Lukashenka Loves Being Called a Dictator but Hates Being Laughed At, Khalip Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 1 – In an essay for Novaya Gazeta Europe, journalist Irina Khalip says that “Lukashenka loves it when he is demonized and called ‘a bloody dictator’ but he hates it when people laugh at him,” something the Belarusian people have been doing with increasing frequency during his long but often absurd reign.

            It would be truly “strange,” however, she continues, “if Belarusians didn’t come up with jokes about Lukashenka.” They began even before he came to power and have continued despite repression for the 30 years since, often being only lightly modified or updated (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/01/luka-mudishchev-prezident-i-drugie-neofitsialnye-litsa).

            Khalip offers the following classics:

·       Lukashenko and his sons are flying in a helicopter over Belarusian. Down in the fields, collective farmers are toiling away. Lukashenko’s eldest son throws a banknote down: "Let one person have something to be happy about." The middle son throws down two: "Let two people be happy." The youngest throws five: "Let five people be happy." Then, the pilot—unable to hold back any longer—shouts: "Why don't you just throw that guy with the mustache overboard? Then ten million people could be happy!"

·       God summons Trump, Putin, and Lukashenko to His presence and says: "The world is coming to an end tomorrow, so go warn your respective nations." In his address to the American people, Trump says: "I have two pieces of news for you—one good, and one bad. The good news: God exists. The bad news: the world is ending tomorrow." Putin says: "I have two pieces of bad news for you. The first: God exists." "The second: tomorrow is the end of the world." Lukashenko says: "I have two pieces of good news for you! The first: I paid an official visit to God. The second: I will be your president until the end of time."

·       Lukashenko sits by the phone, speaking slowly and with pauses into the receiver: "Good... Bad... Good... Bad..." Then, turning to his aide: "What kind of people have I ended up with? They can't even sort through their own potatoes!"

·       OMON officers grab a passerby during a protest, drag him into a paddy wagon, and begin beating him. He screams: "Why are you doing this to me? I actually voted for Lukashenko!" The OMON officers, beating him even harder, then say: "You're lying, you bastard! Nobody voted for him!"

There are of course many more and some have even been catalogued on the Internet (e.g., maximonline.ru/entertainment/luchshie-anekdoty-pro-aleksandra-lukashenko-id516760/), but the full range of these, which perhaps reached a highpoint in 2020 but continues to this day can be seen in numerous internet portals where they are featured.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone, Khalip argues. “In Belarus, reality is shuffled together with absurdity—not only in satirical Telegram channels but in real life as well. Yet there are things that remain unshakable. One of them is laughter. A tyrant can banish a person from the country. Or half a million people.”

“He can throw them in prison,” she writes. “He can even kill them. But he is powerless to destroy their capacity to laugh. And as long as Belarusians laugh at the tyrant, they remain immortal—unlike him, even if he has been ruling for more than 30 years.”

Russian Jailors Follow Jailed to Fight in Ukraine but Also Leave Jobs Because of Low Pay and Poor Working Conditions, Leaving Penitentiary System with Severe Shortage of Guards

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 3 – More than 35 percent of the staff slots in Russian prisons are now unfilled, the result of the departure of many guards for bonuses and high pay in the Russian military in Ukraine but also of the low pay and poor working conditions in Russian prisons, Novaya Gazeta Europe reports.

            Russian officials are proud that more than 3500 prison employees have gone to fight in Ukraine, but they are deeply troubled by the fact that 37 percent of the jobs at Russian prisons are now unfilled even though the number of prisoners and even of prisons has fallen sharply since 2022 (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/04/03/dazhe-na-vyshkakh-manekeny-staviat).

            The first victims of the shortfall, of course, are the inmates who are often forced to wait long periods for movement to exercise areas or meetings with lawyers, whose quality of food has declined, and who are often treated even more brutally now than they were in the past, according to prisoners recently released.

            Other reasons guards have been leaving include the fact that many benefits they used to receive – including the possibility of retiring after only 12.5 years of work – have been eliminated and the fact that to keep their jobs, they have been asked to move from their long-time homes, something many say they see no reason to do.

With Discovery of New Lithium Deposits Last Year, Russia Assured of Resource Independence, Moscow Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 2 – With the discovery of new lithium deposits last year – the first such finds in the last two decades – Russia now ranks third in the world in terms of lithium deposits and has assured itself of resource independence of a metal critical for a range of high tech industries, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev says.

            Russia’s proven reserves of lithium, a metal sometimes referred to as “white oil,” have now reached 3.5 million tons, he says; and that ensures that Russia will have more than enough to support its own industries which now use lithium rather than be forced so import it from others such as China (ura.news/news/1053081966).

            Moreover, Moscow can now use lithium deposits in occupied portions of Ukraine, in particular the Donets Peoples Republic, where there are an estimated 12 to 14 million tons of lithium ore, giving the Kremlin a powerful advantage in international competition where lithium in the 21^st century will be playing a role similar to oil in the 20^th.

Civic Identity More Common in Bi-National Republics than in Others in North Caucasus, Poll Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 2 – Residents of the two remaining bi-national republics in the North Caucasus – Karachayevo-Cherkesiya and Kabardino-Balkaria – are more likely to say their primary identity is as citizens of the Russian Federation than to point to any other identity compared to people in the other republics of the region.

            According to the results of a Russian Field poll, 48 percent of the residents of Karachayevo-Cherkesiya and 43 percent of those in Kabardino-Balkaria say their first identity is as citizens of the Russian Federation, compared to 36 percent for the North Caucasus as a whole (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/04/02/1187301-severnogo-kavkaza).

            That finding may give new impetus to calls for amalgamating non-Russian republics as a way to weaken ethnic identity, something especially important to the Kremlin in this case because this poll suggests that is what has happened in these two Turkic-Circassian republics and might be expected to happen with others combined together.

