To Keep Armenia in Russia’s Orbit, Moscow May Soon Use Migration Weapon, Shustov Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 24 – Roughly a quarter of Armenia’s GDP consists of transfer payments by Armenians working in the Russian Federation; and if Yerevan pursues EU membership, Moscow will be “compelled” to consider imposing restrictions on Armenian migrant workers in Russia, Aleksandr Shustov says.

            So far this possibility and the deadline Moscow has supposedly set for Yerevan to make a choice about its future have been mentioned only in the Armenian media, the Russian nationalist commentator says (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-08-24--naskolko-silna-migracionnaja-zavisimost-armenii-ot-rossii-89830).

            But since Armenia gives no sign of changing its direction, Shustov continues, Moscow will have to “use new instruments” to influence Yerevan, and “one of these soon could be limitations on labor migration” from that country, something that the figures show would be devastating for Armenia.

            According to the Armenian Central Bank, Armenians working in the Russian Federation sent home 3.87 billion US dollars in 2025, an amount equal to 13.3 percent of Armenia’s GDP. That is less than the share of transfer payments to Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan but still enormous and potentially crippling.

            That the Kremlin is thinking about doing precisely this, Shustov continues, was suggested by Putin’s remark earlier this year that if Armenia breaks with Russia economically, it will suffer an economic loss of 14 percent of GDP, less than a single percentage point different from what ending such transfer payments would be.

            The number of Armenian workers in the Russian Federation has been falling in recent months, but until then, with the singular exception of the covid year, it has been running at about 160,000 a year over most of the last decade. If these people are forced to go home, Yerevan will find it difficult to support them; and they will find it very difficult to find work in other countries.

            This is what Armenia should be thinking about rather than pursuing what Shustov clearly considers the will of the wisp of EU membership; and his words suggest very strongly that Moscow is quite prepared to take this step, something that Armenia’s friends and supporters should take into consideration as well. 

Russian Literature Now Threatened by Both Censorship and AI, Two Phenomena which Re-Enforce One Another, Literary Critic Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 23 – In 1946, George Orwell wrote in his essay “The Suppression of Literature” that in a totalitarian society of the future, government censorship will be re-enforced by a system in which “machines will write books,” something that is now happening and means that Russian literature is threatened by both censorship and AI, Semyon Vladimirov says.

            Government censorship in the Russian Federation has attracted enormous attention, the Russian literary critic says; but the ways in which AI re-enforces it both in the course of editorial checking when computer algorithms are used and in the writing of books that will slip through the system has not (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/08/23/neiroslop-i-neirotsenzor).

            At least since last year, major Russian publishing houses are using AI to check manuscripts not as elsewhere to ensure that a human wrote them but rather than they will pass muster with the censors, thus helping the latter to restrict the publication of works the officials don’t approve of, Vladimirov says.

            That is insidious enough given how many mistakes such AI surveys involve, confusing something innocent with something that must be banned. But AI is also allowing writers who hope for publication to avoid any mention of something that could get them in trouble, thus helping censorship and leaving literature ever grayer.

            The specific features of the Russian case that Vladimirov points to are important, but his general point is even more so. AI can easily re-enforce impulses to censor especially if it makes it easy for other governments to impose their will via what may appear to many as “objective” computer models.

Moscow will Promote Traditional Values but Only ‘Delicately and Subtly,’ Kremlin Aide Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 23 – Putin frequently says that Russians “sincerely value” traditional values and that he will continue to support them in that ( nazaccent.ru/content/45631-vladimir-putin-my-iskrenne-dorozhim-nashim-kulturnym-i-duhovnym-dostoyaniem/). But there are signs that this effort may now be slowing because of popular resistance.

            In an interview with TASS, Garri Minkh, Putin’s representative to the Duma, says that promoting traditional values among children and adults remains importance but that it must “be done with sufficient delicacy and subtlety” (tass.ru/politika/28030937 and nazaccent.ru/content/45856-prodvigat-tradicionnye-cennosti-v-rossii-budut-delikatno-i-tonko/).

            His words and the fact that this message was delivered by an official responsible for ensuring that Duma deputies follow Putin’s lead suggest that some Russians may be upset by the heavy-handed way some Duma initiatives in this area have been structured and that the Kremlin wants to ensure that deputies don’t overstep the mark and provoke a negative reaction.

            Minkh said that pursuing the goal in this way is “a very challenging task, as there is a risk of slipping into mere rote adherence to dogma” or not forming a unified basis of identity which “serves the good of our society and state,” an apparent warning that the Kremlin wants deputies to avoid pushing in this direction too hard and too quickly.

37 Years On, Baltic Chain Continues to Inspire Non-Russians Elsewhere

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 23 – Thirty-seven years ago, some two million Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians formed a human chain more than 600 kilometers to remind the world they were committed to achieving freedom and independence, an action that became for many “one of the most powerful symbols of the struggle of nations for independence.”

            Those quoted words belong to Aida Abdrakhmanova of the Tatarstan Independence Committee and vice president of the Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations and highlight the fact that Baltic actions at the end of Soviet times continue to inspire non-Russians still under Moscow’s rule (tatarstan-independence-committee.blogspot.com/2026/08/blog-post_23.html).

            The Tatarstan leader delivered those words in Stockholm at the site where in 1990-1991, Swedes gathered every Monday to support the recovery of Baltic independence, a place which she says “reminds us of that struggle and of the fact that the solidarity of free people can change history.”

            Abdrakhmanova says that this tradition is continuing: “every Monday, following the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, rallies in support of Ukraine have been held here. People gather to support the Ukrainian people, who are defending their country, their freedom and their right to determine their own future.”

