Moscow’s Declaration of Ichkeria a ‘Terrorist Organization’ Reflects Its Continuing Importance and Likely Presages New Russian Moves Against Those who Support It

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – Grozny has declared Ichkeria, the name Chechens seeking independence used in the 1990s for their country and one that those opposed to Russia and the Kadyrov regime in Chechnya still use, an action that reflects its continuing importance and likely presages new Moscow moves against those who support it, rights activists say.

            On the one hand, this decision represents a change in Russian and Chechen propaganda which has consistently declared Ichkeria to have been destroyed in the second post-Soviet Chechen war, an action that highlights the continuing importance of the Ichkeria movement, including in the formation of units fighting alongside Ukrainian forces against Russia.

            But on the other hand, it formalizes what has been an increasing Russian and Chechen effort to attack those who identify with Ichkeria and their relatives not only inside Chechnya but internationally (kavkazr.com/a/otritsali-i-priznali-pochemu-ichkeriyu-obavili-v-rossii-terroristicheskoy/33728400.html).

            Now, human rights activists in the North Caucasus say, such attacks are likely to increase in number and intensity, actions that show just how worried Moscow and Grozny now are about the continuing impact of Ichkeria as a movement among Chechens and how willing they are to violate both Russian and international law in pursuing that movement and its supporters.

Post-Soviet States Engaged in Building Nation States Not in Ethnic Nation Building, Iskandaryan Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 10 – Aleksandr Iskandaryan, who has lived in the Republic of Armenia since 2002 and now heads that country’s Institute of the Caucasus, says that Armenia like the other post-Soviet countries is engaged in the process of building a nation state rather than in forming an ethnic nation.

            Those are two very different things, he points out. The first involves creating a set of institutions and ideas about the relationship of the state to its population while the latter is all about defining an ethnic nation, two processes that may occur together but must not be confused (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/04/10/natsiia-stroisia).

            The former is better captured by the English words “nation sate, a government of citizens” than in Russian where “in the word ‘nation’ is the component of ‘an ethnic state,’” something that is incorrect. For example, ‘the construction of a nation state is translated as state construction and not nation building.”

            “Before modern times,” the Armenian scholar says, the normal state was an empire; but the residents of an empire did not have the identity which they have now. Individuals defined themselves by religion or sometimes subject status, that is by saying who was their tsar or their hehshah.”

            Iskandaryan says that he doesn’t think that the Chechen national project has failed because “ever more of them consider themselves to be a nation in the contemporary sense of this word” and act accordingly in ways that are very different from other parts of the Russian Federation. “I would call Chechnya a proto-state.”

            Elsewhere in Russia processes are taking place “like those we saw in the Soviet Union earlier,” he continues. “The present day North Caucasus as regards the birth of nationalist ideologies is similar to the South Caucasus of the 1970s and 1980s. We see the same processes in Tatarstan and Sakha.”

            “But this doesn’t necessarily mean,” Iskandaryan concludes, that this process will be rapid or lead in only one direction. After all, “we have seen Scottish nationalism for 700 years;” and it is not yet an independent country.

Unlike in Soviet Times, Siberian River Diversion Now ‘More a Political Slogan than a Scientifically Grounded Project,’ Puzanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 7 – Before the Soviet government in 1986 rejected the idea of diverting the water of Siberian rivers to Central Asia, Aleksandr Puzanov says, Moscow established a network of scholarly centers to examine the question given its extraordinarily complex and unprecedented nature.

            But today, the deputy director of the Institute of Water and Ecological Problesm of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences says, the whole issue is “more a political slogan than a scientifically sound project” and “no one has calculated the problems that will arise” if it is undertaken (vfokuse.mail.ru/articles/69615546-ekspert-pochemu-ideya-razvorota-sibirskih-rek-na-yug-nuzhdaetsya-v-glubokoj-prorabotke/).

