Restricted 2025 Moscow Document Outlines Kremlin Plans to Go After Russophobic Elements in the Army and the FSB, ‘Meduza’ Reports

Paul Goble

              Staunton, Sept. 17 – The Meduza news agency as found a March 2025 document never intended to be published mistakenly posted on line by a regional government portal and says that it shows how the Kremlin plans to attack what it sees as Russophobia in the first instance in the Russian army and the FSB.

              The document identifies Russophobia as a new threat and consists of paragraphs which suggest it is widespread but that the Kremlin has decided to focus on extirpating it from the army and the intelligence agencies (meduza.io/slides/meduza-obnaruzhila-v-seti-plan-vlastey-po-borbe-s-ekstremizmom-v-rf-etot-dokument-vidimo-ne-dolzhen-byl-popast-v-otkrytyy-dostup).

              What is striking about the document is not so much the information it provides about fighting Russophobia as such but rather its focus on the security forces alone with ethnic and religious groups barely mentioned, a possible indication of the Kremlin’s real view of where threats to itself lie – and don’t.

In Almost Half of Single Member Duma Districts East of the Urals, There is at Least One Anti-War Candidate, 'People of Baikal' Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 18 – Many Russians and perhaps even more outside observers have convinced themselves that they will not have the opportunity to support anti-war candidates in the upcoming Duma elections. But with regard to the 44 single-member districts east of the Urals, almost half – 21 – have candidates opposed to the war.

            That is the judgment of the independent People of Baikal portal which provides both a map of the districts showing the 21 with such candidates, the six without any, and the 17 others where candidates have adopted a neutral position as well as an analysis of situation in each (baikal-stories.media/2026/09/18/gajd-po-antivoennym-kandidatam-sibiri-i-dalnego-vostoka/).

            The presence of such candidates on the ballot in these single-member districts east of the Urals is not an indication that these districts are going to elect either anti-war or neutral candidates; but it is a sign that in Siberia and the Russian Far East at least, voters do have the opportunity to support such candidates, despite media reports to the contrary.

So Far This Year, Kazakhstan Disarms and Arrests 22 Criminal Groups who Seek to Hide Their Activities by Pushing ‘Extremist Religious Ideologies,’ Astana Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 17 – Kazakhstan remains committed to secularism in its social and political life, but a recent debate about whether young women should be allowed to wear the hijab in schools highlights continuing divides in the society of that country as to just what secularism should mean (timesca.com/kazakhstan-hijab-debate/).

            A more serious indication that Kazakhstan, like its Central Asian neighbors, faces challenges from those who believe that the country’s life should be structured according to religious and in this case Islamic principles comes in a report about the disarming and arrest of 22 religious groups by the authorities (asia24.media/news/v-kazakhstane-obezvredili-22-religioznykh-gruppy/).

            Since the end of last year, law enforcement forces there have broken up 22 criminal groups “whose members had masked their illegal actions with religious-extremist ideologies,” seized large quantities of weapons and ammunition, and arrested 64 individuals. The police played down the religious angle, suggesting instead that this was a cover for violent crime.

            But in making this report, the police did draw attention to the ways in which the religious cover was an effective strategy for these groups to win support from or at least intimidate the population, an indication that popular support for such extremist religious ideologies is far greater than Astana has wanted to admit.

            Moreover, it is a sign that Kazakhstan long viewed as a place where such extremist groups and support for them was rare compared to its Central Asian neighbors now suffers from these two things and that the government has felt compelled to stage a crackdown lest either or both increase in the future. 

Over Last 15 Years, Number of Abortions in Russia Fell by 75 Percent, ‘Vedomosti’ Reports, Precisely the Period in Which Russian Fertility Rates Fell as Well

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 16 – In 2025, there were 20 abortions for every 100 live births, compared to 56 abortions per 100 live births in 2010, falling from 1.01 million in the first year to 236,000 last year, the largest decline in the number of abortions of any country in the world, Moscow’s Vedomosti reports.

            In fact, the paper notes, the number of abortions per 1,000 women in the rpime child-bearing cohort of 15 to 49 has been falling since the mid-1960s, when there were 247 abortions per 100 live births because abortion was the primary form of birth control in the RSFSR (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/09/16/1229076-rossiya-okazalas-liderom-po-snizheniyu-abortov).

            These trends, which the newspaper takes great pride in reflect the increasing use of other forms of contraception, urbanization and the desire of many Russians for fewer children. But they suggest that the Putin regime’s confidence that it can increase the birthrate by limiting the number of abortions is almost certainly misplaced.

            On the one hand, precisely because this decline in the number of abortions took place at precisely the time when the Russian fertility rate was falling, there does not seem to be the link between the one and the other that the Kremlin believes in. Instead, Russians are simultaneously having fewer abortions and having fewer children.

            And on the other, this shift from abortion as the primary form of birth control to other means also suggests that the ability of the government to reduce the abortion rate significantly in the future is likely far less than the Kremlin imagines and that even if it makes abortion harder to get, that won’t boost the birthrate as it hopes.

