Moscow Mulls Creation of Folklore Day and Folklore Medal, Two More Steps in the Reduction of Non-Russian Nations to Folklore Alone

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 27 – Russia’s State Council Commission on Culture and Traditional Values has called for the creation of a new national holiday, the Day of the Folklore of the Peoples of Russia, on July 17 and the establishment of a new award, “the Guardian of Folk Traditions.”

            These proposals will be taken up at a December meeting of the full State Council (nazaccent.ru/content/45868-den-folklora-narodov-rossii-predlozhili-otmechat-17-iyulya-na-federalnom-urovne/) and they represent another step in Putin’s effort to reduce Russia’s nations to cultural communities alone (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/07/putin-seeking-to-reduce-nations-to.html).

            What may seem to some as only yet another way to offer the people a new form of entertainment in fact is a profoundly political challenge to the existence of nations within the Russian Federation and their right to have republics and other forms of political action. If Putin can achieve the folklorization of nationality, he will further rein in nationalities.

            The current proposals apply not only to non-Russians who will thus be encouraged to focus on folklore exhibits and fairs but also to ethnic Russians as well. But that last may run into some problems especially if the proposed date for the holiday isn’t changed: July 17 after all is the anniversary of the murder of the last tsar and the imperial family by the Soviets. 

Russia’s Gas Crisis Prompting Central Asian Countries to Look Elsewhere for Fuel, Kazakh Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 27 – Gas shortages in Russia are not only beginning to have a political impact at home but a geopolitical one at home and not just because of Moscow’s much publicized effort to find other countries who will see it gasoline to fill the tanks of Russian automobiles, Askar Kubayzhanov says.

            Even more significant, the Kazakh commentator says, is the fact that Russia’s gas shortages are prompting the countries of Central Asia to seek new suppliers of fuel because they can no longer count on Russian deliveries (timesca.com/russia-fuel-crisis-pushes-central-asia-to-seek-alternatives/).

            As Kubayzhanov documents, given Russia’s problems, “Kyrgyzstan is arranging supplies from China; Tajikistan has requested large volumes of crude oil and fuel from Iran, while Kazakhstan plans to more than double its refining capacity and eventually sell more petroleum products to its neighbors.”

            To be sure, he continues, “Russian refineries will most likely restore capacity sooner or later. But the contacts established with new suppliers and the alternative routes tested will remain as will the investment in domestic refining.” And those changes now will contribute to a further decline of Moscow’s influence in Central Asia. 

For Five Reasons, the Russian Empire Won’t Revive This Time Around, Independent Ukrainian Blogger Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 16 – For much of the last millenium, Russia has experienced cycles of imperial decay followed by imperial rebuilding so frequently that many both there and elsewhere assume the collapse of the empire in 1991 is currently on the path to the restoration of a new empire, Warden Null says.

            But there are five reasons why that won’t happen this time around, the independent Ukrainian blogger writing under this pen name says; and so Russia faces the prospect of either creating a genuine federation based on democratic values or a slow decay into a situation like the one on view in Somalia (region.expert/track/).

            The five reasons that the empire won’t come back again, Null says, are as follows:

·       First, over the last quarter century, “Russia hasn’t been building a new empire,” despite all the rhetoric coming out of Moscow and the fears expressed elsewhere. Instead, “it has been living off the corpse of the previous one” – and across the board, that resource is rapidly running out and can’t be easily replenished.

·       Second, Russia today doesn’t have the people it needs for the restoration of the empire. “Any aggressive autocracy capable of mobilization relies on surplus biological energy: it needs young, cheap and passionate ‘meat.’ In 1917, Russia was a young country and had such people. Now, it is “an aging, urbanized country” and doesn’t.

·       Third, Stalinist mobilizational methods – the use of terror and force – won’t work anymore. Stalin could get people to dig canals and fell trees by pointing guns at them; his successors can’t get computer engineers to come up with new programs or chips by doing the same thing. That won’t work, Null argues.

·       Fourth, to build a new empire, Russia would need to be a sovereign “power center.” The Soviet Union was, but Russia today “is sovereign only on television.” In reality as ever more people can see, It is absolutely, totally and humiliatingly dependent on China” and even on North Korea. That isn’t a recipe for empire building.

·       And fifth, any such imperial project needs an idea people feel is worth dying for. The Russian Empire had one as did the Soviet Union; but what the Kremlin offers now is “a schizophrenic mix of Ilyin, Soviet flags, priests at cosmodromes and hatred of gays. “That’s not an ideiology.” Instead,  it is cynicism and “a new imperial cycle” can’t be built on that.

According to Null, there are only two paths for Russia in the future, the difficult one of building a democratic and federal system or the continuing slow but increasing degradation of the system as it devours resources rather than creating new ones with no prospects for anything better. The second path unfortunately is far more likely.

Northern Sea Route Shows that ‘Shortest Path is Not Necessarily the Most Profitable,’ Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 26 – Moscow invariably suggests that the Northern Sea Route will beat out the Suez Canal as the primary sea path between Asia and Europe; but that argument is deeply flawed because “the shortest path is not necessarily the most profitable one,” Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

            There are many reasons why this is true in the case, the Russian economist says; but before considering them in detail, it is important to remember that Moscow’s claim that the NSR is shorter is itself flawed because it is measured from northern China rather than other Asian ports further south (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/08/26/sokraschayuschaya-rasstoyaniya-mechta-a204315).

            But the most important is that the speed ships travel on the NSR is very different from that of vessels using more southerly routes. Because of ice, NSR transit often proceeds at two to three knots compared to 19 to 20 elsewhere, a difference which in itself vitiates the advantages of the geographically shorter northern route.

