Russian Government Agencies Stop Issuing 385 More Data Sets in 2024, Largest Cutback in Last Three Years, ‘To Be Exact’ Portal Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – Russian government agencies stopped issuing 385 data sets in the course of 2024, the largest cutback in the last three years, although one whose impact was less than might be expected since many of these data sets had not been updated for several years already, Boris Gi of the To Be Exact portal says.
    Sets involving data on especially sensitive issues, such as the state of the economy, crime, and demographic data which permitted analysts to draw conclusions on Russian losses in the Ukraine war, had already been dropped in 2022-2023 or had remained without updates, Gi says (tochno.st/materials/v-2024-godu-rossiiskie-vedomstva-skryli-385-datasetov-eto-rekord-za-poslednie-tri-goda-treker-otkrytyx-dannyx-ot-esli-byt-tocnym).
    Seventy percent of the 385 dropped this year were from only four agencies – the ministry of health, the ministry of industry and trade, the federal highway administration, and the ministry of energy – but other ministries and agencies either dropped whole sets or did not report statistical data in their annual summaries for the first time.
    Some of these cutbacks, however, are serious: Rosstat ended publication of data on production of gasoline and diesel fuel as well as on migration patterns and delays in the payment of workers, and Russian Aviation stopped issuing data on the size of Russian air fleets, while the emergency services ministry issued less data on accidents.
    For a complete list of what data sets have been eliminated over the last 12 months, see admin.tochno.st/static/files/static/tracker-2024-12-12_2024-12-18_14-49-29.xlsx.

Russian TV Losing Its Audience and Public Trust Far More Rapidly than It is in Europe in Part Because of Moscow’s War Propaganda, ‘Re-Russia’ Says Surveys Show

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – A decade ago, television was the dominant source of information among Russians and most of them trusted what they saw and heard on it, but now, the share of Russians who rely on television and trust what it says has fallen significantly, far more so than in Europe, Re-Russia reports.  
    This has happened, the portal says, because of “the extremely conservative, pension-age style, and ideology of Russian television. Older people still listen to and rely on television but younger Russians do not – and the rate at which they have turned away from TV is much greater than is the case in Europe (re-russia.net/review/793/ and fom.ru/SMI-i-internet/15104).
    Given the role that television played in the rise and rule of Vladimir Putin during his first 15 years in office, this change constitutes an increasingly serious challenge to his information policy and political approach because while Moscow TV still attracts some, it alienates others and thus no longer represents the effective tool it was earlier.
    The decline in reliance on and trust in Russian television is especially great among Russians aged 18 to 30, a group only 21 percent of whom mentions television as a source, far less than the Internet. Older groups remain more television-centric, but they are declining in number and thus in the share of the population they constitute.
    Trust in television is also falling. In 2015, 63 percent of Russians said they trusted what they heard on Moscow television. In 2022, that figure had declined to 42 percent; and now it stands at only 39 percent.  Younger and better off Russians give far more trust to Internet sources than they do to television, leaving TV to the older and poorer segments of society.
    On the one hand, this trend is found in many societies and thus reflects a variety of developments in how people use television and the Internet; but on the other, Re-Russia says the Public Opinion Foundation data show that the extent to which Russian television has filled up with war propaganda is playing a major role shifting reliance and trust in TV among Russians.

Fertility Rates Falling across the World But Not in Post-Soviet Central Asia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – Over the last three years, fertility rates – the number of children per woman per lifetime – have fallen across the world from 2.23 in 2022 to 2.19 in 2024 and are now below replacement levels almost everywhere including in Russia. But there is one region that is an exception: the countries of post-Soviet Central Asia.
    There, according to Moscow observer Konstantin Dvinsky, statistics show they have risen in four of the give countries over the last 20 years and so the population there will continue to rise and at least for some time be a source of migrant labors for other countries, such as Russia (iarex.ru/articles/143234.html).
    Between 2003 and 2023, fertility rates rose from 2.07 to 3.01 in Kazakhstan, from 2.5 to 3.5 in Uzbekistan, from 3.42 o 3.5 in Tajikistan and from 2.59 to 3.5 in Kyrgyzstan, reversing earlier declines and making Central Asia an outlier as far as demographic behavior of the world’s regions is concerned.
    According to Dvinsky, this is good news for Russia because it means that the Russian Federation will be able to count on Central Asia as a source of immigrant labor well into the future.  

Russians Today Associate Stalin with Victory and Order and See Him as Model Russian Ruler, ‘Svobodnaya Pressa’ Informal Survey Finds

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – On the 145th anniversary of the birth of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Svobodnaya Pressa journalists conducted an informal survey of Russians on the streets of Moscow. They found that Russians today feel that Stalin is the embodiment of victory and order and thus is the model Russian ruler.  
    Although the survey was not conducted among anything resembling a representative sample and although those sharing their views may not have wanted to say anything to someone they did not know that might put them at odds with the Kremlin, the answers they did give suggest how successful Putin has been in getting Russians to look past Stalin’s crimes.
    (For the poll, see svpressa.ru/reports/sptv/442873/ and the attached video recording of Russians’ answers.)

Regionalist Movements Assume More Prominent Role at 14th Forum of Free States of Post-Russia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 19 – Representatives of regionalist movements have always had a difficult time when it comes to taking part in émigré meetings of the Russian opposition, even that part of the opposition that is open to cooperation with non-Russian groups committed to the pursuit of independence.
    At the just-completed 14th Forum of Free States of Post-Russia in Vilnius, representatives of regional movements from east of the Urals assumed a much higher profile than they have at earlier sessions (idelreal.org/a/buduschee-nado-gotovit-o-chem-dogovorilis-dekolonizatory-i-soratniki-ponomareva-na-forume-svobodnyh-gosudarstv-post-rossii/33243349.html).
    Their role raises the hope that Russian liberals and non-Russian nationalists may now be willing to cooperate with regionalist groups, some of which also are interested in greater autonomy but others of which are also seeking independence, and thus may form an alliance without which none of these three groups can hope to succeed.
    At the Vilnius meeting, three regionalist leaders spoke: Ivan Kulenko, a blogger from Chelyabinsk who supports the revival of the short-lived Urals Republic of 1993, Stanislav Suslov, vice president of the Committee for the Independent Confederacy of Siberia, and Anna Pryakhina from Tomsk who is a member of the Siberian independence movement.
    Instead of being sidelined as has happened at earlier meetings, the three were given prominent speaking roles and organizers said they and others like them would be welcome participants at future meetings and in a possible “Soviet of Nationalities” which would include both non-Russian and nominally ethnic Russian groups.
    If that proves to be the case, this Vilnius meeting could mark a turning point in the relationship between the liberal, nationalist and regionalist movements, one that would make them a far greater threat to the hyper-centralized authoritarian rule of Putin than any threat each might represent on its own.   

Angry at Chisinau and Encouraged by Moscow, Gagauz May Declare Independence from Moldova as Early as in February

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 19 – The relationship between the Moldovan central government and its Gagauz autonomy is increasingly fraught, and the Gagauz national movement is now holding meetings to discuss the possibility of declaring Gagauzia an independent republic, possibly as early as February.
    Activists say there is already overwhelming support for the idea that if the Gagauz do remain within Moldova, that will be possible only if Moldovan laws which contradict those of the republic are null and void on its territory. Moving toward a declaration of full independence would be a logical next step (ng.ru/cis/2024-12-19/5_9160_status.html).
    The Christian Turkic but largely Russian speaking region of approximately 100,000 people has increasingly been a thorn in the side of the current government in Chisinau, opposing the current president and her plans to integrate Moldova as a whole into the EU. The Gagauz remain pro-Moscow and anti-Europe and are a constrain on her plans.
    Moscow for its part has used the Gagauz along with Transnistria to undermine Chisinau; and this latest talk in Komrat about the Gagauz pursuing independence from Moldova almost certainly is the work of the Russian government and its pro-Moscow allies among the business elite in Moldova.  
    (For background on the complicated history of Gagauzia in independent Moldova and Moscow’s use of it, see https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/01/to-oppose-moldovas-rapprochement-with.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/08/chisinaus-policies-turning-gagauzia.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/07/russia-and-gagauz-expanding-ties-at.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/09/moscow-mulls-mobilizing-transdniestria.html.)  

Central Asians More Numerous, Younger and Living Longer than in 1991, New Moscow Study Finds

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 19 – Since becoming independent in 1991, the five Central Asian countries have seen their combined population grow from just over 50 million to more than 80 million, a development that means the region as a whole is as large as either Iran or Turkey, Moscow’ ACRA credit rating agency says.
    But the growth in numbers is not the only positive demographic development in the region, it continues. The population is now younger and living longer than was the case 35 years ago, a remarkable achievement given all the problems the region has experienced (acra-ratings.ru/research/2800/ and asiaplustj.info/ru/news/centralasia/20241219/demograficheskii-bum-tsentralnoi-azii-pomog-ekonomike).
    What this combination means, the Russian rating agency says, is that Central Asia is on the cusp of becoming am ever more important market for other countries and eventually an ever more important producer of goods and at least for the next few decades source of migrants as well.

Kremlin Increasingly Using Repressive Measures to Try to Boost Birthrate, Shukyurov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 19 – Until the start of Vladimir Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, the Russian authorities sought to boost the country’s birthrate by offering various incentives like maternal capital to lead more women to have more children. But since then, Aby Shukyurov says, they have increasing turned to repressive measures and more are on the way.
    The Russian demographer who now teaches in Paris says that Moscow has made this change both because of the failure of incentives to significantly raise the birthrate and because of the Kremlin’s increasing propensity to see repressive measures as inherently more effective (reforum.io/blog/2024/12/19/aby-shukyurov-repressii-voshli-v-demograficheskie-programmy/).
    In the last two years, Moscow and the regions have banned Childfree propaganda, prohibited abortions in private clinics, and limited access to abortion pills. These efforts, however, have not had a significant effect. Indeed, while the number of abortions continue to fall, the number of births has not gone up.
    In the next year, Shukyurov suggests, the Russian authorities appear likely to take three additional repressive steps in this area: defining fetuses as persons and thus making abortion murder, imposing special taxes on those who don’t have children, and making it more difficult for couples to get divorced.
    None of these measures will be popular, but more importantly from the point of view of the authorities, none of them is likely to lead to an increase in the Russian birthrate, which has long been falling as in other countries because of urbanization and other changes arising from social modernization.
    If the Russian government really wanted to increase the population, Shukyurov continues, it would be far better advised to spend money increasing the life expectancy of Russians and especially of Russian men. But such efforts would be expensive. Moreover, for the time being, Kremlin policies in Ukraine are contributing to a decline in male life expectancy.  

