In a Continuing Act of Genocide, Russia has Been Attacking Ukrainian Cultural Sites since 2014

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 15 – People and officials around the world have been shocked and outraged by Moscow’s attack on the Kyiv-Pechorsk Lavra church center in the Ukrainian capital, but many of them have failed to recognize that this barbaric act is not something new but rather continues a policy Russian forces have been pursuing not just since 2022 but since 2014.

            Yegor Mostovshchinkov, an independent journalist who is preparing a book on this subject, says that Moscow has been “waging a systematic war on Ukraine’s cultural heritage since 2014, destroying monuments, museums and churches” and taking “more than 1.7 million cultural exhibits” to Russia (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/06/15/rossiiskaia-armiia-nanosit-udary-po-ukrainskomu-kulturnomu-naslediiu).

            Ukraine’s culture ministry says that “Russia has destroyed 1783 cultural heritage sites and 2540 cultural infrastructure sites throughout the country, including cultural centers, libraries, art schools, museums, galleries, theaters, and music centers; and Mission Eurasia reports Russian forces have damaged or destroyed at least 737 churches.”

            Such Russian actions, obviously intended to destroy the culture of the Ukrainian people fall well within the internationally accepted definition of acts of genocide and are in sharp contract to Ukrainian actions which are directed exclusively at infrastructure and individuals involved in making war on Ukraine.

            As welcome as outrage about the Russian attacks on the Kyiv-Pechorsk Lavra are,  all people of good will need to recognize that what Moscow has done there is part of a broader policy of genocide against Ukrainians and do what they can to ensure that those responsible, from Putin on down, are brought to trial in international courts for this and other crimes.

Central Asian Populations Continue to Look to Russia Because of Transfer Payments but Governments and Business Increasingly Look to China because of Beijing’s Investments

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 14 – According to the Eurasian Development Bank, China has surpassed Russia and become the largest direct foreign investor in the countries of Central Asia; and as a result, businesses and governments increasingly look to China rather than Russia.

            But at the same time, the importance of transfer payments home by Central Asian migrant workers who remain several orders of magnitude greater in the Russian Federation than they are in China mean that in many of these countries the population and especially its poorer rural segment continue to look to Moscow.

            Consequently, experts in the region say, the shift to China by Central Asians is often overstated both in the Central Asian media and beyond because the existence of the migrant worker factor remains extremely important even as Russian direct investment falls (svoboda.org/a/biznes-estj-biznes-kitay-obgonyaet-rossiyu-v-tsentraljnoy-azii/33777438.html).

            This has a large number of consequences in the politics of the Central Asian countries, but two are especially noteworthy. One the one hand, because migrant workers and their transfer payments are so important, the shift from Russia to China as the dominant foreign direct investor remains less than many have suggested.

            And on the other, if Moscow does reduce the number of migrant workers from Central Asia in Russia dramatically as some in the Russian capital would like to do, that could change this equation and lead to a far more dramatic turn in the policies of Central Asian countries away from Russia and toward China.

            Concern about that possibility is thus likely to be part of Moscow’s calculus on just how many Central Asian migrant workers to allow into the Russian Federation. If the Russian government reduces that number too fast or if it shows itself too hostile to such people, Moscow would almost instantly see its influence in Central Asia decline and that of China rise.

Kamchatka Meeting on Demography in Russian Far East Highlights Two Changes in Moscow’s Approach

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 15 – A meeting in Kamchatka on the demographic development of the Russian Far East over the next decade highlights two important shifts in Moscow’s approach to that sector, a greater focus on promoting more children in families which already have several and on the federal districts rather than Russia as a whole in designing demographic policies.

            Until recently, the Russian government has devoted most of its attention to getting marriage pairs to have children rather than on those with several children to have even more, but now, having discovered that it is easier to get a family with three children to have a fourth, it has been changing its focus.

            That is certainly the message the Ninth All-Russian Conference on Demographic Development of the Far East sends. Speakers there talked about increasing family size not from zero to one or two but rather from two and three children to four or more (eastrussia.ru/news/na-kamchatke-obsudili-demograficheskuyu-strategiyu-dfo-do-2036-goda/).

            As the participants at this meeting noted, that is what is happening not just in the Russian Far East but in the Russian Federation as a whole, a shift that means some of the financial incentives that Moscow has come up with in the past haven’t been as effective as the center had hoped and are likely to be changed.

            The other shift that the Kamchatka meeting marks is the increasing recognition in the center that demographic policy should not reflect a one-size-fits-all approach but rather take regional differences into account, a devolution of decision making from Moscow to the federal districts in one area that could lead to a kind of broader decentralization in the future.

Kremlin Now Fighting Divorce in Russia, ‘a Problem that Doesn’t Exist,’ To Be Precise Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 15 – The To Be Precise portal which tracks social developments in the Russian Federation says that at the present time, the Kremlin has launched a campaign against divorce in the hopes of boosting the birthrate. But the problem it has identified is in fact one that “doesn’t exist.”

            Since January 2025,  the Russian government has increased the costs of those wanting a divorce by eight times and introduced waiting periods and required meetings with counselors in the hopes of reducing the number of divorces and thus making more births likely, the portal says (tochno.st/materials/razvoditsia-posle-10-let-braka).

            But according to To Be Precise, “most Russian marriages are more stable than is commonly believed;” and while divorce occurs most often in the first ten years, the median duration of such marriages is still eight years” and not a few months as the authorities in Moscow seem to believe. 