            There are other problems with the Russian assumption about the advantages of the NSR, Inozemtsev says.  Most large container ships require deeper water to sail through than is available in parts of the NSR. A ship drawing 15 meters which many do simply can’t pass through the NSR which in places drops to far less, only nine or ten meters.

            Another problem is that ships using the southern route typically drop off and pick up cargo at ports along the route, but in the case of the NSR, these are few and far between; and so shippers lose that advantage as well, something the enthusiastic Muscovite backers of the NSR ignore

            Beyond that there is the problem of ice. Of the 116,000 merchant ships in the world, Inozemtsev says, only “about 360” of the container ship segment are ice class, that is, built to withstand ice and required by insurers for passage via the NSR. Building more ships is hardly an attractive option when there are other ways to bring goods to market.

            And there is the problem of icebreakers which must accompany even ice capable ships along the NSR. According to Inozemtsev, “Russia’s icebreaker fleet is too small to handle” a flow much great than the one now, which is far belong what Putin called for only a few years ago and which can’t approach the volumes he and others have projected.

            Changing any of these things would be massively expensive, far beyond the means of the Russian state. That means Moscow would have to hope for and then rely on foreign investors, something that would make the NSR anything but the bulwark of Russian greatness and national security Putin hopes for.   

Russians and Ukrainians Increasingly Divided in Their Assessment of Stalin, Levada Center Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 25 – Ever more Russians over the last 15 years have had a positive assessment of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, while among Ukrainians, attitudes toward the Soviet dictator have deteriorated sharply from an already low point to an even more negative one since Putin launched his expanded war there in 2022, according to Levada Center surveys.

            Last month, the independent Russian polling agency said, slightly more than half of Russians surveyed said they had a positive attitude toward Stalin, about a quarter were indifferent to him and about a tenth were negative (levada.ru/2026/08/25/otnoshenie-k-figure-stalina-v-iyule-2026-goda/).

            The share of Russians expressing a positive attitude toward Stalin has been increasing since the 1990s and reached its highest level in recent times in 2023. Ukrainian attitudes toward Stalin were never as positive as those of Russians, but since 2022, they have plummeted. Now only three percent of Ukrainians say they view him positively.

            Because of the terror famine Stalin conducted in Ukraine and his repressions of Ukrainians more generally, he has never been popular there; but the new polls show that Putin’s action in Ukraine has deepened the divide between Russians and Ukrainians on this question as well as on so many others.

            And that in turn suggests that if and when Putin’s war there ends, it will be far more difficult for Russians and Ukrainians to view each other in positive ways, especially given how central Putin has made Stalin and his role in World War II in the construction of present-day Russian identity. 

Russian Universities Increasingly Recruiting Students to Serve in Putin’s War and Offering Drone Studies Programs

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 25 – Under pressure from the Kremlin to provide more support for Putin’s aggressive foreign policy, ever more Russian universities are pressuring students to sign up for military service in Ukraine now and creating drone studies departments whose graduates will presumably help not only in that conflict but in future ones as well.

            More than 80 percent of Russia’s highest-ranked universities now push students to sign up for military service although in many cases this effort is ostensibly for non-combat positions (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/08/25/47-iz-50-luchshikh-rossiiskikh-vuzov-agitiruiut-studentov-zakliuchit-kontrakt-s-minoborony-vyiasnila-novaia-evropa-news).

            That is an extension of efforts the Putin regime has put in place since 2022 to ensure that it will be able to fill the ever-depleting ranks of Russian forces in Ukraine and thus is no surprise. But the decision to create drone studies programs at 32 of the 50 top higher educational institutions is something new and disturbing.

            While using drones against Ukraine and defending Russians against Ukrainian drone attacks is a politically useful tactic, most of those who might enroll in drone studies programs almost certainly won’t be ready to work in this military sector in Putin’s current aggressive campaign in Ukraine.

            Thus, the decision to create such programs highlights something far more disturbing: the intention of the Kremlin to continue its aggressive foreign policy beyond Ukraine and to use drones to do it, a technique that it had not prepared for earlier but now recognizes is going to be a feature of most future conflicts.

Putin’s ‘Optimization’ Policy and War in Ukraine have Made Doctors and Nurses among the Most ‘Protest Prone’ Groups in Russia, Expert Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, Aug. 25 – Putin’s healthcare optimization policy has reduced the number of hospital beds by 20,000 a year over the last decade even as his war in Ukraine has placed ever greater demands on Russia’s healthcare system and the doctors and nurses who work in it, Sasha Fokina says.

That combination has made these medical workers among the most overburdened and underpaid professionals in that country, the feminist activist and political analyst say, and made them among the most “protest prone” of all groups there (posle.media/article/healthcare-in-wartime-how-womens-labor-is-changing).

These protests typically take the form of petitions, media campaigns and meetings with officials rather than with the more politically risky demonstrations, Fokina says, because other than emigration, Russia’s health workers can’t change jobs easily and thus are trapped by the system.

According to research she cites, in 2025, social and labor conflicts in the healthcafre sector accounted for 62 percent of all such clashes; and in 2026, healthcare is among the top three conflict-prone sectors, even though repressive measures have reduced the number and overall share.

One of the reasons Fokina has focused on this issue is because women dominate the medical professions in Russia, forming 70 percent of all doctors and 95 percent of all nurses, and because they have suffered the most from Putin’s policies which are exactly the reverse of what they should be in wartime.

In order to keep fielding an army, she continues, the Russian government should be providing the medical system with more funding and medical staff with higher salaries; but instead, Putin has cut back both, increasing suffering not only among patients but also among doctors and nurses.