Russia Facing an Increasingly Serious Shortage of Policemen, Interior Ministry Officials Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 29 – Putin’s Russia may be a police state; but it is now facing what may be for some an unexpected problem: an ever-larger shortage of policemen. Three years ago, it had 90,000 unfilled slots; now, that number has almost doubled to 152,000, nearly one in five of all officers on the force.
    The reasons for this shortfall are not far to seek. Many men who might have become policemen have joined the army and are fighting in Putin’s war in Ukraine; and others are put off by the low pay police in Russia receive and are taking jobs elsewhere in the economy (rosbalt.ru/news/2024-11-29/peterburgu-ne-hvataet-lyudey-v-pogonah-5263030).
    Low pay is a particular source of problems because now “even migrants,” interior ministry officials say, are paid less than the police; and unless the government increases the salaries it pays its police, the regime may have no one to serve as its first line of defense against crime and the threat of mass protests.  

Russian Women have Used More than Two Million ‘Morning After’ Abortion Pills in 2024

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 28 – As the Russian government has imposed ever greater limitations on access to abortions, Russian women have turned to the use of “morning after” pills to deal with unwanted pregnancy. So far this year, the DSM Group which tracks phamaceuticals, says they have used some two million of these pills.
    That continues a trend, the researchers say. Between 2019 and 2023, Russian women bought a total of 11 million such pills, with the numbers rising during the covid pandemic and at the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine in February 2022 (newizv.ru/news/2024-11-28/god-semi-govorite-rossiyanki-udvoili-traty-na-ekstrennuyu-kontratseptsiyu-434675).
    The Russian authorities have restricted access to these pills by increasingly requiring prescriptions for their purchase, but they have not imposed in countrywide and many women are still able to purchase these pills without the approval of a doctor. According to DSM, they have spent almost eight billion rubles (80 million US dollars) over the last five years.
    The widespread use of such medications shows that many Russians are not willing to respond positively to the Kremlin’s call to boost the birthrate and even have found a means to prevent pregnancies without having to go to hospitals or other medical facilities to get abortions. And at the very least, this will further complicate the Kremlin’s desire to boost the birthrate.  

Nearly a Third of All Russians Now Over the Age of 55, the Highest Share Ever

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 28 – According to the Russian labor ministry, 30 percent of Russians are now over 55, the highest share in the history of the country and one that means that the demographic “burden” pensioners place on those of working age is increasing as well, with there now being 471 pensioners to every 1,000 workers, a figure up from 413 only eight years ago.
    This aging of the Russian population, however, is the product less of improved healthcare and living conditions for the older cohorts than of the decline in the number of births (moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/27/dolya-rossiyan-starshe-55-let-dostigla-maksimuma-vsovremennoi-istorii-rossii-a148825 and moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/28/vrossii-predlozhili-schitat-molodezhyu-lyudei-do60-let-a149006).
    In response to these new figures, Veronika Skvortsova, head of the Federal Medical-Biological Agency, has proposed changing the Russian law which currently defines young people as those under 35 to one that suggests Russians are young until 60, far older than the WHO says (ria.ru/20241128/molodost-1986224254.html).
    That may make for good propaganda, but it will do little to address the very real problems of an aging Russian population.    

Putin Regime has Taken Steps to Boost Birthrate but Very Little to Help Families after Children are Born, Russian Expert Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton,, Nov. 27 – A Russian demographer speaking anonymously says that the Putin regime has taken a variety of steps to boost the birthrate, including its latest moves to rate governors on the basis of how much they do, but at the same time, Moscow has done very little to help families after the children are born.
    As a result, the demographer says, Russians can see that having a child may bring them one-time payments but put additional financial burdens on them over the longer term – and so decide not to have children in the first place despite the bonuses the Putin regime is urging (verstka.media/kak-regiony-budut-povyshat-rozhdayemost-po-trebovaniyu-kremlya).
    That situation is compounded, he and others say, by the fact that many regions lack the money to provide birth bonuses – only seven have done so up to now – and Moscow’s promised assistance has yet to come through. As a result, many governors are reviving Soviet propaganda methods like the celebration of “hero mothers” to try to boost the birthrate and save their jobs.
    Those methods are unlikely to boost the birthrate or save the jobs of the governors involved. Only a massive commitment to improve the lives of families over long periods of time could do that, and Putin has neither the money nor the interest in doing that. Instead, he will continue to spend on his wars and face ever greater problems in finding enough soldiers.