            In Soviet times, he says, experts calculated exactly how much electricity would have to be generated to raise the waters from Siberian rivers to a height where they could flow to Central Asia, how much would be lost in transit, and what would be the impact on Siberia and the Arctic Ocean by removing so much water from the region.

            Now, however, many are again talking about diverting water southward;  but they are doing so almost in every case without any new research because there simply aren’t enough expert centers to conduct it. Consequently, the issue has been reduced to one of political choice rather than expert judgment.

            Puzanov’s words, of course,  apply with almost equal force to almost all of the major projects involving transfer of resources from one region to another, projects that the Kremlin leader and others appear to believe are simply the occasion for a display of political will rather than scholarly attention.

 

Moscow’s Naming Memorial an Extremist Organization ‘Direct Result’ of Putin’s Declining Poll Numbers, Davidis Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 10 – Sergey Davidis, a longtime Memorial activist now in emigration, says that the main cause behind the decision to declare Memorial an extremist organization is connected “with the decline in Putin’s rating and in general of trust in the government” in the Russian Federation.

            Putin’s lack of success in Ukraine and the deterioration of the economy, he says, has led to “the growth of dissatisfaction among broad swath of the population, including those who until now have supported the war” (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/novye-repressii-protiv-memoriala-svazany-s-padeniem-popularnosti-putinskogo-rezima-uvereny-pravozasitniki/448415).

            Given this trend, Davidis continues, “it is becoming especially important for the powers to take steps for the destruction of everything alive and independent which still remains on the territory of the country;” and by declaring Memorial extremist, it can more easily go after all those who are associated with the ideas of that movement.

            The second reason Davidis points to is closely tied to the first and concerns “the desire of the authorities to destroy ties between Russians who have left the country because of their lack of agreement with the policy of the Putin regime and those who remain in Russia while retaining the very same opposition views.”

            Breaking such ties is especially important for the Putin regime which “suffering from conspiratorial thinking” is inclined “to see in everything a plot involving the participation of ‘foreign agents,’” something it imagines Memorial to be and thus to play that up with new waves of repression at home.

            Davidis’ colleague Elena Zhemkova, who was among the original organizers of Memorial, agrees and notes how worried Moscow seems to be about the activities of the Zukunft Memorial organization she leads in Berlin and wants to complicate its life and those of its allies as well.

            The Putin government is “already a real totalitarian regime which in principle does not allow any opinion except its own;” and thus it is no surprise that Memorial which has always acted independently has long been a target, Zhemkova says. The Kremlin’s latest moves, however, are doomed to fail.

            That is because, she says, “the more the powers will try to force us to be silent, the more active we will work.”

To Punish Yerevan, Moscow Should Tighten Control Over or Even Expel Armenians from Russia, Some Russian Commentators Suggest

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – Following Yerevan’s moves away from Moscow and toward the West and what was a tense meeting in the Kremlin between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian commentators are discussing how Moscow should punish Yerevan in an attempt to force it into line.

            Pashinyan has already warned that if Moscow raises the price of gas it now sells to Armenia, Yerevan will leave the main alliances that Russia has set up to dominate the former Soviet space, a threat that means that choice would rapidly prove counterproductive and lead Armenia to move even more quickly away from the Russian Federation.

            Closing the Russian base at Gyumri in Armenia is not something Moscow wants to think about either, but in the views of some in Moscow its status is likely to be reviewed and changed if the situation continues. And so now some in the Russian capital are focusing on moving against the Armenian diaspora in Russia as a way of punishing Yerevan.

            Among those advocating a new tough line against the Armenian diaspora is Leonid Krutakov of the Russian Finance University. He says that Russia has been too welcoming and has allowed Armenians to earn a lot of money that often escapes Russian taxes and that Russians should ask “if it isn’t time to put an end to this (svpressa.ru/weather/article/510232/).