Kalmyk Activist Charged with Rehabilitating Nazism Because He Wrote a Year Ago that Soviet Soldiers Acted “like Nazis” when They Deported His Nation in 1943

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 15 – Of all the punished peoples Stalin deported in whole or in part, the Kalmyks have received perhaps the least attention. That is unfortunate because their 1942 deportation was even more cruel than those of others as the Soviet dictator pulled troops fighting Nazi invaders and had them behave like Nazis in deporting the Kalmyks.

            On that history and how it has left the Kalmyks among the most anti-Russian of all the non-Russian peoples inMoscow’s empire, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/02/stalin-treated-kalmyks-much-worse-than.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/stalin-pulled-soviet-soldiers-from.html).

            Equally tragically, Moscow’s harsh approach to those among the Kalmyks it views as its opponents continues. The Russian-appointed prosecutor in that Buddhist North Caucasus republic has brought charges of “rehabilitating Nazism” against Boris Todayev, 66, a rights activist there (svoboda.org/a/natsisty-v-litse-sovetskih-soldat-pravozaschitnika-iz-kalmykii-presleduyut-za-statjyu-o-deportatsii/33853820.html).

            The basis of this charge like the charges against the Kalmyks in 1943 is absurd on its face. Todayev, one  of the organizers of the republic’s peoples front in Gorbachev’s time, is accused to “rehabilitating Nazism” because he quoted a Kalmyk woman in an article a year ago saying that Soviet soldiers had behaved “like Nazis” in deporting the Kalmyks.

             That article appeared in the Kalmyk opposition newspaper Narn and is available at pub-831ee2724cbf4b9a9fc6ab77c5d64003.r2.dev/narn-news/releases/Narn_9.pdf. Todayev is currently under house arrest, but because he has been behind bars in the past, Memorial has included him in its list of political prisoners.

            Other activists speaking in support of him suggest that what the Russian authorities are doing now not only provides support for those who draw parallels between the Nazi regime and the Stalinist state but gives new impetus to those who want to pursue independence from the Putinist state now. 

            Putin signed a law in July 2021 banning the drawing of any public parallel between the role of the USSR and that of Nazi Germany in World War II. Thus from Moscow’s perspective what it is doing in the Tokayev case is completely legal. But it is far from morally justified and like so many other Putin actions is proving ever more counterproductive.

Piontkovsky Asks ‘Will the Russian Federation Survive until 2028?’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 16 – Twenty-one years before the USSR disintegrated, Russian dissident Andrey Amalrik asked in a provocative essay “Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?” Now, émigré commentator Andrey Piontkovsky has asked an analogous question about Russia and suggested its demise may come in the next few years.

            Piontkovsky, who is always provocative and more often than not right, says that there are compelling reasons to think that the Russian Federation may not last until 2028, a date he appears to have selected less because of a Russian calendar than because that is when the next US presidential election is (charter97.org/ru/news/2026/9/16/698655/).

            In that way too, his new essay echoes Amalrik who selected 1984 for the demise of the USSR less because of events in the Soviet Union than because that was the title of George Orwell’s 1949 novel with that title on a dystopian totalitarian state and the discontents that kind of regime inevitably produces.

            But the parallels between Amalrik’s analysis and Piontkovsky’s are deeper than that. Both see the demise of the country they are talking about as the result of the conjunction of the actions of foreign powers and the bad policy choices the Kremlin leadership has made about how to deal with the world around it.

            And the reason that Piontkovsky times the demise of the Russian Federation as being so imminent is not just in his words that “the Russian Federation is already dead” but that the two most important foreign powers are coming together in their response with the consequences of Kremlin policies beyond its capacity to sustain and are thus destroying that state from within.

Laboratory of the Future Asks Russians Whether Their Country Even Needs a Parliament

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 17 – A few weeks ago, the independent sociological Laboratory of the Future asked Russians when Russia in its current state really needs a parliament, Elena Panfilova and Aleksey Levinson say. While only three percent answered in the affirmative, many others gave answers that were less than a resounding endorsement of the Duma as an institution.

            Eleven percent said Russia needed a parliament because all “civilized” countries have one, the two sociologists said; 25 percent said it was needed to express the views of the population; but the largest share – 28 percent – said the Duma’s job was to help the president  Duma (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/09/17/nuzhen-li-strane-parlament).

            Given the way in which the Russian political system actually operates, one in which the president dominates everything including what the Duma does, this is hardly a ringing endorsement of the very idea that Russia needs a parliament at all, Panfilova and Levinson continue.

            They suggest that one of the reasons Russians give such answers is that they know very little about what he Duma actually does or what it could do if it lived up to its constitutional role. According to a recent Russian Field survey, more than half of those surveyed could not give the right answer to any of four questions about the Russian parliament.

            Such attitudes and ignorance are especially striking now as Russia heads toward the end of a lengthy campaign to elect a new Duma; but together they reflect the increasing decision of Russians to go their own way while allowing the Russian powers to go their own, a not unreasonable position given how little influence the population has on the powers.