Restrictions on Migrant Workers Already Hitting Russian Citizens, Especially Those who aren’t Ethnically Russian or Don't Appear to Be

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – Russian officials are imposing ever more restrictions on which kinds of jobs migrant workers can take, a position that more than half of the Russian population supports. But these limits on migrants are increasingly having an impact on anyone who doesn’t look Slavic including many ethnic Russians, the People of Baikal portal says.
    With the imposition of restrictions, Russian police in many places, the news agency says, are challenging people who don’t look Slavic and demanding that they prove that they are not immigrants (baikal-journal.ru/2024/12/18/chem-tak-stradat-na-chuzhoj-zemle-luchshe-uehat-otsyuda/).
    The more limitations Moscow and the federal subjects place on immigrants, the more frequent this phenomenon is likely to become, something that revives a longstanding tradition in Russia of extending attacks on one group to others perceived to be similar or somehow related and that threatens to make such repression even more widespread.
    Indeed, this trend recalls an old and bitter Soviet joke about a Russian rabbit who is seeking to flee into Poland. When asked why he is doing so, the Russian rabbit says that it is because the police are arresting camels. When it is pointed out that he isn’t a camel, the rabbit says “Yes, but just try to prove that!”

Putin Says ‘Ethnic Jews Tearing Apart Russian Orthodox Church,’ Reviving Theme of Stalin’s Campaign Against ‘Rootless Cosmopolitans’

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – Of the many untrue and disturbing comments Vladimir Putin made during his “direct line” show, the following was perhaps the worst and most fateful: He accused “ethnic Jews” not part of their own religion of working to tear apart the Russian Orthodox Church (youtube.com/watch?v=-BUW37AuG4E).
    The Kremlin leader blamed the Jews for “tearing apart the church” not because they are “atheists” but because “these are people without any beliefs, godless people, they’re ethnic Jews but has anyone seen them in a synagogue? I don’t think so” (jta.org/2024/12/19/global/vladimir-putin-accuses-ethnic-jews-of-tearing-apart-the-russian-orthodox-church).
    Many are horrified. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow who left Russia after Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine, suggested that what Putin said “echoes the Stalinist anti-Semitic rhetoric of the Doctors’ Plot era (1948-1953)” and called on people of good will to condemn this (x.com/ChiefRabbiPG/status/1869783979169050836).
    Many Russian nationalists around Putin, including the increasingly powerful and influential “Russian Community,” have been openly anti-Semitic for some time; and Putin himself has fanned anti-Semitism by attacking Ukraine as a country needing what he calls “de-Nazification” even though it has a Jewish president.
    But the Kremlin leader’s words this week are his clearest and most noxious so far and will undoubtedly be taken as a sign that his regime will not oppose and may even openly support attacks on Jews, thus repeating the long and sad history of Russia in which attacks on Jews may not come first but almost inevitably come when the regime launches attacks on other groups.

Russians with Same Names as Other Russians Sanctioned by the West Suffering as a Result

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – While many of those Russian officials Western countries have imposed sanctions on have learned how to get around them, these sanctions have hit and often hit hard are Russians who happen to have the same name as those who have been sanctioned but often are treated as if they are the same individual.
    The Holod news agency has spoken with about ten of these people as well as to lawyers who have worked with this problem and recounts both the problems such Russians have in sending or receiving money and provides advice on the steps they need to take in order to avoid difficulties (holod.media/2024/12/18/ne-ta-mariia-zaharova/).
    The agency points out that many of these problems might be avoided if it were not for the fact that the governments imposing sanctions often provide only limited information about those they wish to sanction, such as first and last name, sex and citizenship, but do not specify the position the individual they wish to punish occupies.
    As a result, people who share these names, gender and citizenship with the targets of sanctions often become collateral damage and face difficulties that often delay their movement of money around. But Russian lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov says there are four steps such people can take to minimize the problems.
    First, those with the same name as someone sanctions can collect documents proving they are someone else. Second, they can appeal to the government or agency issuing the sanctions for a declaration on that account. Third, they can seek redress from the banking authorities of the country in which they live. And fourth, if all else fails, they can seek legal help.
    But Smirnov warns that such people are likely to continue to face problems even if they do everything right, at least until those issuing the sanctions are more precise in defining who it is they wish to target.  

Duma Foolishly Wants to Create an Institute for the Study of Traditional Values, El Murid Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 20 – Anna Kuznetsova, the deputy speaker of the Russian Duma, is calling for the creation of an Institute for the Study of Traditional Values so that lawmakers and others will know what values are traditional an what are not and thus will be able to promote the former and oppose the latter, Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid says.
    But the very idea, the blogger says, is “absurd,” an effort to create an ideology that will lead to Russia’s further degradation and one that ignores the fact that traditional values can only exist alongside other values as part of a larger moral universe (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/22418 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6763D4F0AB59E).
    Indeed, El Murid continues, underlying this proposal is the notion that “the country should not have a future for only in that case is such an institute required.” But that won’t be the end of such absurdities. Instead, “other structures will inevitably be created to address and solve the same problem: to turn the country into a cemetery.”

Couriers in Russia Now Receive Higher Pay than Doctors, Teachers, and Even IT Professionals

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – Demand for couriers has risen so fast that there are almost 200,000 vacancies in that sector and as a result, their salaries have risen as well over the last several years and now exceed those of doctors, teachers, and even IT professionals, a sign that the market is not allocating work in ways that best serve the Russian people, Ilya Grashchenkov says.
    The head of the Moscow Center for Regional Politics points out that almost all of the couriers are in the major cities even though “it is no secet that the country needs to increase production primarily in the regions” (rosbalt.ru/news/2024-12-18/ilya-graschenkov-kuriery-obognali-programmistov-po-zarplatam-chto-eto-znachit-5278925).
    Unless that is done, reported income gains will be illusory and Russia will continue to fall behind the advanced countries, Grashchenkov continues. But “for now,” he says, “the high-wage economy the country seeks is being formed not through high-tech industries but rather thanks to people on bicycles with backpacks.”
    Unless that changes – and it will require massive government intervention to do so – the Kremlin may be able to point to large wage gains but neither it nor the population of the country as a whole will be able to avoid the degradation that is certain to follow such arrangements and trends.  

Many Suffer from ‘Delusion’ that after Putin, ‘Everything will Return to Normal and Be Just Fine,’ Sulandziga Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – Many people “expect and hope that the Putin regime will fall – and then that everything will return to normal and be just fine,” Pavel Sulyandziga, head of the Batani International Indigenous Fund for Development and Solidarity and former vice president of RAIPON who has been forced into emigration.
    To think that way, he argues, is to suffer from “a profound delusion. Things won’t be the same as they used to be before! And the sooner the Artic community … realizes this, the sooner it will be possible to begin building a new system of relations with Russia and have effective interactions in the future” (batani.org/archives/2846).
    Before 2010, most members of the Arctic community outside of Russia regarded that country as “friendly,” albeit “with some oddities and peculiarities.” But “we have all witnessed what that illusion led to” in the form of Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine and his breaking off of relations between Artic peoples.
    What the Western community, including governments, activists and scholars, must grasp is that “there is a dangerous enemy on the other side and that its oddities and peculiarities are not just whims of the regime but sources of its power and a threat to the outside world. Any policy toward or relations with Russia must be based on an acknowledgement of that fact.”

No Matter How Many Territorial Concessions Ingushetia Makes, Kadyrov Won’t Stop Until He Controls All of Ingushetia, Sultygov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – Some may believe that Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov will be satisfied if Magas hands over the parkland to Chechnya that he is demanding, but Sarazhdin Sultygov, a prominent Ingush activist, argues that the Chechen leader will never be satisfied until he has swallowed Ingushetia whole.
    The vice president of the Mekk-Khel organization says that Kadyrov “will not stop” because “he hates the Ingush. He doesn’t like the fact hat the Ingush are inflexible and that he cannot destroy us. He says that we are brothers but then offends us and seizes our land” (youtube.com/watch?v=c2zoklvZGEs and fortanga.org/2024/12/kadyrov-ne-ostanovitsya-dazhe-zabrav-erzi-obshhestvennik-sultygov-vyskazalsya-o-peredache-ingushskih-territorij-i-pisme-chajki/).
    Sultygov is especially angry about Kadyrov’s harsh words concerning the Ingush treatment of Chechen refugees in the 1990s and about the apparent support the Chechen leader has in Moscow for his expansionist agenda (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/chechnya-pressuring-ingushetia-to-yield.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/kadyrovs-comments-about-ingush-sparks.html).
    His comments are the latest indication that opposition to Kadyrov is heating up across the North Caucasus because the Chechen leader has been making claims not only against Ingushetia but against Dagestan as well (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/chechen-issue-in-daghestan-heats-up.html).
    All this leaves Moscow in a difficult position. If it supports Kadyrov now as it has in the past, it will offend all the other North Caucasus republics and nations; but if it doesn’t, Kadyrov may not remain Moscow’s reliable agent of control in Chechnya itself, something that could spark another war there.  