In Cooperation with Kazakhstan, Russia to Open Kazakh-Language Schools in Astrakhan, Orenburg and Tomsk Oblasts

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 27 – At a time when Moscow is closing schools where instruction is in the non-Russian languages of the peoples of the Russian Federation, the governments of the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan have agreed to open Kazakh-language schools in three Russian oblasts – Astrakhan, Orenburg, and Tomsk – where there are sizeable Kazakh populations.
    In exchange, the two have agreed to the opening of new Russian-language schools in the southern regions of Kazakhstan, an area that is overwhelmingly Kazakh but at least in urban areas also overwhelmingly Russian speaking (eurasiatoday.ru/kazahskie-shkoly-v-rossii-novaya-initsiativa-ukreplyaet-kulturnye-svyazi/).
    The most significant impact of this plan is likely to be in Orenburg, the one-time capital of Kazakhstan, the land bridge between that country and the Turkic and Finno-Ugric republics and a place where the ethnic balance is shifting against the Russians (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/orenburg-corridor-arose-because-kazakhs.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/tatars-stress-turkic-and-muslim.html, jamestown.org/program/the-orenburg-corridor-and-the-future-of-the-middle-volga/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatars-and-bashkirs-must-recover.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/representatives-of-middle-volga-nations.html).
    But there is another possible consequence of this plan that cannot be ignored, although it is less likely in the short term; and that is this: Other countries bordering the Russian Federation which have significant diasporas inside the current borders of that country could seek a similar arrangement, moves that would help to promote the survival of non-Russian peoples there.

One Million Migrant Workers Left Russia in First Nine Months of 2024, Expert Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 27 – Approximately one million migrant workers left Russia during the first three quarters of 2024, the result of restrictions Russian officials have imposed on them, according to Andrey Kladov, an expert on migration who heads the Migrant Services Platform. Some sectors of the Russian economy are already suffering and more will if this continues.
    Kladov says that the departure of migrant workers, most to the Central Asian countries of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is already obvious to the naked eye, with employers now advertising many jobs that migrant workers had filled in the past. Employers have responded by boosting the pay and other benefits they offer.
    According to the specialist on migration, the average monthly wage offered to immigrants rose from 105,000 rubles (1050 US dollars) to 150,000 rubles (1500 US dollars) over this period, but that was not enough to hold immigrants who now must be offered housing and other  benefits in order to keep them from returning to their own countries. 

    Russian officials claim that the total number of migrant workers has not fallen because those departed have been replaced by those arriving, and Kladov in his remarks is not clear as to whether he is speaking about a net decline or simply the number of those who have left. His words about an emerging labor shortage, however, suggest, he is speaking about the former rather than the latter. 

Ruble’s Collapse Now Leading Russians to Remember 1990s and Thus Depriving Putin of His ‘Last Line of Defense,’ Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 27 – For Russians, “the main argument” in favor of Putin is that the Kremlin leader rescued them from the disasters of the 1990s, but the collapse of the ruble exchange rate in recent days has caused many of them to remember that period and thus is depriving him of his “last line of defense,” Abbas Gallyamov says.
    According to the former Putin speechwriter and now Putin critic, “this is already the third shock of this type.” The first is the war in Ukraine and the second is a crime wave sparked by returning veterans (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/6675 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/poslednij-rubezh-oborony).
    More significant is the fact that while the ruble declined earlier at the start of the war, this time around, the war itself has not eclipsed the fall in the value of the ruble as far as most Russians are concerned. That means that now as compared to early 2022, the Russian people are drawing comparisons with the 1990s and Putin is losing their trust as a result.

Unlike Other Post-Soviet States, Russia has Avoided a Wave of Renaming Because It is ‘More Stable,’ Yelovsky Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 27 – Renaming cities or even streets in Russia attracts a great deal of attention, but in fact it has been and will remain relatively rare there in contrast to other post-Soviet state because Russia is “more stable” than the others and changing names doesn’t normally happen unless large groups of people are mobilized, Dmitry Yelovsky says.
    The current plans to rename Rostov-na-Donu and Tutayev are attracting attention, the communications expert says, but they should be seen as efforts by local officials to boost the brands their cities want rather than anything broader, and efforts to rename Volgograd aren’t going anywhere fast (club-rf.ru/76/detail/7501).
Consequently, Yelovsky suggests, there are unlikely to be many such efforts in the future because unlike in the immediate post-Soviet period, the Russian Federation is relatively stable and neither the government nor the population is obsessed with renaming or is ready to pay the price of change.
    Despite his suggest, there are efforts in many places to eliminate Soviet names from streets, many of which are supported by the Russian Orthodox Church. Among the most prominent are some in Kirov which some want to use as a springboard to bring back that city’s tsarist-era name Vyatka (rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=119179).

