Anger about Putin’s Closing of Village Schools So Intense and Widespread Moscow has Decided Not to Shutter Any More Before Duma Elections

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 3 – When Vladimir Putin came to power, there were more than 45,000 village schools. Now, there are fewer than half that number, the result of his “optimization” program that has accelerated as the Kremlin ruler searches for places to take money to pay for his expanded war in Ukraine.

            But many in Russia’s villages are angry because the program has been carried out with little regard to local interests or even demography – in some places schools have been shut down even though there are many young families present – and villagers have protested against the program.

            (On this rising tide of protest beyond the ring road and outside of even smaller cities and only rarely being reported in Moscow, see tribuna.nad.ru/uroki-optimizacii-kak-v-komi-razrushayut-selskoe-obrazovanie, rtvi.com/stories/inache-my-vymrem-reforma-shkol-privela-k-ih-likvidaczii/, sreda42.pro/articles/tpost/x6yiijnb11-zakritie-shkol-v-kuzbasse-masshtabnaya-o and deita.ru/article/573872).  

            Now, in a concession to the power of rural anger about this program, the Russian government has decided to suspend the closure of any additional village schools until after the Duma elections lest villagers among Putin’s most loyal supporters vote against his United Russia Party (zebra-tv.ru/novosti/vlast/vo-vladimire-na-god-priostanovyat-obedinenie-shkol/ and svpressa.ru/politic/article/505379/).

            That may not be enough because many rural Russians are suspicious about why Moscow is closing their schools and about what it will do next. One retired teacher in a village near Arkhangelsk recalled the words of a local priest: village schools weren’t closed “even in the Great Fatherland War, so what is happening now that makes this necessary?” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/02/28/urok-muzhestva).

Moscow Plays Ethnic Card by Having Russians with Ukrainian Roots Attack Kyiv in Diplomatic and Media Spheres

Paul Goble     

            Staunton, Mar. 5 – It should come as no surprise given Moscow’s long tradition of playing the ethnic card to advance Kremlin interests, but some may not have noticed how many Russians with Ukrainian roots and names are now being deployed by the Putin regime to denigrate the land of their ancestors.

            On the one hand, of course, this provides support for Putin’s claim that Russians and Ukrainians aren’t two nations but one; but on the other and likely more important, it suggests that some that many Ukrainians are already in Putin’s corner and that even more will be if he occupies Ukraine.

            Perhaps the most prominent of these Ukrainian Russians is Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations who on occasion has suggested that he is “more Ukrainian” than his Ukrainian counterpart at the UN or even Kyiv’s deputy foreign minister, journalist Aleksey Blokhin says (pointmedia.io/story/69a94626e657f59b666dced4).

            But he is far from the only Ukrainian Russian Moscow uses to advance its positions. Flamboyant Moscow commentator Vladimir Soloyev routinely hosts self-identified Ukrainians on his television program  to show that “one need not sacrifice Ukraine’s language or attachment to its culture to become part of the Russian political mainstream.”

            Pro-Moscow Ukrainians who have fled to Russia since 2022 form a major part of the radical nationalist Z segment of the Telegram channel world and also work as part of a network of internet sites that disseminate Moscow’s messages and seek thereby to legitimate them in Ukraine and more broadly, Blokhin says.

            Moscow uses Ukrainian Russians as “peace” negotiators with Kyiv to promote Kremlin notions that Ukrainians are divided and that many support Putin’s war aims. No one should fall for this tactic but rather understand that those engaged in this process aren’t reflecting the views of Ukrainians but of Russians in the Kremlin. 

Mounting Debt of Russia’s Federal Subjects Prompting Regional Officials to Focus on Their Own Problems Rather than on Moscow’s, Shiryayev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 28 – At the end of 2025, 74 federal subject budgets were in the red to the tune of 1.5 trillion rubles (20 billion US dollars), while the others had surpluses of only 46 billion rubles (600 million US dollars), an indication that “the system has devoured itself” and one that is creating the basis for a serious political crisis, Vyacheslav Shiryayev says.

            The MGIMO economist says that regions in deficit are rapidly cutting back their spending, often on things that their own populations care about like schools and hospitals, and officials there aren’t getting the kickbacks from firms that have served as the basis for loyalty to Moscow in the past (nemoskva.net/2026/02/28/sistema-sozhrala-sama-sebya-ekonomist-vyacheslav-shiryaev-o-byudzhetnoj-katastrofe-v-regionah-strany/).

            As a result of this which itself reflects Kremlin decisions, leaders in the regions are increasingly focusing on their own problems rather than about what Moscow wants, a shift that could become the basis for the rise of regionalist movements if things continue for very long and that in fact reflects a mistaken Moscow policy intended to protect the center.

            After all, Shiryayev says, since the start of Putin’s war in Ukraine, “Moscow has been shifting responsibility downwards as it doesn’t want to think or know anything about the problems of the regions.” The message from the center to the regions is “make your own decisions; manage yourselves.”