2024 Marked a Partial Stabilization of ‘New Repressive Landscape’ in Russia, OVD-Info Expert Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – The Kremlin’s increasing repression has driven anti-war protests almost completely underground, led to the growth of attacks on groups and in places far from the center, and increasingly involved “uncivil society,” groups that share the values of the state but at least nominally aren’t part of it, according to Dan Storyev.
    The managing reporter at OVD-Info which tracks repression in the Russian Federation says that all these developments have come after “the Kremlin’s successful obliteration of opposition structures within Russia” and opens the way to an even more totalitarian system (ridl.io/russia-s-repressive-home-front/).
    The repressive approach of the government regarding anti-war protest means that while 18,910 Russians were detained for taking part in such demonstrations in 2022, only 34 have been so far in 2024, as people have shifted from open protests to underground actions that the authorities have had more difficulty in stamping out.
    In response to this shift, the powers have brought more charges against people for criticizing the army or the war in Ukraine and have done so against members of groups and especially those far from Moscow who were not touched in the past. In fact, Storyev says, “repression is now reaching places that previously didn’t engage in political activity.”
    But the two most important developments in this area lie elsewhere: the use of groups like the Russian Community and others allied with the government to carry out Kremlin repression and the expansion of repression against personal autonomy concerning abortions, gender roles and so on.  

Increasing Demand for Burials since Start of Putin’s Expanded War in Ukraine Sends Funeral Service Prices Skyrocketing

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – The cost of funeral services in Russia has been skyrocketing, in part because of general inflation and sanctions but primarily because of increasing demand for burials since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, sparking anger among Russians who are facing real difficulties in paying for last rites, according to an Okno Group survey.
    Over the last year alone, the cost of funerals has risen by nine percent overall and by more than 30 percent in some places; and Russians now face real difficulties in getting the defense ministry what it has committed itself to (fedstat.ru/indicator/31448 and okno.group/dayte-skidku-na-leshenku-pohoronnyy-biznes-vo-vremya-voyny/).
    Those increases, of course, come on top of prices rises in 2022 and 2023; and they are a final insult and indignity to Russians who have sacrificed their husbands, sons and fathers to fight in Putin’s war, something that will add to their anger about his government which is less prepared to honor and respect those it sends to die than the Kremlin repeatedly claims.  

Keeping Migrant Children who Don’t Know Russian Out of Schools Counterproductive and ‘Stupid,’ Activist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – Keeping migrant children who don’t know Russian from attending Russian schools and learning the language is “not only amoral but stupid” and Russian nationalists should be taking the lead in the fight against Duma plans to do just that, according to Olga Nikolayenko, a leader of efforts to protect migrant children.
    Such a step, near approval in the Duma, she continues, “not only contradicts morality, international law, the Constitution of the Russian Federation” but also good sense because it throws these children on the streets and deprives Moscow of a chance to spread knowledge of the Russian language (holod.media/2024/12/17/ne-tolko-amoralno-no-i-glupo/).
    If migrant children are thrown into the streets, Nikolayenko continues, they may form gangs and will contribute to the ghettoization of the migrant communities, she continues; and when they eventually return to their homelands, they will not speak Russian and will be even more inclined to be anti-Russian than they would if they learned the language.
    If these children are allowed to attend Russian schools and thus do learn Russian, they and their parents are far more likely to integrate into Russian society as productive members, to develop more positive attitudes toward Russians, and be its ambassadors when they return to their homelands.
    Which future would any sensible Russian nationalist want? The answer is obvious, the activist says; but unfortunately, in Russia today, many people, including Russian nationalists, don’t follow their interests but their febrile emotions – and thus lead the country into ever more difficulties.

Batal-Haji Sufi Order in Ingushetia ‘New Wahhabis in Eyes of Regional and Federal Authorities,’ a Perspective that May Trigger a New War

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – Ingush and Russian officials have been attacking leaders of the Batal-Haji Sufi order centered on Ingushetia for five years, but they are now moving to attack all of its more than 20,000 members because they see them as “the new Wahhabis” and thus an alternative state formation threatening state power in that North Caucasus republic.
    Islam Belokiyev, an opposition blogger from Magas, says Ingush siloviki are now pressing Moscow to declare all Batal-Haji members extremist so that it will be easier to link them to Ukraine and the West and impose more draconian punishments (kavkazr.com/a/dlya-silovikov-eto-novye-vahhabity-v-ingushetii-prodolzhaetsya-presledovanie-batalhadzhintsev/33244173.html).
    But because the Batal-Haji order is so large and because its membership includes numerous officials, such an action could quickly lead to the collapse of the republic government, a development that almost certainly would lead to the intervention of Chechnya, especially since Ramzan Kadyrov has taken up the defense of the order.
    (For background on the Batal-Haji order and its travails in recent years, see  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/11/moscow-attacks-ingushetias-batal-haji.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/russian-officials-accuse-influential.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/chechnyas-kadyrov-takes-up-cause-of.html.)

Russian Economy Split Between Surging and Stagnating Sectors and So are Attitudes of Russians about the Future, Academy of Sciences Study Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – Many want to evaluate the Russian economy as a whole rather than recognize that the Russian economy is split between sectors that are booming, mostly those funded by the government for its war in Ukraine, and others which are stagnant or even declining, most of those driven by consumer spending, Mikhail Sergeyev says in a discussion of new research by the Academy of Sciences.
    And these observers make a similar mistake in evaluating Russian attitudes about the future, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta economics reporter says, forgetting that those who are benefitting have positive attitudes while those who aren’t have negative ones (ng.ru/economics/2024-12-17/1_9158_problem.html).
    In general, these second differences follow generational lines, Sergeyev continues, with older workers being more likely to be in the government-funded industries and younger ones struggling in those driven by consumer spending. As a result, older Russians tend to be more optimistic about the future than younger ones.
    These differences, he adds, help to explain why older Russians are more in favor of the war in Ukraine and its continuation than are younger ones who see the war as depressing their prospects and the prospects of the Russian Federation in the future.

Russia’s Critical Shortage of Teachers in STEM Subjects Threatens Country’s Development, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – Russia is currently experiencing critical shortages of teachers in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), something that threatens the country’s development, according to the editors of Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta; and the government is not responding to this crisis with the necessary urgency.  
    At present, the editors say, almost one school in four does not have a teacher of physics and almost one in two does not have a chemistry instructor, a lack that means a large swath of young people are never exposed to those disciplines and thus are less likely to go into them professionally (ng.ru/editorial/2024-12-17/2_9158_red.html).
    Many Russians, including members of the Duma, are disturbed about this and are pressuring the government to do more. The government in response has announced plans to solve the problem by 2030; but, the editors say, it has not committed anything like the funds necessary to attract more teachers in these fields.
    Lest the situation deteriorate further, Nezavisimaya Gazeta says, it would be a good idea to consider forming social councils that could take responsibility for particular schools and offer to fill key teaching slots with those who have expertise in STEM subjects acquired not by teacher training but by life experiences.
    Such people, the paper suggests, would attract young people into these fields before Russia falls even further behind other countries.  

Many Families of Russians Fighting in Ukraine Freezing in Their Homes

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 17 – Thousands of Russian families whose fathers, husbands and sons are now fighting in Ukraine are freezing in their homes because of ruptured pipes and the collapse of the communal heating system (thebarentsobserver.com/news/people-are-freezing-in-putins-arctic-navy-towns/422253 and semnasem.org/articles/2024/12/17/gorod-razorvannyh-trub).
    In response to complaints, Russian officials have promised that they will correct the situation (thebarentsobserver.com/security/touchdown-in-sputnik-defence-minister-belousov-pays-visit-to-naval-infantry-brigade-near-nordic-nato-border/326724), but perhaps the best indication of how Russians feel about this situation is the spread of the following anecdote:
    Many note that Putin says Russia is always ready to fight a nuclear war, even though it has never had to do so; but regardless of whether that is true or not, it is clearly the case that neither he nor any other Russian official is ready for winter, even though that season and the cold it brings Russia comes every year.

Moscow Increasingly Using Its Journalists Abroad for Espionage, Dobrokhotov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 16 – Moscow is increasingly using its journalists abroad not to spread disinformation – it has other means for that – but to penetrate opposition groups and to work as spies and spotters for spies, according to Roman Dobrokhotov, the chief editor of The Insider whom a group of Bulgarians recently attempted to kidnap.
    Most Western journalists and most Russian opposition groups are ill-prepared to defend against such penetration and espionage activity, he says, because Moscow prepares such agents by having them work first in analogous roles inside Russia, something that gives them credibility outside of Russia (pointmedia.io/story/67604c0c3d97a5c1c5781f13).
    When these journalists arrive in the West, they already have the patina of opposition figures and are typically accepted as such, Dobrokhotov continues. That allows them to work as spies or at least as spotters who can identify people that more senior Russian intelligence operatives can focus on as possible recruits.
    These pseudo-journalists are thus often very successful in such operations; and there are two additional reasons why this is an effective tactic, although The Insider editor doesn’t mention them. On the one hand, spreading suspicions about such people can disorder opposition groups in the West.
    And on the other, if these pseudo-journalists are exposed as spies, that works for Moscow’s purposes as well. It may lose a few agents, but it gains because both Russians abroad and Westerners will become ever more suspicious of working with real opposition groups, again helping the Kremlin.

Growing Shortage of Military Equipment One Reason Why Kremlin Reducing Military Recruitment Effort in Moscow, ‘Meduza’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 16 – In recent weeks, the city of Moscow has reduced the number of billboards calling on men to joint the military, a development that flies in the face of reports that the number of Russians volunteering to fight in Ukraine has been falling despite the need for more troops to replace losses there.
    But there are at least two compelling reasons this is happening, officials tell Meduza correspondents Svetlana Reiter and Andrey Pertsev. On the one hand, the billboards had become so widespread that Muscovites were ignoring them but visitors from elsewhere in Russia were taking notice and signing up in Moscow (meduza.io/feature/2024/12/16/v-moskve-stalo-menshe-reklamy-sluzhby-po-kontraktu-vmesto-otpravki-na-voynu-lyudyam-predlagayut-shodit-v-novye-rybnye-restorany).
    As a result, Moscow was easily meeting its recruitment quotas but primarily as the result of decisions by men from other federal subjects who signed up there to get the larger bonuses that the capital is offering. That has meant that regions and republics have fallen short in their efforts, an embarrassment to both their own officials and to the Kremlin as well.
    And on the other, Russian officials say – and this is likely to be the more important reason – the Russian military finds itself in a situation where it has lost so much equipment in the fighting that commanders are no longer able to supply new men with the weapons they need to be effective fighters.
    “It’s not just about recruiting people,” one official told Reiter and Pertsev; “you have to be able to arm them.” That apparently is becoming a problem for the Russian invasion force, although for obvious reasons, it isn’t one that Moscow has wanted to talk about – or for less obvious reasons, one that most coverage of the conflict has focused on.