Only a Revolution from Above Can Save Russia from Crashing into the Scylla of Revolution and the Charybdis of a Post-Revolutionary Dictatorship, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 27 – History strongly suggests that a revolution is possible in Russia but also that any such revolution would be followed by a post-revolutionary dictatorship as “a side effect,” Vladimir Pastukhov says, adding that he has “no confidence” Russia has “enough historical time left for a smooth exit from another dictatorship.”
    Consequently, to have any kind of positive future at all, the London-based Russian analyst says, the country “will have to pass between the Scylla of revolution and the Charybdis of a post-revolutionary dictatorship,” something that succeeds only in legends and myths (t.me/v_pastukhov/1310 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/rossiya-mezhdu-sczilloj-revolyuczii-i-haribdoj-diktatury).
    The only chance for Russia to make this passage successfully, Pastukhov continues, would arise in the even of “a revolution from above,” one that might take place if cooperation could be established “between that part of the Putin elite ripe for change and that part of the anti-Putin counter-elite that is ripe for compromise.”
    Such cooperation, “even for a short period, could smooth out the corners of the post-revolutionary dictatorship and make the descent from the current peak of post-communist neo-totalitarianism smoother,” although any such arrangement would still be marked by tragedies, although much smaller ones than any other arrangement.
    Such a scenario is possible but unlikely not least of which because it would represent “essentially a second attempt at Gorbachev’s perestroika, Pastukhov concludes. But “it would be the most desirable and promising in terms of the pace of the transformation of Russian society into something at least remotely resembling a law-based state.”

Russians Again Making Plans for the Longer Term, VTsIOM Poll Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – After Vladimir Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the percentage of Russians who said they were making long-term plans for the future dropped from 64 percent to 49 percent; but now, having absorbed that shock, the share doing so has risen again to 57 percent, according to a new VTsIOM poll.
    Over the past year, the polling agency which is closely affiliated with the Kremlin, said that those who say they are avoiding making longer term plans because of instability in the country had fallen from 21 percent to seven percent, although the share saying they live only day to day went up from 19 percent to 25 percent (actualcomment.ru/rossiyane-vozvrashchayutsya-k-dolgosrochnomu-planirovaniyu-2411251243.html).
The survey also found that 67 percent say they are now able to achieve their plans while  58 percent say that such outcomes depend “above all” on themselves and that 54 percent say they now expect their children to have better lives than they do. What the survey did not determine is whether Russians have reduced their expectations about themselves or about these prospects.  
Thinking longer term and believing that what happens in their own lives depends on the first instance what they do means that Russians have factored in the war in Ukraine in terms of its impact on them, something the Kremlin no doubt welcomes, and are even thinking about a Russia after Putin departs the scene, something the powers that be almost certainly don’t.

Moscow Planning to Eliminate Journalism Faculties in Russian Universities

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – Dmitry Afanasyev, the Russian deputy minister for science and higher education, has told the Duma that the Russian government plans to eliminate separate journalism faculties in Russian universities and instead train those who are planning to work in the media in philology faculties.
    He argued that “journalism is not a science and therefore doesn’t need a separate faculty” and that in any case, the lines between various professional categories are becoming less sharp than they were as the explanation for this decision of the Russian government (nakanune.ru/articles/122859/).
    But the plan faces opposition from journalists and those who teach journalism. Vitaly Tretyakov, dean of the television faculty at Moscow State University, says that any such unification of the disciplines would harm journalism which has developed its own theories and methods.
    Neither side in this debate which is only now beginning is saying the obvious: the Putin regime has long had problems with journalists, has suppressed most independent outlets and driven many journalists out of their profession and even out of the country, and is now taking steps to destroy its professional training centers in order to better control such people.