            That may help the Kremlin in the short term, but in the longer one, regional leader who have been told to make their own decisions without changes in the tax system to give them more money to do so are certain to become more recalcitrant when it comes to following orders and ever more prepared to do what Moscow mistakenly asked them to do: act on their own.   

Some No Longer Feel Compelled to Justify Military Action by Citing International Law and Some Who’ve Benefited from Its Provisions are Going Along, Bogush Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 6 – A profoundly disturbing trend is taking place in international discourse, Gleb Bogush says. Until very recently, most governments taking military action felt the need to justify what they were doing by referring to international law, however implausible and unconvincing their references to its provisions were.

            But now, ever fewer governments feel any need to do so, the Russian scholar at the University of Cologne in Germany says; and indeed, both they and some in their own populations welcome this change as a sign that they can act as they like on the basis of power relations alone (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/03/06/pcheli-protiv-meda-strannaya-radost-po-povodu-razrusheniya-mezhdunarodnogo-prava-a189023).

            And what may be even more disturbing is a related development: many who have benefited from the provisions of international law such as Russian liberals aren’t objecting to this failure to follow international law even though they have been the beneficiaries of other provisions of international law themselves.

            This combination is destroying international law, the Russian scholar continues; and “’the brave new world’ in which only force matters will hardly be a kingdom of freedom. It will simly be a world of illegality – and in this world, international law no longer will be able to defend anyone, neither the state, nor the opposition, nor human rights.”

              Bogush points out that international law as codified by the United Nations allows the use of force in only two cases: in response to an armed attack and if approved by the UN Security Council. Neither has been true in many cases of armed attack in recent years and so it is not surprising that those behind such attacks don’t want to talk about international law.

            What a few of them have done is talk about something they call “preventive self-defense,” but however emotionally satisfying that is, “in international law, such a basis for the use of force simply doesn’t exist; and talk about humanitarian intervention unless it is strictly limited also has not legal justification.

            As Bogush notes, “international law doesn’t permit states to kill and suppress their own citizens; but from this it doesn’t follow that other states have the right to do this instead of them. Otherwise, a right to conduct war will appear, from which humanity, it had appeared, had with justice rejected in the 20^th century.”

            At present, he continues, “in a majority of commentaries [on various current wars], international law has simply disappeared from any discussion. Most often arguments are made that international law is not absolute and is even out of date when one is speaking about dictatorial regimes.”

            That formulation is “convenient, but it is untrue,” Bogush says because “international law doesn’t ‘defend’ dictators. They are defended by the inaction of states and in part they are directly supported by others. Authoritarian regimes are becoming ever more numerous” since “an aggressive foreign policy, wars and militarization are fatal for democracy.”

            Unfortunately, some who have benefited from international law are now joining the ranks of those who think it is perfectly acceptable to ignore that law when they want to. Among those, Bogush says, are some “among Russian liberals” even though their claims and rights are typically based on appeals to international legal principles.

            For reasons that are far from clear, “they suppose that in ‘this brave new world’ they will thus turn out to be on the side of the strong – and that these ‘strongmen’ also for reasons that are unclear, will respect their rights and interests.” At the very least, they are mistaken; and worse, they are likely to destroy the basis for their own claims and protections.

            Their position is “not simply strange” but horrifying, Bogush concludes, because it is “a classic case of when the bees begin to fight against honey.”

Russia’s Demographic Crisis Deepens and under Putin Threatens to Become Irreversible

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 3 – The fertility rate in Russia has fallen to 1.3 children per woman per lifetime, far below the replacement level of 2.2, a trend that means not only will each woman have on average fewer children than are needed to keep the population of that country stable but that with each passing generation there will be fewer potential mothers as well.

            That means that Russia’s demographic crisis is “becoming ever deeper” and threatens to become irreversible because even if the government is able to push up the fertility rate slightly, it is unlikely to reach the 2.2 level needed for the population to remain stable or prevent the number of potential mothers from declining (nakanune.ru/articles/124407/).

            Up to now, Nakanune journalist Elena Rychkova says, Kremlin efforts even to boost the fertility rate have largely failed or even proved counterproductive as far as the desires of the Russian authorities are concerned. Banning or restricting abortions region by region have not boosted the birthrate but increased abortion tourism and the number of illegal abortions.

            Propaganda, the Kremlin’s favorite device, has led women with three or more children already to have more but not boosted birthrates in families with two or less. As a result, fertility rates among Russia’s Muslims are either increasing or at least not falling nearly as fast as increasingly urbanized ethnic Russians, hardly what the powers that be want.

            And offering awards like Hero Mothers or money isn’t working either. Instead, surveys show it is changing the timing of births by women but not the number of children they elect to have. As a result, women may have two children when it pays but not have any more when it not only doesn’t but pushes many of them into poverty.

            According to Rychkova, who writes regularly on demographic issues, fertility rates will continue to fall given urbanization and the government’s failure to provide both adequate housing for families and a stable future. When people are forced to live in two room apartments, they won’t have children; and when they fear far or economic disaster, they won’t either.

