control.”

            Perhaps surprisingly and for some alarmingly, those in the moderately patriotic group were more likely to agree with the last proposition than are those who are the least inclined to say they are patriotic.

 

Fertility Rate Fell in All Regions of Russia Last Month with Greatest Declines in North Caucasus where Birthrates Nonetheless Remain the Highest

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 10 – Last month, the seasonally adjusted fertility rate fell in every federal subject of the Russian Federation with the largest percentage declines coming in the republics of the North Caucasus where these rates remain higher than in predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays, official data show (t.me/sterngang/1760).

            In the first two months of 2026, Chechnya saw its fertility rate fall by 6.5 percent; but that Muslim republic along with its neighbors still has a much higher fertility rate than do predominantly ethnic Russian regions (kavkazr.com/a/chechnya-i-dagestan-v-chisle-liderov-po-spadu-rozhdaemosti/33700297.html).

            That means that Chechnya and other Muslim republics even if their fertility rates are declining and now in most cases below the 2.2 children per woman per lifetime needed to keep their populations stable will retain a relative advantage compared to predominantly ethnic Russian regions.

            Thus, in time, all federal subjects may decline on this metric; but the ones with predominantly ethnic Russian populations will decline faster than those with Muslim populations. And that means at the end of the day, the Muslim republics will form a larger share of the country’s population than they do now, even if they too are less numerous.

            Only if fertility rates in Muslim republics fell below the figures for the Russian Federation as a whole or for overwhelmingly ethnic Russian cities, where these metrics currently stand at under 1.3 and approximately 1.0 would that no longer be the case, a prospect that no expert Russian or Western sees taking place. 

Three Trends Exacerbated by Putin’s War Suggest Russia isn’t Headed toward a New Federalism or Disintegration but Rather toward Becoming a Failed State, Luzin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 11 – Pavel Luzin has long argued that Russia isn’t headed toward disintegration because it lacks the kind of conflicts among organized groups that are required for such an outcome and instead had put his hopes that effective decolonization would happen by means of the reconstitution of a genuine federalism there.

            But now, the Russian political scientist at the Fletcher School says that three aspects of Russian political culture that have been exacerbated by Putin’s war in Ukraine currently cast doubt on that second possibility and that he believes Russia may instead toward becoming a failed state unless Russians change their attitudes (region.expert/no-unity/).

            First of all, Luzin says, “Russian society has completely abandoned its own political agency, leading to a situation in which there are few “individual or collective political actors capable of formulating answers to questions like what kind of Russia do they need? Why do they need it at all? And why do they need neighbors and the people around them?”

            Second and related to this, “Russians couldn’t care less about what is happening in other regions.” They ignored the Prigozhin rising and the Ukrainian occupation of Bryansk Oblast. That, of course, has “a positive consequence” in that it “dispels the myth that Russians will never agree to the loss of the occupied territories of Ukraine.”

            And third, “there has been a clear erosion of one of the most important if not indeed the most important hierarchies – that of the capital and the regions. “Not only has Moscow had to compete with domestic migration flows with other cities … but Russian aggression has further exacerbated the capital’s unattractiveness as a place for a better life.”

            “When a country’s center loses its ideal role and vertical ties weaken,” Luzin continues, “then centrifugal forces can take hold” and disintegration can occur, although it “doesn’t necessarily have to occur along administrative-territorial and/or ethno-cultural boundaries” as many now assume.

            Instead, he argues, this “institutional disintegration” can lead to the country’s transformation into a failed state.” That is an option few are exploring or even think even possible in the case of a country with nuclear weapons. But having such weapons didn’t stop the USSR from falling apart and likely can’t prevent Russia from becoming a failed state.

               More than two decades ago, the author of this review of Luzin’s article published an essay entitled “Russia as a Failed State” in the Baltic Defense Review in which he made that and other points about the nature of the Russian state at the start of Putin’s reign  (bdcol.ee/files/docs/bdreview/bdr-2004-12-sec3-art3.pdf).

            Luzin’s article now is a sign that what was certainly true then and what Putin with some success fought against is again true now, the result in large measure of the Kremlin leader’s own actions and his failure to understand the nature of his own country and its history despite how often he talks about it.