‘Stalin’s Mistake’ on the Carpathian Rusins Echoes to This Day, Khavich Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – When Soviet forces drove the Germans out of Transcarpathia, the Rusins, who had been under Czechoslovak rule, declared they did not want to become part of Ukraine but instead sought to become either a separate Soviet union republic or part of the RSFSR in much the same way that Kaliningrad subsequently became.
    But Stalin blocked this and insisted that the Rusins and their land be absorbed into the Ukrainian SSR. This was “Stalin’s mistake,” Oleg Khavich, a pro-Moscow specialist on the western portions of Ukraine, argues in a Regnum commentary (regnum.ru/article/3931507). On Khavich’s background, see my.ua/persons/oleg-khavich.
    Khavich’s article is noteworthy both because suggesting that Stalin made mistakes is now a rarity among pro-Moscow writers and because current Russian discussions about a future partition of Ukraine again involve the Rusins, just as they have in the past (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/04/moscow-again-focusing-on-rusins-of.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/03/russia-must-partition-ukraine-to-ensure.html).
    What is especially disturbing about this commentator’s observations is that he concludes his article by observing that Stalin’s “mistake” has become ever more costly to Russia because the Rusin issue has not yet been resolved, “at least up to now.”

Despite Its Claims, Putin Regime has Nothing in Common with Genuine Conservatism, Sapozhnikov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – For more than a decade, Vladimir Putin has regularly proclaimed that he is a supporter of conservatism, but his approach has nothing in common with genuine conservatism and has been accepted only because internationally conservatism has been defined not in its classical sense but as an anti-liberal ideology, Andrey Sapozhnikov says.
    The Novaya Gazeta commentator argues that Putin’s abuse of conservatism has happened because Russia after 1991 did not initially focus on what it was descended from but on how it wanted to change and then got a leader, Putin, who did not want any additional changes because they would threaten his power (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/11/25/ne-pravye-nepravye).
    When the Russian Federation emerged as a separate country in 1991, Sapozhnikov says, “the issue of its relationship with the past was not a priority concern of the authorities.” Instead, they focused on building something new but using both the methods and often the personalities of the old regime – and any talk about that pastiche could have produced real problems.
    Genuine conservatism, which favors a small state and great respect for the diversity of the population, thus had no basis for developing. The new Russian authorities did not want the state to be limited, and they had little or no respect for the diversity of the population with its varied traditions, the commentator says.
    In actual fact, Sapozhnikov continues, “the Kremlin in principle never considered the territory under its control as a space of habits and traditions worthy of being preserved, defended or subject to coordination.” Instead, it continued to view the population as something it had the right and power to modify at its will, hardly a conservative position.
    Putin’s rise to power did not change this. Instead, he first acted as a continuer of Yeltsin’s approach at home and to the West, but only after his return to power following the Medvedev interregnum, did he begin to talk about traditional values as the core of his ideas, an approach that “was not conservative but defensive.”
    Then, following his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin began developing his conservative image “for export,” something that was possible because conservatism in the West had changed beyond recognition, from support for a limited state and respect for popular values and traditions to anti-liberalism as such.
    Indeed, Sapozhnikov says, Putin invokes the term conservative in the same way many of its current adepts in the West do as a synonym for opposition to liberal ideas rather than as a political doctrine in its own right. That has brought him a certain success, but it has nothing in common with genuine conservatism, the commentator concludes.

Putin Regime Increasingly Using Stalinist Tactic of Taking as Hostages Family Members of Its Opponents, Pavlov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – In the first years of Putin’s rule, Russian security services occasionally made use of the Stalinist tactic of taking as hostages family members of their opponents; but in the last several, Ivan Pavlov says, this practice has become so widespread as to be almost routine.
    So far, the Russian lawyer says, the Putin regime has sought to intimidate this or that individual into silence or cooperation rather than to frighten the entire society as Stalin did with his jailing of relatives of those it judged to be “enemies of the people.” But there is a great danger that Putin’s moves could grow into that (theins.ru/opinions/ivan-pavlov/276418).
    Pavlov suggests Russia “still has a chance to avoid a repetition of the blackest pages of its history, at least if the current regime quite quickly comes to an end.” Anything short of that, including exposure of the crimes the Putin regime is committing, is unlikely to force the Chekist leader to change his ways.  
    To make his case that this practice has a long history in the Soviet Union and Russia and that it is expanding again under Putin, the Russian lawyer points to a number of cases involving the arrest of wives of prominent dissidents like Leonid Gozman and the arrest of those that the regime hopes to exchange with the West for its own agents.
    Some of the cases are well-known in the West including the arrest of the brother of Aleksey Navalny but many have taken place without the kind of attention that might dissuade at least some in the Russian power structures from using a technique most often associated with international terrorists than with governments.
    Unfortunately, as Pavlov documents, the Putin regime is now acting in this regard the same way as such terrorist groups do and is better classified as a terrorist organization than a state like any other.  