            She and other Tatars continue this tradition not only in defense of Ukraine which is standing up to a Russian invasion but in the name of their own nation which one day “will become a free and democratic country, a country that will be a friend of Sweden, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.”

            Thus, if can be said, the Tatarstan leader continued, just as when people joined hands 37 years ago “to show the world that freedom is possible,” so too today, “we continue to hold on to this chain” in support of our own national drive toward independence and others like it as well.

Moscow Transforming Groups which Oppose It and UsingThem Under Their Original Names to Push Its Own Line

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 20 – What the Putin regime has done to the Yamal to Its Descendants NGO represents an increasingly serious challenge to the West: Working with Russian business, it has transformed a group that routinely spoke against Moscow’s pretensions into one that now can be counted on to spout the Kremlin line but without changing the name.

            Because many in the West know of this group because of its earlier activities, it thus retains an image which is no longer deserved but which many who interact with it at international forums do not fully recognize has been made into something entirely different, thereby creating a situation far more fraught than when Moscow closes down organizations. 

             This process is thus far more insidious and serious in its implications than when Moscow as often has been the case disbands existing groups and creates alternative ones, a tactic that has attracted far more attention but that has typically worked less well for Moscow than continuing to use existing groups after taking them over.  

            This process has occurred in many groups formed in Russia in the late 1980s and 1990s (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/moscow-not-only-repressing-non-russian.html); but nowhere has it been described in more detail than Arctida’s new article on changes in the Yamal to Its Descendants association (arctictoday.com/how-yamals-independent-indigenous-association-became-a-partner-of-the-authorities-and-the-oil-and-gas-companies/).

            The group, Arctida notes, was formed in 1989 to defend the indigenous peoples of the Yamal against the untrammeled actions of oil, gas and mining companies. It did so with vigor and sometimes success until about 2010  but now has stopped doing that and instead parrots the Kremlin line about Ukraine and other issues.

            In part, this change reflects the repression Moscow has visited on all hitherto independent groups; but in this case, it also involved the financial and personnel takeover of these groups by the businesses they had been opposed to and by Moscow loyalists in United Russia as well.

            As a result, Arctida says, the group still poses as a defender of the rights and interests of indigenous peoples but only “in situations where such a defense does not conflict with the interests of administrative elites and extractive companies.” This “defense” leads many to belief nothing has changed when in fact almost everything has.

            The new article traces how this process of regime capture was taken over the last two decades and how it has become even more severe since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022 and how this has helped the Kremlin confuse and misinform the West about what Moscow is doing in recent years.

           

International Conference in Baku Denounces ‘New Wave of Persecution of Circassians’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 23 – A conference organized in Baku by the Azerbaijani Silk Road Association which drew online participants from around the world denounced Moscow for what attendees described as “a new wave of persecution of Circassians” that recalls Russian actions in tsarist times and under Stalin.

            The conference had been in the works for some time given Moscow’s policies; but it was given new urgency by new reports that Russian officials in their drive to recruit Circassians for Putin’s war in Ukraine have tortured and killed a young Circassian, an action that has sparked protest through the Circassian world and in the countries where some seven million of them live.

            (For background on Russian actions in this regard and the growing reaction they have sparked, see saratoga-foundation.org/p/putins-conscription-drive-in-north, minval.az/news/124549681 and icpc-circassia.org/news-and-updates/circassian-young-man-nurdin-karaf-reportedly-killed-under-torture.)

            Speakers at the Baku conference denounced Moscow’s actions in this case but argued that they are part of a broader policy of suppressing the Circassians and other non-Russians and predicted that these acts of repression would have exactly the opposite effect and lead the Circassians and other non-Russians to increase their activism.

            They also thanked Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Turkey, Ukraine and other countries for focusing attention on the Circassian cause and suggested that such attention will play a key role in the expansion of the Circassian movement despite everything Moscow has done to try to suppress it (minval.az/news/124549797).

Russian Elites Attitudes toward Putin have Shifted But This By Itself isn’t Yet a Threat to Kremlin Leader, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug.23 – Over the past several months, the attitude of Russian elites toward Putin has become more negative, Vladimir Pastukhov says; but this isn’t yet a threat to the Kremlin leader because his use of repression has prevented them from acting on this shift and because the Russian people are even more hostile to these elites than they are to Putin himself.

            The London-based Russian analyst, one of the closest and most thoughtful observers of the Moscow scene, says that he is convinced that the shift in elite attitudes is real and not some notion promoted by Ukraine or others opposed to Putin (t.me/v_pastukhov/1988 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/perelom-nastroenij-v-elite-ne-mif).

            Moreover, Pastukhov continues, he views this frone “not so much as anti-war, however much many would like to see it, but rather as anti-Putin, a shift in attitudes that reflects the judgment of elites that Putin has failed to achieve his promised goals” and his allowing the war to come home to Russia and threaten their interests.

            This shift in elite attitudes thus “does not pose any danger to Putin at the moment, first of all because he has control of a repressive regime that can eliminate anyone who raises his head; second … because the Russian people dislike them even more than they dislike Putin; and third, because the frond does not have a leader.”

            But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a problem. “The very fact of its existence is something Putin cannot ignore,” the London-based analyst says; and his reaction can turn this shift in attitudes into something more serious for the future of his rule. “The best way out would be to do nothing,” but that isn’t something Putin is capable of.

            Consequently, it will be how Putin reacts rather than how the elite feels that will define what will happen in the coming weeks and months, Pastukhov concludes.