Russian Actress Fined for Joke about Karels, a Nation Only One in 200 of Its Members under the Age of Nine Speaks Their Language

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 16 – Sometimes Muscovite efforts to make itself look better than it is regarding the treatment of non-Russian nationalities are the only times that just how repressive it really is comes to the attention of a broader audience. Such is the case with the Karels, the titular nationality of the Karelian Autonomous Republic.
    Earlier this fall, Russian actress Valeriya Lomakshina got in trouble with local officials when she suggested that the only place where anyone spoke Karel was from the stage at the republic theater. Even those in the audience, she said, needed translations into Russian. Now, she has apologized and fined 100 US dollars for her comment (nazaccent.ru/content/43286-sud-oshtrafoval-aktrisu-valeriyu-lomakinu-za-shutku-o-karelskom-yazyke/).
    As even the pro-Kremlin portal Nazaccent.ru notes, “the Karelian language is rare and at the brink of disappearing.” Only about 25,000 people in the Russian Federation speak it and most are elderly, with the media age of Karel speakers being 64. Most ominously for the future: only one in every 200 Karels under the age of nine knows the language.
    One of the reasons the Karel language is in so much difficulty is that Moscow refuses to allow it become the official language of the Karelian republic, the only republic in the Russian Federation whose titular nationality doesn’t have that status. The reason? Karelian is writing in Latin script, and Moscow requires that all official languages be written in Cyrillic script.  

Since Putin Became President, Predominantly Ethnic Russian Regions have Seen Their Populations Plummet and the Number of Ghost Towns in Them Jump

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 15 – Vladimir Putin has cast himself as the defender of the Russian world, but in the almost 25 years since he became president, predominantly ethnic Russian regions across the country have plummeted and the number of ghost towns, villages in which no one lives any more, jump.
    Predominantly ethnic Russian regions have seen their populations decline by from 150,000 to more than 400,000 each, as residents have died off or fled to larger cities (region.expert/dying/), and the number of ghost towns has risen by a few hundred in Perm to over 2200 in Tver (facebook.com/groups/661124300699950/permalink/3730378770441139).
    These new figures show that the trends of the first decades of Putin’s rule are accelerating, something that means Russia is rapidly becoming a place of cities surrounded by empty spaces at least in predominantly ethnic Russian regions (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/12/one-in-five-villages-in-many-parts-of.html).

91 Percent of Victims of Family Violence in Russia are Women, and Men who Inflict It Get Off Unpunished or with Only Small Fines or a Few Days in Jail, ‘Scythe’ Portal Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 15 – Although most Russian women would like to see a law against family violence adopted, their country does not have one, a reflection of the patriarchal values of the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox church. Because there is no law, there are no official statistics; but activists have collected dismaying figures.
    The Scythe portal, which reports on women’s issues in Russia, reports that 91 percent of those Russians who suffer from violence in families are women, that those who engage in such violence typically get off, are fined 50 US dollars for their offenses, or sentenced to 15 days or less behind bars (kosa.media/2024/12/gendernoe-nasilie/).
    In its latest article on the subject of family violence, Scythe presents both a directory of articles about that subject in Russia and a guide to those numerous organizations which seek to protect women against such violence at a time when the authorities seem quite content to ignore its spread.  

Feminism Must Play a Key Role in Ending Moscow’s Authoritarianism and Aggression, Domańska Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 15 – Russia will remain an authoritarian and aggressive state as long as its political culture remains rooted in hegemonic masculinity, Maria Domańska argues; and thus, “feminist politics could help break the patriarchal paradigm” that keeps Russia on its current path both domestically and internationally.
    The scholar at Warsaw’s Centre for Eastern Studies adds that “the war against Ukraine is the most brutal example of the patriarchal culture of violence which permeates the Russian political system,” one manifested in “a cult of strongman rule, war and territorial conquest, hatred, and the romanticization of criminality” (ridl.io/ru/u-putinizma-ne-zhenskoe-litso/).
    According to Domańska, “the Kremlin is pursuing the neo-totalitarian goal of deepening the atomization of society and turning it into a homogeneous mass that declaratively rallies around the head of state” with women being “objective and expected to conform to ‘patriotic femininity, their main function being to produce cannon fodder for future wars.”
“In this highly ideologized political environment, sexism goes hand in hand with «internal colonialism». Formally a federation, Russia is in reality a highly centralised state in which the needs and interests of regions and local communities are disregarded, their resources are plundered and discrimination against non-Russian ethno-national groups is systemic,” she says.
Moreover, she continues, “the Kremlin’s foreign policy is also tainted with sexism and neo-colonialism: Russia’s war against Ukraine and hybrid warfare against the West have a very strong gendered dimension. State propaganda portrays Putin as an alpha male contrasted with «effeminate» Western leaders and ‘weak’ women.’”
Russian feminists have organized against the war, but their agenda is far larger because ehy recognize that “any sustainable political change in Russia must be based on gender equality,” something far more comprehensive that the usual ideas about political liberalization as advocated by opposition Russian politicians.
Few senior male opposition figures understand that, Domanska says; but there is a growing awareness among young opposition leader that “talking about ‘democracy’ without respecting women’s rights is an oxymoron” and doomed to fail.” Only if women’s rights are respected will any future democratization lift all boats and not just a favored few.

Regional History Textbooks Now Not Only Must Not Contradict Moscow’s Position but One Another, Kremlin Officials Tell Regional Authors

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 15 – Kremlin officials have told a Kazan conference of educational authorities from some 30 federal subjects that new local history textbooks must not contradict either Moscow’s positions on the country’s history or – and this is something new -- one another, lest what pupils are told in one region lead them into conflict with those in another.
    Kazan was host because Tatarstan officials have made the most progress preparing such textbooks and have shown themselves ready to meet the first of Moscow’s demands (milliard.tatar/news/izucenie-istorii-rossii-polnostyu-privedeno-k-edinoobraziyu-6637; for background, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/moscow-asks-federal-subjects-to-prepare.html.)
    But at the meeting, after the second demand was made clear, even Tatar scholars admitted that meeting it would not be easy, especially since much local history on the territory of what is now the Russian Federation is about not just conflicts between the center and the periphery but about conflicts between and among segments of the periphery.
    Downplaying or even eliminating all of those will be difficult, speakers suggested; and coming up with regional histories in one federal subject that do not contradict but “re-enforce” the messages of those in other, neighboring federal subjects is thus likely to be one of the most contentious areas of textbook writing in the coming months.
    It is likely that the authors of this latest expansion of Moscow’s commitment to homogenization may not have considered all the potential consequences of this demand. On the one hand, if the federal subjects meet it, they will make it more rather than less likely that regions can cooperate, undercutting Moscow’s traditional divide and rule approach.
    But on the other hand, the process of bringing the textbooks into line with each other will likely have the effect of highlighting the differences among the republics and regions and the nations that form them and this in turn will exacerbate differences between these entities and the federal center.

Kadyrov’s Comments about Ingush Sparks Outrage among Chechens and Ingush

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 13 – During his open line broadcast, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said that in the 1990s, when Chechnya was pursuing independence, “90 percent” of Ingush enriched themselves by taking money from Chechen refugees. As a result, he continued, while grateful for that help, “we do not owe them anything.”
    Kadyrov’s words have been denounced as slanderous not only by Ingush but by Chechens who have lashed out at the Chechen leader with some of the sharpest commentaries ever (fortanga.org/2024/12/eto-kadyrov-a-ne-ingushi-obogatilis-za-schet-chechenczev-obshhestvenniki-otvetili-na-kritiku-glavy-chechni-v-adres-ingushej/).
    Musa Lomayev, a Chechen human rights activist now in exile, said Kadyrov’s version of events was just the opposite of the truth. In fact, the Ingush helped the Chechen refugees, including his family, and it was Kadyrov who enriched himself at the expense of the Chechen people (youtube.com/watch?v=cUeV_d7r_Lg).
    Ansar Garkkho, the leader of the Committee for Ingush Indepemdence, said that Kadyrov has “no authority” to speak in the name of the Chechens. “You are a Russian official,” not a genuinely Chechen one. If you were otherwise, he continued, you wouldn’t say such things (youtube.com/watch?v=sZOFj-l1Fmo).
    And Islam Belokiyev on the Thoughts of Islam YouTube channel also took issue with Kadyrov’s comments on the Ingush. “If 90 percent of the Ingush became riche,” he asks rhetorically, “then where are their mansions and high-rise buildings built at the expense of the Chechens?” (youtube.com/watch?v=lhjeF5fiAOw).
    These responses to Kadyrov’s comments will not only make it likely that the Ingush will dig in their fight to retain control of a park on their borders but also will make it virtually impossible for the achievement of the kind of rapprochement of the two Vainakh peoples that many anti-Kadyrov leaders have sought.
    Indeed, they are a sign that the two, long combined in a single republic by Moscow, are now going to go their own way, increasingly suspicious and even hostile of the other – and that such hostility will undermine Kadyrov’s standing not only across the North Caucasus but in Chechnya as well.  