Keeping Russia in One Piece will Involve Bloody Wars; Allowing Its Peoples to Go Their Own Way Won’t, Pskov Republic Center Head Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 25 – A major reason opponents of the pursuit of independence by regional and national groups within the current borders of the Russian Federation will inevitably entail  bloody wars, while keeping all of them under Moscow’s rule will ensure peace. But that is exactly the opposite of what is the case, Artyom Tarasov says.
    In reality, the head of the new Pskov Regional Center says, Moscow has launched bloody wars against the Chechens and Georgians in the past and Ukrainians now and will continue to do so as part of its effort to maintain the Kremlin’s power (idelreal.org/a/aktivisty-zayavili-o-sozdanii-pskovskogo-respublikanskogo-tsentra-/33213246.html and facebook.com/groups/661124300699950/permalink/3714332012045815).
    Tarasov made that comment when he announced in Warsaw earlier this week the formation of the Pskov Regional Center which seeks independence for its people, the revival of their language which is close to Belarusian and the development of close ties with the West and which has already demonstrated the ability to reach peaceful agreements with regional groups to its north and south.  
    The announcement of the formation of the Center in Warsaw and Tarasov’s words about what is really the source of bloody conflicts won support from a variety of regional and ethnic movements whose leaders are now forced to live and work abroad, including the Ingermanlanders and Smolensk Regional Center.  
    That Pskov should want to escape from Muscovite rule should come as no surprise. It is one of the poorest federal subjects with the life expectancy of its population being only 50 – and the difference between that rate and life expectancies in neighboring Latvia and Estonia being one of the largest in the world (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/10/life-expectancy-in-many-russian-regions.html).    
    Because of these characteristics of the Pskov population and the insights of the leader of the Pskov Regional Center, it would thus be a mistake to dismiss this formation as just another child of what is often the hothouse of émigré groups. But of course, only the future will tell whether the Pskov movement will take off or Moscow will use bloody means to block it.

Kremlin Destroying Environment and Environmental Movement Russia’s Green Think Tank Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – On the pretext of supporting Russian business in response to Western sanctions, the Kremlin has largely eliminated government oversight designed to protect the environment and is working to crush the last remnants of the independent environmental activist community, according to Russia’s Green Think Tank organization.
    The result is that “Russia’s militarized economy is now ruining the environment and that “the situation will likely deteriorate further regardless of the war’s outcome” because the Putin regime shows no signs of being willing to restore the regulations it has scrapped or allow the environmental movement to recover (theins.ru/politika/276364).
    The consequences for Russia and Russians are increasingly horrific, the Green Think Tank says; but they are also serious for other countries and peoples because the consequences of Moscow’s approach are spreading into other countries because environmental contamination is no respecter of national borders.
    As a result, the group says, what Russia is doing to the environment must become a matter of concern to governments and peoples in other countries before it is too late and the consequences Russians are already suffering from spread to them as well.

Push for Family Values Opening the Way for Full-Blown Fascism in Russia, Kordochkin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – The Putin regime’s push for family values is not only about ensuring that Russia will have enough manpower to fight more wars or to legitimate the Kremlin by distracting people from its failures at home and abroad but most seriously about opening the way to “the hell” of full-blown fascism in Russia, Archpriest Andrey Kordrochkin says.
    The Spain-based Russian Orthodox priest who has been banned from conducting services by the Moscow Patriarchate for his opposition to Putin’s war in Ukraine says that the Putin regime has very different goals than the ones it trumpets in its current campaign for “traditional values” (theins.ru/opinions/andrei-kordochkin/276320).
    It isn’t just to ensure that Russians will have more children so that Putin will have more soldiers but rather so that Russians will have a new domestic enemy at a time when the war in Ukraine is headed toward its third anniversary and so that they will see Putin’s power as sacred and go along with his efforts to impose fascism on Russia.  
    Those latter goals, as Umberto Eco’s well-known list of the 14 markers of fascism show, are vastly more important and more dangerous than even the horrific and immoral attacks on homosexuality or childfree beliefs especially in a country where life expectancy remains low by international standards and broken families are the norm.
    If the Putin regime were really interested in promoting strong families, it would be acting very differently than it is, Kordorchkin says, and Russians would know far more about Putin’s family life. Indeed, he says, Putin likely ordered the death of opposition figure Aleksey Navalny precisely because he had a strong family and Putin couldn’t stand the comparison with himself.