            Over the course of a lifetime, fewer than half of all marriages dissolve, the portal continues, with “the risk of divorce reduced by children, economic inequality between the partners, and the chronic illness of the husband.” Women are more likely to file for divorce in Russia than men.

            The portal does concede that its figures are incomplete and that the actual number of marriages ending in divorce may be higher, but it insists that even if that is the case, the policy moves Moscow has made are not having a big impact and in fact are directed against a problem that really doesn’t exist. 

Moscow’s Efforts to Promoting Civic Identity in North Caucasus May Be Opening the Way for the Rise Not Only for More Islamic Identity but Also Even Islamist Extremism

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 15 – In April, a Russian Field Poll found that residents of Kabardino-Balkaria, one of the two bi-national republics in the North Caucasus, were significantly more likely to reidentify as civic Russians than residents of other mono-ethnic federal subjects there.

            But it also found that younger people in the KBR are less likely to list citizenship in the Russian Federation as their primary identity than are their elders who were born in Soviet times and instead continue to identify in ethnic or even religious, which in this case means Muslim, terms (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/04/02/1187301-severnogo-kavkaza). 

            Now, the SOVA Center which monitors racism and xenophobia in the Russian Federation says that KBR courts for the third time in two years are convicting ever more young residents of that republic for taking part in shariat patrols which sought to intimidate residents into following Islamic rules (sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/news/counteraction/2026/06/d53950/).

            This prompts a question which neither Vedomosit nor SOVA ask: are Russian government attacks on ethnic identity, which until now has exercised a powerful influence on behavior in the North Caucasus, opening the way for the expansion not only of Islamic belief but of Islamist activism?

            In early Soviet times, Moscow promoted ethnic identities in Muslim areas precisely to weaken the power of Islam. Its success in boosting ethnic identities did weaken Islam in many places. After 1991, the weakening of the state meant that Islam expanded to fill the void left by the decline in a secular ethno-nationalism.

            That was especially obvious in the case of Chechnya where an extremely secular national movement in 1991-1993 gave way to an increasingly Islamic and sometimes Islamist one thereafter. Now, Moscow’s efforts to weaken ethnic identity by promoting a civic Russian one may be having the same effect and over more parts of the North Caucasus.

            If that proves to be the case, Moscow in its rush to try to solve one problem may be creating a different and even larger one instead.

‘Main Result’ of Moscow’s Nationality Policy has Been that Russia Remains Stable, FADN Report to Duma Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 15 – “The main result” of Moscow’s nationality policy over the last dozen years has been that contrary to the expectations of many and the attempts of external and internal enemies, Russia remains stable, according to the government’s Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs.

            In an 80-page report to the Duma, the FADN pointed to the increase in the percentage of Russian Federation residents who say their civic Russian identity is more important than their ethn0-national ones and who believe that ethnic problems are declining in seriousness and importance.

            (For the full text of the report, see fadn.gov.ru/otkritoe-agenstvo/realizacziya-strategii-gosudarstvennoj-naczionalnoj-politiki-rossijskoj-federaczii-na-period-do-2025-goda/file-download/rubxj5jyrvezivdndqlxev43k2y36gpy; for a useful summary, see   nazaccent.ru/content/45587-nazvany-glavnye-itogi-strategii-nacpolitiki-rossii-v-20122025-godah/.).

            The report celebrates both what it says is improved monitoring of ethnic relations in the Russian Federation and the fact that “for the first time, significant attention has been devoted to the strengthening of the unifying role of the Russian people as the state-forming people … as well as strengthening the regional component of nationality policy.”

            But beneath these celebratory claims, the report acknowledges that the shift from ethnic to civic identity has been slower in the North Caucasus than in other regions and that challenges to Russia’s stability have intensified both from foreign and domestic sources, developments that mean all the tasks of nationality policy have yet to be achieved.

Kazan Institute of History Set Up in 1996 to Help Tatars Recover Their Identity has ‘Moved Away from Concept of the National Liberation Struggle,’ Salikhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 14 – Thirty years ago, Tatarstan established an Institute of History within the republic’s Academy of Sciences to help Tatars recover their national past and identity; but now, Radik Salikhov, its current director says, “we have moved away from the concept of the national liberation struggle of peoples.”

            The first director of the institute, Rafael Khakimov, was not only an internationally recognized specialist on federalism but also an advisor to Tatarstan President Mintimir Shaymiyev. He sought to have the institute play an active role in the rebirth of Tatarstan after Soviet times (business-gazeta.ru/article/704512).

            Now, however, the situation is different and so too is the mission of the Institute of History, its current director says. “We are an integral part of the state scientific institution … nd we view ourselves as an institute dedicated entirely to the well-being of all the peoples of our region and of Russia as a whole.”

            “Perhaps the most significant change has been a rethinking of the approach to the historical process itself,” Salikhov says. “We have moved away from the concept of the "national liberation struggle of peoples"—which dominated both the Soviet period and the 1990s—as a universal model of historical development.”

The earlier approach often led “to confrontation and did not foster a constructive understanding of the past.” In its place, he ways, the institute is now “emphasizing the concept of service to the Fatherland. I consider this ideological and methodological shift to be one of our major achievements in recent years.”

Salikhov continues by observing that “disputes often arise around specific events, figures, or historical legacies—and sometimes even attempts at a kind of’"privatization’ of history, in which various groups seek to claim something as being exclusively part of their own tradition and no one else’s.”

But the current direction insists that “the task of historians is not to exacerbate these divisions, but to seek common ground and foster a balanced, evidence-based understanding of the past. History should not divide people; rather, it should promote mutual understanding and strengthen social cohesion.”