Controversy over Pühtitsa Female Monastery in Estonia Raises Possibility Moscow Patriarchate Might Extend Stauropegial Status to Maintain ROC MP Influence Abroad

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 13 – Tallinn’s insistence that not only the Estonian Orthodox Church break with Moscow but also that the female Orthodox monastery at Pühtitsa which has stauropegial status has raised the possibility that the Moscow Patriarchate might seek to use that status as a defense against moves to autocephaly in former Soviet republics.
    The struggle between the Estonian government and the EOC has attracted the most attention because the EOC has agreed to most of Estonia’s demands that it separate itself from Moscow and thus ends the earlier compromise between Tallinn and Moscow in which there were two recognized Orthodox churches in that Baltic country.
    On the history of this conflict, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/estonian-orthodox-church-of-moscow.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/estonian-orthodox-church-drops-of.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/will-estonia-be-site-of-another.html).
    But what has been viewed as a side issue in this struggle and thus ignored, the status of the women’s Russian Orthodox monastery at Pühtitsa, may in fact turn out to be the most important not only in the preservation of a Moscow role in Orthodoxy in Estonia but  even with regard to Moscow’s defense of its positions in the Orthodox communities elsewhere.
    That is because the Pühtitsa women’s monastery has stauropegial status, an arrangement in Orthodox cannon law whereby a monastery or other community is made subordinate not to the local bishop as is usually the case but to the leader or leadership of the church and thus has greater honor and independence.
    (For a discussion of how this came to be for Pühtitsa, a facility created in 1892 but given that rank only in 1990 by Moscow Patriarch Aleksii who had earlier served as bishop of Talllinn, see ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-12-14--estonskie-vlasti-stavjat-ultimatum-pjuhtickoj-obiteli-porvite-s-moskvoj-77416,).
    In a response to the Estonian government which demanded that Pühtitsa break its ties with Moscow, the monastery’s mother superior not only defended its stauropegial status but told Tallinn that she and her 90 sisters do not even have the right to raise that issue with the Moscow patriarchate (puhtitsa.ee/docs/obrashchenie-29.10.2024.pdf).
    On the one hand, this raises the possibility that Estonia will use force to take control of the women’s monastery, something that would certainly give Tallinn a black eye from the point of view of many Christians. But on the other, this situation has already led to a proposal that Moscow make broader use of this status.
    The Russian Orthodox Chrisma Research Center says that the position the mother superior has taken could be a model for Russian Orthodox communities under pressure in other former Soviet republics and indeed more generally to break ties with Moscow and change allegiance (t.me/chrisma_center/8227).
    In addition to Pühtitsa, the Moscow Patriarchate already has this kind of relationship with monasteries in Belarus, Ukraine, and the United States as well as with individual congregations. Were the ROC MP to adopt the strategy Chrisma proposes, that could radically transform the efforts of post-Soviet states to break Orthodox ties with Moscow.  

Since Putin Began His Expanded War in Ukraine, Russians have Destroyed 17 Memorials to Poles Repressed in USSR

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 13 – In the almost three years since Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine, Russians, sometimes officials and sometimes unnamed “vandals” have destroyed at least 17 monuments erected earlier in memory of Poles who were repressed in either Russia or the USSR.
    The fact that such actions have occurred in so many places across the Russian Federation suggests that they have been inspired if not directly ordered by officials who have been angered by Warsaw’s support of Ukraine against the Russian invasion (pointmedia.io/story/675c18313d97a5c1c5781f0f).
    According to activists like Kseniya Sergeyeva of the Yabloko Party branc in Nizhny Novgorod, there is evidence of even more direct official encouragement. Equipment used to destroy the monuments comes on vehicles without license plates, something that would be unlikely if they weren’t being used by Russian government agencies.

Moscow Asks Federal Subjects to Prepare History Textbooks that Treat Their Lands as Russian Regions rather than as National Republics

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 13 – Having come up with a new history text for the first grades of schools in the Russian Federation, Moscow is now supervising the preparation of textbooks about the federal subjects for the middle grades to be introduced next year and has asked the 32 governments to treat themselves as regions rather than republics.
    Tatarstan is one of the 32, and Marat Gibatdinov, the deputy head of the republic Academy of Sciences Institute of History, says “Moscow has requested that the accent in these volumes be not national but regional” and thus focus on all the nationalities of the republics rather than just the titular ones (business-gazeta.ru/article/657159).
    Of course, in the case of Tatarstan, the Kazan scholar continues, the Tatar are the dominant group and will receive the most coverage, “but there will also be discussions about other peoples and their contribution [to the development of the region] and about connections among these peoples.
    The new textbooks which are based on the conception of all the federal subjects being krays, a Russian word which means not only region but “on the edge” of the state ignore many subjects that have been at the center of Tatar history and rewrite others, scholars involved in the preparation of the new textbook say.
    Any talk of a Tatar-Mongol “yoke” has disappeared. Russia’s advance into Tatarstan in the 16th century is treated as a mostly peaceful enterprise with no discussion about the sacking of Kazan in 1552, and the mass purges of Tatar officials and intellectuals in the Great Terror ignored altogether.
    Instead, Tatarstan is presented as one region among many committed to being part of Russia and whose history reflects that at all times and places, the facts of the case notwithstanding. These changes are already sparking anger in Tatarstan, anger that is likely to be far greater than that about Medynsky’s general history texts for lower grades.

Syrian Revolution ‘Start of Russia’s Decolonialization’ Just as East European Revolutions were of USSR’s Disintegration, Lushnikov Says

 Syrian Revolution ‘Start of Russia’s Decolonialization’ Just as East European Revolutions were of USSR’s Disintegration, Lushnikov Says
Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 13 – It is now common ground that the revolutions which swept through Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990 were a major cause of the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. Its loss of this outer empire in fact created a situation in which it became almost inevitable that it would lose the inner empire as well.
    Now, according to Aleksey Lushnikov, a co-founder of the European Petersburg movement, Moscow’s inability to defend its new outer empire in Syria is a perfect analogy and marks “the beginning of the  decolonization of Russia” and the approaching end of its inner empire (region.expert/syria-decolonization/).
    No one should forget, he continues, that “nine years ago, Syria was in fact converted into one of the colonies of the Putin regime. That may seem at first glance only a metaphor, but everyone will well remember ow Putin so frequently talked about the victory of Russia in Syria” and about Russia’s special role there as a result.
    The Kremlin issued medals for those who took part and created holidays in honor of its victory in Syria, Lushnikov says; and it was because of Putin’s support that Assad was able to hold power so long and to kill “hundreds of thousands of his own citizens.” As a result, Putin views his overthrow “as a personal defeat and hit to his own regime.”
    “Although Syria may seem alien,” the activist continues, “it is for Putin much closer than for example Khabarovsk, both geographically and in terms of what it represents.” Assad’s overthrow is thus “ a direct attack on Putin’s personal power and on his understanding of sovereignty.”
    According to Lushnikov, “this is something like another Kursk Oblast but much more serious because it has taken place publicly” and thus represents a clear sign of “the weakening of Putin’s influence. The wheels of fortune are turning” and “the victory of the anti-Assad forces are the beginning of the process of the decolonization of Russia.”
    “Syria has long been a symbol of Russian geopolitical expansion,” he argues; “but today’s events show that Putin’s empire is full of cracks and that Assad’s overthrow is a signal to everyone still under the Kremlin that the power of their rulers is weak and short-lived” however much they may have thought otherwise only a few weeks earlier.”
    Again, just like in 1989.

Russian Soldiers in Ukraine Less Supportive of Peace Talks than Russians at Home, ‘Vyorstka’ Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 11 – A Russian Field poll last month found that twice as many Russians favor a ceasefire in Ukraine as support continuing the war, but the attitudes of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine are very different, according to interviews the independent Vyorstka news service has carried out.
    The 20 Russian soldiers said that any ceasefire would be “a second Khasavyurt,” a reference to the agreement that ended the first post-Soviet Chechen war, and that “after a certain time,” the Ukrainians would resume their attacks after “deceiving” Russia as appened in Syria (verstka.media/kak-v-rossiiskoi-armii-otnosyatsya-k-vozmozhnomu-nachalu-mirnyh-peregovorov-s-ukrainoi).
    All the soldiers told the news agency that they were tired of war and would naturally like to return home but believed there was only one acceptable outcome: an overwhelming Russian victory that would prevent Ukrainians from ever taking up arms against Russia again. None of them said they believed that such a victory could be easily or quickly achieved, however.
    But those interviewed overwhelmingly said that despite losses and difficulties, it was better to continue the fight now, especially when there are Ukrainian forces on Russian territory like Kursk Oblast lest the Ukrainians organize similar actions elsewhere in the Russian Federation. Otherwise, Russians will have to fight again and in less advantageous positions.
    There is no indication of how representative this sample is, but it is almost certain that the attitudes that Vyorstka captured do affect a sizeable number of Russian servicemen and thus are something that the Kremlin can simultaneously count on and must take into account as it moves forward.
 

Putin Involved in Effort to Force Ingushetia to Hand Over Land to Chechnya, ‘Fortanga’ Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 11 – Yury Chaika, the head of the North Caucasus Federal District, who favors having Ingushetia yield to Chechnya’s demands that it hand over parkland to Grozy, has involved Vladimir Putin personally in this effort since at least the fall of 2023, according to a new report by Fortanga, the independent Ingushetia news outlet.
    That report is available at fortanga.org/2024/12/chajka-predlozhil-putinu-soglaercensovat-peredachu-chechne-chasti-erzi-posle-obrashheniya-kadyrova/ and comes on the heels of reports that Ingush officials have been lobbying against Chaika and his support of Ramzan Kadyrov (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/chechnya-pressuring-ingushetia-to-yield.html).
    That Chaika has been behind Kadyrov isn’t news, but what appears to be is that the presidential plenipotentiary has been forced to try to get Putin involved in order to get Ingushetia to agree to transfer park land that was part of the 2018 deal that gave ten percent of Ingushetia’s territory to Chechnya.
    If Putin doesn’t go along with Chaika and Kadyrov, the Kremlin leader would face real problems with both figures; but if he does, now that his role is becoming more widely known, any outburst of Ingush anger about this deal will be directed less at the republic leadership as was the case after 2018 and more at Moscow, exactly the opposite of what Putin wants.
    Indeed, while the Fortanga report may seem a small thing, it could easily mark the turning point in the Ingush national movement away from attacks on Moscow’s local representatives who can always be sacrificed by the center and toward Moscow itself, a development that the Kremlin will find it much more difficult to counter.  