            For Moscow to succeed in fighting the near universal decline in fertility rates around te world and especially in its own country, the Kremlin would have to  change its approach, devoting far more money to housing and childcare services and avoiding the kind of crises sparked by war and the fear of war that its current policies are producing.

            But even if the Kremlin did change all those policies, it would likely still fail to reverse the decline in fertility rates by very much. That could happen if and only if the culture of families change and men become more involved in taking care of children and the household. Such a shift isn’t likely given Putin’s cult of manliness.

            And changing that is likely to prove difficult if not impossible, something that will only  accelerate Russia’s demographic decline, especially if the country continues to lose young men who might otherwise become fathers by sending them to fight and die in massive numbers in conflicts like Putin’s war in Ukraine. 

 

Not a Single City, Town, Street or Square in Russia Bears Mikhail Gorbachev’s Name

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 2 – Given the propensity of Russians to memorialize leaders by naming places after them, it may come as a shock to learn that there is not a single city, town, street or square in the Russian Federation named after Mikhail Gorbachev; but it will surprise fewer that this reflects state policy in the age of Putin.

            On the 95^th anniversary of the first and last Soviet president’s birth, Novaya Gazeta observer Natalya Chernova says that even in Gorbachev’s home region of Stavropol, officials have continued to block efforts by his supporters to name any place after him (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/02/imeni-gorbacheva-ili-figura-umolchaniia).

            Even there, the only public recognition of Gorbachev comes in the form of a small memorial plaque on an aging school in Krasnogvadeysk that declares only “Here studied the first president of the Soviet Union.” The local historical museum contains no reference to him at all, Chernova says. Officials there say “there is no space” for personal mentions.

            The same total absence of references to the former Soviet leader is also the case in Stavropol’s regional historical museum, although it is the case that at least there is a picture of Gorbachev among Stavropol residents on the museum’s website, something likely to confuse casual visitors that Gorbachev has not been officially whited out in his home region.

            Not long ago, Georgy Lyashov, a realtor and longtime resident, “decided that Stavropol’s lack of memory [of Gorbachev] was truly indecent,” Chernova says; and he circulated a petition calling for the naming of a vacant public lot for the former Soviet leader. Officials turned him down, and he says local residents long accustomed to not having a voice haven’t taken action.

            “Residents want a park, but what it is called is irrelevant,” he says. “People here won’t do anything in Gorbachev’s memory, let alone stand in their own doorways. Indeed,” he adds, “it too me 18 months to get people in my building to come to a general homeowners association meting and sign a petition calling for replacing the doors in their building.”

            Chernova sums up Lyashov’s experience: “it’s understandable why there is no mention of Gorbachev because if we remember and honor Russia’s first present, we’ll have to talk about his perestroika, his pursuit of peace, freedom and choice.  In short, we’ll have to talk ab… about all those things the powers have been taking away from us in recent years.

A Truly Disturbing Proposal: Putin Calls for Filling Depleted Ranks of Police with Veterans of His Expanded War in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 4 – For several years, Russian officials have sounded the alarm that the country suffers from a shortage of policemen given that low salaries, poor working conditions, and the possibility of making more money either by volunteering to serve in the army or joining private security companies have led more to resign than force has been able to hire.

            In some places, especially at the local level outside of Moscow, as many as 40 percent of the positions in the police are currently unfilled, forcing the remaining offers to work overtime and meaning that the police force often lacks the personnel need to combat crime and especially its more serious and violent categories.

            Vladimir Putin has proposed a solution, one that might lead to a filling of the ranks of the police but that should concern all worried about crime fighting and the rule of law (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/04/s-ikh-psikhologicheskoi-zakalkoi-putin-predlozhil-zakryvat-defitsit-kadrov-v-politsii-za-schet-uchastnikov-voennykh-deistvii-v-ukraine-news).

            Speaking to the collegium of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of which the police is a part, the Kremlin leader said that he favored recruiting police from among the veterans because “their combat experience and psychological and physical training” makes them serious candidates for the police (vedomosti.ru/politics/news/2026/03/04/1180679-putin-v-strukturi).

            There are at least three serious problems with this idea. First, the police and the military have fundamentally different purposes and pursue those purposes in fundamentally different ways. Suggesting that the approach of one will work well in the other fails to take these differences into account.

            Second, many of the returning veterans suffer from the brutality of combat and the presence in their midst of criminals who agreed to serve in the military to get their sentences commuted, experiences that mean many veterans are hardly good candidates to enforce the law in a humane way. They are thus likely to be more disposed to use violence than current officers.

            And third, a major reason the Russian police can’t hold officers is that pay is so low. For returning veterans, the difference between the money they were getting to fight in Ukraine and that they would receive for joining the police is so large that few are likely to want to join and those that do may be even more inclined to engage in corrupt practices than police already there.

            Putin’s proposal in this regard may go nowhere, but his readiness to suggest this idea indicates that he doesn’t fully understand any of these problems or alternatively and even more worrisome, he wants a police force of the future to be far more willing to use violence than even the Russian police are now.