            Just what such moves could look like is suggested by Russian actions against the Azerbaijani diaspora in the Russian Federation, actions that have soured relations between Moscow and Baku beyond any easy repair. But any such move against the Armenian diaspora in the Russian Federation would likely backfire very quickly against Moscow.

            Unlike the Central Asian and Caucasian migrant workers in Russia, the Armenian diaspora consists of highly educated and strategically placed individuals who have for decades played a key role in Russian intellectual life and administration. Going after then as Moscow has against the Armenians could lead to their flight and to huge losses for Russia.

            Nonetheless, the Kremlin appears to be laying the groundwork for expulsions of people like the Armenians, pushing for legislation that will make it easier for the Russian authorities to expel not just migrant workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus generally but also well-educated foreigners like the Armenians who’ve been in Russia for decades (ng.ru/politics/2026-04-09/1_9472_control.html).

 

Moscow’s Difficulties in Defining Who is ‘a People of Russia’ Intensifying Conflicts among Russia’s Parties as Duma Elections Approach

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 8 – Putin has proclaimed 2026 to be the Year of the Unity of the Peoples of Russia,” but officials and politicians are now locked in a fight over defining which groups are on this list and what rights they should have, issues two Nezavisimaya Gazeta journalists say are sharpening divisions among Russia’s political parties in advance of the Duma elections.

            Russian officials and politicians have been debating this issue since the 1990s when most believed that “a people of Russia” was any ethnic minority inside Russia without an independent state of its own abroad. Such a definition was not unproblematic but has become unsustainable as Moscow has given those classed as “a people of Russia” greater rights than those without it.

            The latest such conflict, Darya Garmonenko and Ivan Rodin of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, say involves the Russian government’s decision that the 1996 law governing national cultural autonomies needs to be updated and handed that task to the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (FADN) (ng.ru/politics/2026-04-08/1_9471_law.html).

            Many Russian nationalists, the KPRF and the For Justice Party do not want to allow national territorial autonomies based on immigrant groups from Central Asia and the Caucasus to have the right to demand that local governments set up special educational arrangements for them as it now the case.

            In its draft, either because it is poorly written or because it reflects the intentions of someone in Putin regime, FADN has offered language that appears to retain the 1996 provisions even though its language has changed. Thus, the government agency is on a collision course with the opposition parties.

                The situation is exacerbated not only because of the upcoming election but because under other Russian legislation, it is FADN which maintains the official list, such as it is, of which nations are “peoples of Russia” and which are not, thus raising the stakes about the future not only of migrant NCAs but of all others.

            Often in the past, observers have suggested that elections can be the occasion for a sharpening of ethnic tensions in the Russian Federation. This year, the Russian government has made that a certainty by its talk about “the peoples of Russia” and simultaneously calling for a redraft of the legislation one of the most important components of its nationality policy rests.

With 11 Percent of Its Cargo Cars at Risk of Falling Apart, Russian Rail an Accident Waiting to Happen

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – The Moscow Institute on Natural Monopolies says that 11 percent of the cargo cars on Russian railways – 158,000 – are in bad shape and need immediate repairs, a figure that is almost twice as many as last year, a reflection of the fact that the number being repaired each month fell from nearly 40,000 a month in 2024 to 20,000 per month in 2025.

            Because the number of cars needing repair is so large, the railways now don’t have the reserves they did to replace cars that should be taken offline immediately. And that in turn means accidents are becoming ever more likely (vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2026/04/09/1188967-na-seti-rzhd-viroslo-chislo-neispravnih-gruzovih-vagonov).

            There is little hope for a turnaround anytime soon. Because of reductions in earnings and government subsidies, the number of new cargo wagons coming online to replace the aging ones at risk of accidents was down by almost 50 percent in the first two months of 2026 as compared to the same period a year earlier.

            Many but of course far from all of these problems are a direct result of the Kremlin’s shifting of funding from services like railroads to the needs of the Russian military now fighting in Ukraine.