State of Winter Crops in Russia This Year Worse than at Any Time in the Past, Soil Experts Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 11 – Only about a third of Russia’s winter crops are in good condition while another third is in poor or ungerminated condition, the result of droughts this past year and a development that will hit Russian food production hard in the coming months, according to the ProZerno portal.
    The situation with winter crops “has NEVER been this bad” in Russia before, the experts say; and with global warming, it will only get worse (prozerno.ru/index.php/novosti/1339-otritsatelnyj-rekord-sostoyaniya-ozimykh-posevov-v-rossii-na-konets-oseni-2024-goda and nemoskva.net/2024/12/11/v-rossii-rekordno-nizkoe-kachestvo-ozimyh-posevov-pered-zimoj/).
    Irrigation projects will do little to slow let alone reverse this trend, and the only option will be to take more and more land out of food production and plant new forests that will at least prevent massive erosion and still more environmental and food production losses, ProZerno’s Aleksey Yaroshenko says.
    In the short term, this development means that Russia will produce less food in its winter plantings, leading to food shortages and higher prices, pushing up inflation still further and possibly forcing the Russian government to seek to purchase substitutes on the international market.  

Roma Children Not Provided with Adequate Schooling in Russia and So Leave Before Middle Grades, Extending Isolation of Their Nation, Memorial Expert Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 10 = In many places around the Russian Federation, the children of Roma families are put in inadequate schools where they do not mix with children of other nationalities but are instructed in Russian, a language they seldom know well enough to succeed in their studies, Steafniya Kulayeva says. She describes this approach as a form of apartheid.
    As a result, most fail and drop out before entering the middle grades, a pattern that means few of them acquire the skills to enter the normal workforce and thus keep the Roma isolated for another generation, the Memorial human rights expert who has been studying that community for 30 years says (cherta.media/interview/roma-v-rossii/).
    And such Roma when they grow up sometimes fall into a life of crime to make ends meet, a pattern that helps to explain why there is so much hostility toward that nation among Russians and one that the Kremlin does little or nothing to counter. Instead, it feeds such views by its talk of the isolation of the Roma, an isolation it has itself promoted.
    Kulayeva does not draw the conclusion that many others will: that Moscow’s policies under Putin regarding the schooling of other non-Russian nations may have similar if not quite as radical consequences and thus produce the kind of isolation and hostility between them and the ethnic Russians the Kremlin wants to prevent.

Weapons Flooding into ‘Bandit Formations’ in North Caucasus, Bortnikov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 10 – In reporting on his organization’s success in countering the influx of arms into the hands of North Caucasus militant groups, FSB director Aleksandr Bortnikov unwittingly highlights why there are so many guns in private hands there and why groups are coalescing into what he calls “bandit formations.”
    The FSB chief’s words (stav.aif.ru/save/glava-fsb-mezhdunarodnye-terroristy-oslozhnyayut-situaciyu-na-severnom-kavkaze and chernovik.net/news/obstanovka-na-severnom-kavkaze-oslozhnyaetsya-zayavlenie-direktora-fsb-bortnikova), of course, allow him to attack Ukraine and the West and suggest why his organization remains so important.
    But the statistics he gives of FSB confiscations of more than 100,000 guns and more than 5500 explosive devices and “neutralization” of more than 38 bandit groups with some 1700 members casts doubt on the optimism about improving conditions in the North Caucasus that  Moscow has long insisted upon.
    Bortnikov doesn’t give any figures for the number of guns and explosives not confiscated or the number of bandit groups and bandits not neutralized, but it strains credulity to think that the FSB has gotten them all or even a majority of them – and that suggests the situation in the region is not only “becoming more complicated” as he says but more unsettled as well.

Chinese and Central Asians Combining to ‘Displace’ Ethnic Russians in Far Eastern City

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 10 – Some Russians fear the arrival of migrant workers from Central Asia; others the arrival of Chinese; but in the Far Eastern city of Ussuriysk, the second largest urban center in Primorsky Kray, these two groups are growing together at a rate that threatens the position of the Slavic majority, Sergey Slon says.
    The Versiya journalist says that officials have downplayed this joint action by focusing on one or the other groups and noting how the migrants have allowed the city to continue to grow despite the exodus of Russians. But, he continues, “positive statistics do not always testify to changes for the better” (versia.ru/v-ussurijske-kitajcy-i-uzbeki-vytesnyayut-korennyx-zhitelej).
    Ussuriysk has some 180,000 residents now, but they are not the same people who were there even a decade ago. In 2020, there were 6400 Uzbeks, 7800 Koreans and 1600 Chinese; but by 2023, 17,000 additional Chinese and 5,000 additional Uzbeks had arrived. That allowed the city’s population to grow but at the price of de-Russianization.
    Most discussions of the change in ethnic mix in the Russian Federation focus on the entire country or on major regions as wholes such as Siberia and the Far East; but ordinary people undoubtedly experience it more at the city or even district level, making rare articles like Slon’s an important sign of the times about ethnic change there.
    But his article is also important for another reason: It highlights something Moscow has been loath to admit. It has only been the arrival of immigrants from China or Central Asia that have kept the population decline in Russia east of the Urals as limited as the central authorities choose to present it. Without the influx of migrants, it would be far worse.  

Sanctions Hitting Russian Airlines Harder with Each Passing Month Re-Russia Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 10 – Initially, Western sanctions did not hit Russia’s airlines as hard as many in Moscow feared and many in the West hoped; but now with each passing month, they are affecting that sector ever more deeply with carriers forced to cannibalize some planes to keep others in the air and suffering ever more accidents, the Re-Russia portal says.
    While the Russian carriers were able to carry almost as many passengers in 2024 as they did the year before, analysts expect that they will no longer be able to do so in 2025 and 2026, prompting ever more demands for policy changes that would lead to an end to sanctions in this sector and others (re-russia.net/analytics/0219/).
    This pattern, one that first featured shock but little impact and then reflected growing problems, is true in many sectors of the Russian economy; but Moscow has been able to do end runs around sanctions in most cases or come up with quick fixes. But it hasn’t been able to do that in the case of civil aviation – and so the impact of sanctions is now most visible there.
    In fact, the Russian carriers are becoming a major choke point in the Russian economy and have prompted Moscow to seek to get both planes and spare parts from Kazakhstan to try to minimize the impact of sanctions. If Kazakhstan is not forthcoming, however, Russia will face real problems in this sector over the next few years.  

For First Time Since Pandemic, Russian Deaths have Increased in 2024, in Part Because of Combat Losses in Ukraine, Official Moscow Data Show

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 10 – The Russian government’s statistical arm, Rosstat, reports that for the first time since the pandemic year of 2021, deaths in the Russian Federation have increased in 2024, mostly because of the aging of the population and the impact of high levels of alcohol consumption but in part because of combat losses in Ukraine.
    In the metropolises of Moscow and St. Petersburg, combat losses formed only a small part of the increase, but in at least 13 of the country’s 80-plus federal subjects, they made the difference between an increase and a decrease (rosstat.gov.ru/storage/mediabank/osn-10-2024.pdf and verstka.media/v-rossii-rastet-smertnost-news).
    In short, had Russia not been engaged in a war in Ukraine, deaths would have fallen in these regions, with both their populations and the life expectancy of residents increasing. But because deaths were reported on the basis of where the men signed up rather than where they lived, often very different places given differing bonuses, more precise findings aren’t possible.
    Nonetheless, these data sets are impressive not only because they suggest that Rosstat is now releasing more reliable information than it had recently but also because they indicate that Putin’s effort to keep the war from hitting the two capitals and sparking protests in those most politically sensitive places is working.
    But the Kremlin leader’s success may be coming at a price. As residents of the regions and republics beyond the ring road learn from official government statistics as well as their own experiences that deaths are rising in their areas, such knowledge could reignite or exacerbate anti-Kremlin attitudes and actions.  

Chechnya Pressuring Ingushetia to Yield Land Magas had Agreed to Give Grozny in 2018

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 10 – Six years ago, the former leadership of Ingushetia signed an agreement with Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov to give approximately ten percent of Ingushetia’s territory to Kadyrov’s republic. That deal sparked massive protests in Ingushetia that Magas worked hard to suppress.
    Ingushetia was punctilious in living up to the arrangement with one exception; and that exception now threatens to trigger a new round of protests in the republic. Magas has insisted on holding on to a park that contains numerous rare animal and plant rarities and cultural monuments that Grozny says is Chechnya's.
    Grozny has been pressing its case for at least two years apparently with the support of at least some in Moscow; but Magas has been resisting, arguing that federal laws on parks make it impossible for the Ingush authorities to do what the Chechen ones are insisting (fortanga.org/2024/12/vlasti-ingushetii-mogut-peredat-chechne-chast-zapovednika-erzi-istochniki/).
    Most of this back and forth has been going on behind the scenes, with only occasional leaks, followed in each case by denials from the other side. But if the conflict continues, it could create a new situation, one in which the Ingush people and the Ingush government would be united against a Chechen challenge.
    That could lead Kadyrov to try to use force to get in fact what he thought he had been given earlier; and any such effort could trigger a serious military conflict in the North Caucasus, one that could easily spread from between the two Vainakh peoples to a more general one involving Dagestan where there is a significant and restive Chechen population.

Russia’s Nationalities Agency Calls for New Law to Tighten Government Control over National-Cultural Organizations

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 10 – Russia’s Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs has proposed a new law that would establish tighter government control over national cultural organizations to ensure that such groups will work closely with the government to promote the development of a common non-ethnic Russian nation.
    At present, the agency says, there are between 3,000 to 18,000 of such groups, a lack of precision that highlights the fact that these groups have largely developed independently of the state  (nazaccent.ru/content/43252-v-fadn-predlagayut-izmenit-status-nacionalno-kulturnyh-organizacij/ and vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2024/12/10/1080358-v-zakone-ob-nko-mozhet-poyavitsya-kategoriya-natsionalno-kulturnih-organizatsiii).
    If the proposed law is adopted, Moscow will exercise tighter control over the activities of these groups, fund some of them to promote desired ends, and prevent the citizens of foreign countries from playing a major role in them. The measure is likely to pass, thus reducing the opportunities for ethnic communities to advance their interests independently of the state.