            Among the responses for the region as a whole, the poll found, 17 percent said their primary identity was as a man or woman, nine percent pointed to religion, and six percent to their nationality. Other identities – citizen of the world or of the North Caucasus, resident of a particular district or village, or clan roots – were listed by even fewer.

            Other findings of the poll are also noteworthy:

·       Older people are more likely to identify as citizens of Russia while younger ones are more likely to identity in ethnic or other terms.

·       Younger people are more likely to identity as representatives of a religion than among those over 60.

·       And civic identity is more common among the more educated and better off than among the poorer and less well-schooled.

Despite High Oil Prices, Russia Now Faces a Situation Even Worse than the USSR Did Before Its End, Kazakh Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 1 – Many assume that the high prices for oil in the wake of the war in Iran are automatically translating into equivalent boosts in the income of the Russian government, the Altyn-Orda portal says; but in fact, Russia faces a situation in that regard even worse than the one the USSR did before its demise.

            That is because while it has oil to sell, it faces new challenges in selling it and thus is earning less money from it than one might think, the Kazakh portal says. Indeed, it continues, Moscow is having ever more problems in converting its oil into money (altyn-orda.kz/kogda-neft-nekuda-devat-rossiya-vhodit-v-stsenarij-huzhe-chem-u-sssr-pered-raspadom/).

            Ukrainian drone strike on the Ust-Luga port, pressure on Primorsk, and the risks of using Novorossiysk have created a situation “in which several key export channels simultaneously find themselves under attack,” Altyn-Orda says. Indeed, these are “no longer isolated incients.” Instead, the Russian system is “beginning to suffocate.”

            Those problems ae compounded by others. “Oil-loading facilities are operating at capacity; logistics networks are overburdened; shipping routes are lengthing; insurance costs are rising, and risks are mounting.” Consequently, while “the oil is there, it is becoming ever more difficult to sell.”

            “When oil cannot be moved to market, production must be curtailed, a direct blow to the national budget” despite high prices because “the entire economic model rests upon a simple formula: extract, then sell, then earn foreign currency. If this chain breaks at any point, the entire structure collapses.”

            Because that is the case, Altyn-Orda says, “that is precisely why we are no longer dealing merely with ‘temporary difficulties.’ For the first time, Russia is not confronted by an oil shortage but rather by an oil surplus without a stable market. And that,” the portal continues, “is far more dangerous.”

            As a result, “comparisons with the Soviet Union no longer seem as far-fetched.” At the end of the USSR, Moscow “was hemorrhaging money; but at that time, its infrastructure was not under direct attack.” Today, it is. That represents “a new type of pressure,” a kind that won’t  produce a sudden collapse “but rather a gradual deprivation of the system’s oxygen.”

            As of now, “the system is still functioning,” Altyn-Orda says; “but it has already begun to suffocate, a state of affairs which as history demonstrates, rarely endures for very long.”

Russian Humor Today is Eroding the Legitimacy of the Putin Regime, Arkhipova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 1 – Present-day Russian humor, much of it featuring a naïve Russian and disseminated via social media, nominally involved people laughing at themselves rather than others but in fact is “systematically eroding the authority” of the powers that be by showing the absurdity of the Putin regime’s repressive actions, Aleksandr Arkhipova says.

            The social anthropologist who has long focused on humor argues that “the collective ‘I’ – long considered apolitical, protective of its private life and skeptical about the interference of the authorities – has now become the object of its own self-irony” (istories.media/opinions/2026/04/01/oruzhie-slabikh-o-chem-govorit-segodnyashnii-yumor-rossiyan/).      

            While many Russian jokes may appear to be nothing more than “letting off steam,” Arkhipova says, they are “more than that” because they allow those who tell them and those who listen to them to “collectively reach a consensus on the nature of current events,” many of which it is now dangerous to discuss directly.

            As a result, there “thus emerges a horizontal network of interpretations in which the powers are consistently portrayed as absurd, intrusive, and overbearing,” in which “hundreds of thousands of online views transform what might have begun as a private joke into a shared collective experience.”vent

            According to Arkhipova, that is “precisely how a common understanding emerges, a shared knowledge that something is fundamentally amiss. Thus, the modern weapon of the weak is not direct resistance but rather the mass production of narratives on their relationship with authority.”

            Such humor is part of a process that “while unable to destroy that authority outright systematically erodes its legitimacy” and thus plays a key role in the profess of setting the stage of that authority’s eventual demise.

Half of All Kazakhstan Residents Get Their News from Kazakh Language Sources, with Third a Using Both Kazakh and Russian Outlets, and Only a Fifth Russian Ones Alone, ‘Demoscope’ Poll Shows

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 31 – Russian commentators, especially those in Moscow, continue to insist on a regular basis that most Kazakhs know Russian and use it widely despite the increasing share of ethnic Kazakhs and self-declared Kazakh speakers in the population of that Central Asian country.

            But a new and representative survey conducted by the Demoscope Bureau for the Express Monitoring of Public Opinion calls those Russian claims at least in part into question (vlast.kz/novosti/68864-osnovnym-istocnikom-informacii-dla-kazahstancev-ostautsa-socseti-opros-demoscope.html).

            It found that 45.4 percent of the population of Kazakhstan prefers to get news and information in Kazakh rather than Russian, that 31.1 percent use sources in both languages, and only 21.1 percent choose to use Russian language outlets, the final figure being only slightly larger than the share of ethnic Russians in the population.

            What this suggests if not proves is that Kazakh is becoming the language of public use in that country even among Kazakhs who know both languages and that the share of ethnic Kazakhs who prefer to use Russian to get their news is quite small and likely will continue to decline.