Russians East of the Urals No More Afraid of China than Those to the West, Levada Center Head Says Polls Show

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – Surveys show no significant difference between those who live east of the Urals and those who live to the west of that traditional dividing line between the European and the Asiatic portion of the country  in the share of Russians who fear China, according to Levada Center head Denis Volkov.  
    That is just one of the intriguing conclusions he offers in a new survey of polling data about changing Russian attitudes toward China over the last several decades (gorby.media/articles/2024/12/06/i-ne-drug-i-ne-vrag-a-kak reposted at levada.ru/2024/12/09/i-ne-drug-i-ne-vrag-a-kak/).
    Among the others, the following are especially noteworthy:

•    Russians who oppose Putin’s turn to the east are far more likely to fear a Chinese threat to the territorial integrity of Russian than are those who support the Kremlin leader’s policies.

•    Russians fear that unless their national economy turns around, there is a risk that Russia will soon become very much the junior partner in its alliance with China.

•    Few Russians are troubled by the appearance of Chinatowns in Russian cities like the Khuamin district in Moscow.

•    Unlike 30 years ago, Russians now view China as an appropriate model for emulation.

•    Russians’ greatest fear is that China will turn back toward the West, leaving Russia without its support in its conflict with the West.

Syrian Events Seen Having Greater Impact on North Caucasus than Even War in Ukraine Has

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – Putin’s war in Ukraine has had a profound impact on the North Caucasus because Moscow has drawn so many men from there to use as cannon fodder d. But the overthrow of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is likely to have an even greater impact on the region than the Ukrainian war, experts from the region say.
    The reasons for this, these experts, many speaking on condition of anonymity, are not only that many North Caucasians fought against Assad but also that there are numerous and significant North Caucasian diasporas in that country who remain in close touch with their homelands (kavkazr.com/a/blizkaya-istoriya-kak-na-severnom-kavkaze-reagiruyut-na-sverzhenie-rezhima-asada-v-sirii/33234398.html).
    Ruslan Kutayev, a Chechen political scientist, argues that “the overthrow of Assad is very important for the North Caucasus, both for the Chechens and for the republic itself. The news from Syria is not simply about some events of a distant Arab state. In that country, there are many young people from the North Caucasus” who fought the Assad regime.
    Consequently, he continues, “as strange as it may seem, the events in Ukraine are not  as close for young people [in Chechnya] as are the events in Syria” because “young people conceive the latter as something very close” because some of their number fought there, because Moscow has failed to successfully defend its client, and  because of the diasporas there.
    The North Caucasian diasporas in Syria are especially important because they link Syria to the North Caucasian peoples and involve not just the Circassians, who are the most numerous, but many other groups from that region as well. (For a useful survey of these groups and their activities, see kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/406502.)

Ingush Interior Ministry Angers Local People by Refusing to Apologize for Calling Local Youngsters ‘Mankurts’ and Punishing Their Parents

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – Last week, pupils from a Magas school slid down a monument honoring Soviet soldiers who fought in World War II. The republic’s interior ministry, which is more controlled by Moscow than many other parts of the Ingush government, was outraged and denounced the children as “mankurts” and administratively punished their parents.
    Ingush residents were furious at this characterization of the children, given that calling someone a mankurt, a term taken from Chingiz Aitmatov’s stories which refers to a slave who has lost his memory and dignity, is one of the most offensive things one can call someone in non-Russian parts of the Russian Federation.
    They demanded that the interior ministry apologize, but the ministry refused, no doubt pleasing Russian nationalists and Moscow but further exacerbating relations between the Ingush and Russian officials (fortanga.org/2024/12/podrostki-mankurty-mvd-ingushetii-oskorbilo-shkolnikov-igravshih-na-memoriale-voinskoj-slavy-v-magase/ and fortanga.org/2024/12/v-mvd-ingushetii-otkazalis-izvinyatsya-za-frazu-podrostki-mankurty-v-adres-shkolnikov/).
    It seems clear from the Fortanga reports that the Ingush were not so much defending the children as expressing their outage at officials for their decision to denounce the children and punish their parents, actions that most reasonable people in the Ingush capital saw as excessive and unnecessary but that are increasingly common in Putin’s Russia.  

Moscow’s Decision Not to Put Pictures of Religious Sites on Bankntes Infuriates Moscow Patriarchate

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – The Russian Central Bank’s announcement that it will no longer put pictures of churches or the religious shrines of other faiths on banknotes because Russia is a multi-national and poly-confessional country has infuriated the Moscow Patriarchate which says that this decision will have a negative impact on relations among the country’s faiths.
    Sergey Belov, the deputy head of the Central Bank, announced that institution’s decision in the course of an interview in Izvestiya, clearly in the hopes of stilling a controversy that has been roiling Russia over the last year (iz.ru/1803971/anna-kaledina/bank-rossii-ne-vidit-osnovanii-dla-nacala-diskussii-ob-otmene-nalicnyh).
    At that time, the Bank issued and then immediately withdrew a 1000-ruble note showing  a mosque with a crescent but a former Orthodox church without a cross in Kazan, a display that outraged many Russians (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/russian-central-bank-pulls-new-banknote.html).
    Rather than simply adding the cross, which is what the Orthodox wanted, the Central Bank decided it would change the way decisions were made about what would be shown on Russian currency. From now on, it said, there would be a nationwide poll allowing Russians to vote on such decisions.
    But the bank has limited the range of their choices to non-religious facilities and personalities, likely in the hope that such a limitation will make Russian money more modern and less controversial among the faithful of various denominations. That hope, however, has proved illusory.
    Following Belov’s announcement, Vladimir Legoyda, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Sinodal department for church-society relations, lashed out at the decision on his telegram channel and warned that what the bank had done will in fact make relations between the faiths of Russia worse (rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=119243).
    According to the churchman, the Central Bank’s decision “opens the door ote to a very dangerous logic” because “it is strange to believe that there is a connection between the achievement of interreligious peace and the exclusion of religious symbols from public life.” In fact, one does exist, he argues. But it is “the reverse” of what the Bank says.
    In reality, Legoyda argues, “the more symbols of traditional religions are removed from the public space, the more likely conflicts will become. Indeed, the intensity of discussions about the new banknote has already shown this. “Why should anyone pretend they don’t exist and then decide to exclude them from public symbolism?”

‘Only Non-Russian Republics have Strength to Overthrow Russian Government,’ Bashkir Activist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 10 – Eight years ago, I wrote an article for the then-new Region.Expert Tallinn portal entitled “Regionalism is the Nationalism of the Next Russian Revolution” (region.expert/regionalism-next-nationalism/; for the English-language original of that essay, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/01/regionalism-isnt-separatism-as.html).
    Now, Vadim Shtepa, the editor of Region.Expert, points out that the Putin regime has so suppressed the regions of the Russian Federation that at least for the time being there is no political life worthy of the name going on there (svoboda.org/a/zamorozhennaya-politika-vadim-shtepa-ob-otsutstvii-sobytiy/33221703.html reposted at region.expert/no-events/).
    And Bashkir activist Aigul Lyon, who has lived for a long time in the US, argues that “today, only national republics have the strength to overthrow the Russian government” (lb.ua/world/2024/12/07/648825_bashkirska_aktivistka_aygul_lion.html, translated into English at abn.org.ua/en/liberation-movements/bashkir-activist-aigul-lyon-today-only-national-republics-have-the-strength-to-overthrow-the-russian-government/).
    No one who follows events in the Russian Federation can deny that Putin has had more success in suppressing regionalist challenges than he has in eliminating nationalism among the non-Russian minorities or that at least for the present only the latter appear to be the prime movers for secessionist challenges to Moscow.
    Nor can anyone fail to recognize that those in the West have devoted more attention to the non-Russians as the source of such challenges at least in part because of the analogies such analysts and policy makers continue to make with the events of 1991 when the USSR fell apart on the basis of union republics.
    But the arguments of Shtepa and Lyon should prompt those now talking about the disintegration of the Russian Federation to consider whether that is more possible if only the non-Russian republics are viewed as the challengers, given their small size and dispersed locations or if helping the regions is an important means to that end.
    Some in fact have argued that regional activism is a prerequisite for the disintegration of the Russian Federation (e.g., windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/in-war-for-consciousness-of-russias.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/decolonization-far-more-likely-to.html).
    If they are correct, then Shtepa’s conclusion about the suppression of political life in the predominantly ethnic Russian regions suggests that the demise of the Russian Federation is unlikely as close as many advocates say or as the Kremlin invokes as a scarecrow to justify its actions.    

As War in Ukraine Continues, Moscow Increasingly Talking about Spread of 'Banditry' in Russia Itself

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 10 – In the last few weeks, ever more Russian officials and media outlets have begun to speak not about individual terrorist actions inside the Russian Federation but about the more serious emergence of armed bands committed to fighting the authorities, language that recalls the one used by the Stalin regime against its opponents.
    For examples of this, see kp.ru/daily/27671/5022572/, rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/675813329a7947a8947e7e86, forbes.ru/society/526841-nak-soobsil-o-predotvrasenii-v-2024-godu-v-rossii-190-teraktov and oficery.ru/2024/12/10/nak-kievskij-rezhim-aktivno-ispolzuet-arsenal-nato-dlya-teraktov-v-rossii/.
    According to one observer, such discussions suggest that “the state is now officially recognizeing that an armed struggle is going on in Russia against the ruling regime,” the result of the fact that “the powers that be have not left their opponents with any other means save for armed force” (vkrizis.info/bezopasnost/renessans-bandpovstanchestva/).
    That overstates the situation, but it is certainly noteworthy that what Russian officials classified as hooliganism and more recently as terrorism is now being called banditry, a change that some who engage in such actions and those who support them are likely to see as a sign that the authorities are frightened and that the authorities will see as the occasion for more repression.
    After all, both the one side and the other have precedents in Russian history to look back on, most prominently the banditry that was a regular feature of Soviet life in the 1920s and early 1930s and in the western borderlands after the end of World War II. And thus the appearance of the word “banditry” in Russian outlets is yet another sign of the deteriorating situation there.   

Syria’s Asad Sixth Member of Post-Soviet Moscow’s Club of Overthrown Presidents

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – Vladimir Putin’s grant of political asylum to Syria’s Bashar is the sixth time post-Soviet Moscow has taken that step for one of its allies overthrown by a popular revolution, a sign of both gratitude for their support and hope that these individuals will somehow be able to help Moscow in the future.
    The other five, the Vyorstka news portal reports, have been Afghanistan’s Babrak Karmal, East Germany’s Eric Honnecker, Azerbaijan’s Ayaz Mutalibov, Kyrgyzstan’s Askar Akayev, and Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovich (verstka.media/karmal-honecker-mutallibov-akaev-yanukovych-asad).
    While other political allies of Russia may see such grants as the ultimate expression of Moscow’s willingness to protect them, opponents of these rulers are likely to see such steps differently, as an indication that Moscow is rapidly losing its ability to take steps to keep such people in power and will instead allow them to be a club of overthrown presidents in Moscow.

Moscow Struggles to Come Up with List of ‘Historical Peoples’ of Russia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 8 – The Russian government does not have an agreed-upon list of “the historical peoples of the country,” those nations whose members either now or in the past had such a status and therefore whose members currently abroad have the right to return as compatriots, Nezavisimaya gazeta says (ng.ru/politics/2024-12-08/1_9151_migrants.html).
    A major reason such a list does not exist is that the Kremlin doesn’t want to see an influx of people from some nations such as the Circassians because that would change the ethnic balance in various parts of Russia and could generate social and political instability (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/moscows-compatriots-program-allowing.html).
    But without such a list, Moscow must continue to rely on Russian language knowledge as the primary basis for deciding who can quality as a compatriot and who cannot, a reliance Putin favors but that has the effect of blocking the return of favored groups and allowing the return of some the regime would prefer not to have come back.
    Thus, the current struggle to come up with such a list, although unlikely to yield one anytime soon because of the political sensitivities involved, will remain an important indicator of where Russian official opinion now is regarding who’s in and who’s out as far as the formation of Putin’s favored “Russian world” is concerned.   

Beijing Rapidly Expanding Its Influence across Russian Far East -- with Putin’s Help, Nemets Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 8 – Beijing has been rapidly expanding its influence in the economy and government offices of the Russian Far East, often with Vladimir Putin’s help because the defeats he has suffered elsewhere mean that he has no choice but to give in to what the Chinese want, according to Aleksandr Nemets.
    The US-based Russian analyst says that this trend began more than a decade ago but is accelerating because of Putin’s problems in Ukraine, Syria and with the Russian economy (m.kasparov.org/material.php?id=674D9776C7941&section_id=444F8A447242B&subject_id=230 and kasparov.ru/material.php?id=675449E4EA866).
    Not only are there more than three million ethnic Chinese in the Russian Far East, far more than the 40,000 registered residents the Russian authorities admit to, Nemets begins; but China now makes no secret of its aspirations for control of the region and has already achieved great success in dominating the economy and even regional governments.
    And this has happened with Putin’s help because he needs China given his weakened position and therefore is deferring to Beijing on issues large and small in the Far East, including but not limited to accepting border changes in China’s favor, expanding the ability of Chinese firms to rent land, and extending extraterritorial rights to Chinese operating in that region.
    Officials in Russian regions, whatever they may feel personally, take their lead from the Kremlin, and as a result, China is finding it easier and easier to rent more land for longer and longer terms and to act as a neo-colonial power, confident that no one locally or in Moscow will show any resistance.
    Nemets sees Moscow’s willingness to extend virtual extraterritorial status to the Chinese working and living in the region as the most serious development because it gives both the Chinese and the local Russians the sense that the Chinese are already the more important of the two, despite everything Putin says about Russians and Ukrainians elsewhere.  

Russian Parents Pulling Their Children Out of Public Schools to Escape Brainwashing and Other Problems

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 7 – Tens of thousands of Russian parents are pulling their children out of public schools because of overcrowding, the dumbing down of the curriculum and the brainwashing about the war and the Putin regime children are now subject to, aga according to a study of the situation in St. Petersburg by the Bumaga news agency.
    While the number of pupils in expensive elite private schools remains relatively small, the covid pandemic led to an explosive growth in the number of “economy class” informal schools that parents could send their children to instead of the state schools or home schooling (paperpaper.ru/bez-propagandy-i-s-uvazheniem-k-chelovek/).
    Now, the Bumaga study estimates that there are far more youngsters in these schools, which cost about 30,000 rubles (300 US dollars) a month, than the official figures for the northern capital of just over 50,000 given that the government does not include a large number of schools very much in operation.
    Parents in smaller cities and villages have fewer opportunities to send their children to such institutions, but the fact that those in the megalopolises do suggests that parents now view such schools as a way to protect their children from what the Putin educational reformers are doing.

War in Ukraine No Time to Talk about Fixing Elevators Even in High-Rise Buildings, Officials Tell Residents of Nine-Story Apartment Building without Them

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 8 – Vladimir Putin has worked hard to convince Russians that his war in Ukraine is being carried out by professionals and that it doesn’t affect them. But increasingly, that conflict is coming home to roost, albeit often in ways that likely seem marginal to outsiders but have a profound impact on the population.
    An example of this is to be found in the case of a nine-story apartment building in Tula where neither of the elevators works and people have had to use the stairs since 2005 when the elevators stopped functioning. Officials have told residents who’ve asked to have them fixed that wartime isn’t the time to talk about that (thenewtab.io/lifta-net-no-vy-derzhites/).
    Worse, these same officials have suggested that it may be another decade before either of the elevators will be fixed. Such comments may not lead residents to go into the streets to protest the Putin regime, but they will fuel anger at the state he heads and make it less likely that they will enthusiastically support it, especially if they have to use the stairs every day.

Western Sanctions Mean Northern Sea Route Carried Only Half the Cargo This Year Putin had Called For, Rosatom Chief Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 7 – The Northern Sea Route carried only 38 to 40 million tons of cargo this year and not the 80 million Vladimir Putin had called for, largely the result of the impact of Western sanctions on the ability of Russia to build enough icebreakers and ice-capable ships to handle larger amounts, according to Aleksey Likhachyov, head of Rosatom.
    He and other Rosatom officials say that Russia needs at least 13 icebreakers to handle the ice, not the ten it currently has operating to keep the NSR operational, and as many as 90 ice-capable ships, far from than it has or can build soon because of the sanctions regime (nakanune.ru/articles/122915/).
    Russian experts were also dismissive that global warming will soon leave the Arctic ice-free especially in the eastern portions of the NSR and said that Russia must devote more effort to building icebreakers and ice-capable ships if it is to meet Putin’s targets. Given sanctions, Russian yards must develop whole new sectors of construction if they are to do that.

Just like a Century Ago, Moscow’s Intelligence Services Working Hard to Penetrate Wide Swath of Émigré Opposition Groups

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – The case of Nomma Zarubina, whom the FBI has accused of working with the FSB, has called attention to something many in Russia and the West prefer not to focus on. Just like a century ago, Moscow’s intelligence services are working hard to penetrate émigré opposition groups.
    Because Lenin went from being the leader of a small émigré clique to the ruler of Soviet Russia in a matter of months, Soviet and now Russian leaders have always been more obsessed with émigré activists than those activists in most cases deserve, seeking to penetrate them to know what is going on and use them for Moscow’s purposes.
    In some cases, these agents promote Moscow’s line and work to disorder the émigré groups. In others, they push for radical agendas so that the Kremlin can discredit the groups or use them as propagandistic scarecrows. But in every case, the involvement of Russian agents has the effect of disordering the groups by sowing suspicions that they are totally penetrated.
    Smaller ethnic groups are generally more able to resist than are larger regional or pan-Russian organizations because the former find it easier to identify agents than the latter, but they are not immune from such penetration and often find themselves victims in ways they don’t expect (idelreal.org/a/uchastnitsu-dekolonialnogo-meropriyatiya-nommu-zarubinu-obvinyayut-v-svyazyah-s-fsb-chto-ob-etom-dumayut-v-natsdvizheniyah-/33229067.html).
    The best defense is to be aware of the problem and work to counter it gain knowledge about Operation Trust, the early Soviet effort to penetrate and disorder the first Russian emigration  (On the Trust as precedent for Putin’s approach to nationalist and regionalist groups now, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/regionalists-in-russia-find-common.html.)

Putin has Given Assad Asylum But is Unlikely to Allow Syria’s Circassians to Return Home

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 9 – Moscow has given overthrown Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad political asylum, but it seems unlikely that the Russian government will allow more of Syria’s estimated 50,000 Circassians to return to their homeland in the North Caucasus, despite the opportunities Assad’s ouster has given them for leaving.
    Prior to 2011, Syria had an estimated 200,000 Circassians; but during the civil war there, roughly half of them fled abroad. But of those, only around 2,000 were able to return to their homelands in the North Caucasus from which their ancestors were deported by the Russian Empire in an act of genocide.
    Given the uncertainties and instability following the departure of Assad, many  more will want to leave; but they are likely to be blocked by Moscow’s increasingly hostile attitude toward the return of compatriots abroad like the Circassians who do not speak Russian (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/moscows-compatriots-program-allowing.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/moscow-tightening-screws-on-circassians.html).
    Nonetheless, many are likely to try and both Circassian organizaations and the governments of the three Circassian republics – Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabadino-Balkaria and Adygeya – may very well help them given labor shortages and a history of allowing more Circassians in thanMoscow likes (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/06/circassians-appear-to-be-returning-to.html).
    That could easily create a new conflict situation in the North Caucasus and help mobilize the seven million Circassians against Moscow which seems always ready to help the enemies and oppressors of that nation but not members of a group that the Russian government itself has been fighting for three centuries.
    Two years ago, Memorial released a report on the Circassians of Syria and their plight. For the report, see memohrc.org/ru/announcements/desyat-strashnyh-let-narusheniya-prav-cheloveka-i-gumanitarnogo-prava-vo-vremya-voyny. For a discussion of that study, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/04/allowing-circassians-to-return-from.html.