Putin’s Push to Standardize Russian History Textbooks Speeds Up – and Experts See Trouble Ahead

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 22 – Having mandated a single permitted Russian history textbook for grades 10 and 11 this year, the Putin regime plans to do the same thing for grades five through nine next fall, a standardization that the Kremlin hopes will help it shape the next generation but a move that critics say won’t have the impact Moscow expects.
    There are a variety of reasons for that conclusion, educational specialists surveyed by Novyye Izvestiya say, among which the most prominent is the following: most students don’t read the textbooks but rather rely on the lectures of teachers who will continue to push their own ideas (newizv.ru/news/2024-11-22/kak-vo-vremena-sssr-v-shkolah-vvodyat-edinyy-uchebnik-istorii-pedagogi-protiv-434546).
    But over time, this standardization of textbooks will reduce the ideas teachers will draw on, leading to more uniformity, and make it more difficult for them and their students to keep up with the latest historical research. Indeed, these critics suggest, that may be the unspoken intention of the Kremlin which wants a single version of Russian history.
    However that may be, many expect parents, pupils and teachers to like the new system because it will help those who have to take school-leaving examinations pass them even if it makes it even more likely that Russia’s schools will increasingly teach for the test rather than anything else.

Joining Russian Army to Fight in Ukraine Allowing Some Russian Men to Evade Paying Court-Ordered Alimony

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – Yet another group of victims of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine has emerged inside the Russian Federation: ex-wives who now find that their former husbands are typically able to evade paying court-ordered alimony and related child support if they join the Russian military to fight in Ukraine.
    The precise number is unknown, but there are currently some two million Russians who have been awarded alimony payments. And when women who have not received them have gone to court, they have failed in most cases, perhaps especially in cases where the former husband is now in the military (sibreal.org/a/resheno-s-svoshnikov-ne-vzyskivat-kak-sbezhat-ot-alimentov-na-voynu/33205567.html).
    Lawyers for these women say that the military command is uncooperative in many cases and certainly does not adjust the alimony payments when the incomes of the men jump as a result of the bonuses that those who agree to fight for Putin in Ukraine receive not only initially but for the length of their service.
    This situation is creating serious hardships for the former wives and the children involved, and this human tragedy is likely to have demographic consequences as well. Many Russian women may decide that it is too big a risk to give birth if their husbands can leave them, volunteer for the army, and then evade paying alimony.  

Creeping Annexation? Moscow Expands Use Border Regions to Increase Its Influence in Neighboring Belarusian Ones

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – Vladimir Putin has taken another page from Stalin’s playbook and is using the western border regions of the Russian Federation to expand Moscow’s influence in neighboring Belarusian ones, weakening Minsk and raising questions about the Kremlin’s intentions not only with regard to annexing Belarus but using it to attack Ukraine.
    According to two new reports (rubaltic.ru/article/ekonomika-i-biznes/20241123-regiony-belarusi-i-rossii-uglublyayut-ekonomicheskoe-vzaimodeystvie/ and eurasia.expert/regiony-belarusi-i-rossii-ukreplyayut-gorizontalnye-svyazi/), Moscow has quietly expanded this effort over the last several months.
    Using border regions to promote larger policy goals has been a long-standing Russian and before that Soviet strategy (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/09/russian-governors-playing-increasing.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/12/cross-border-trade-means-for-russia-to.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/moscow-expanding-its-influence-in.html).
    But the situation with regard to such regional cooperation in the Russian-Belarusian case now inevitably raises questions about Moscow’s intentions -- especially in the wake of Putin’s war in Ukraine, one that the Kremlin invoked as a casus belli earlier transfers of what it claims as Russian territories, including Crimea and the Donbass, to Ukraine.
    That is all the more so because as one Moscow writer has pointed out, “the most significant land gift from the RSRSR under Stalin” to another republic did not involve transfer of control of territory from Russia to Ukraine but land from Russia to Belarus (russian7.ru/post/kakie-territorii-stalin-prisoedinil/).
    Between 1924 and 1926, the Soviet government transferred from the RSFSR to Belarus, almost all of Vitebsk, Mogilyev and Gomel oblasts, moves far larger than the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine and that increased the size of the Belarusian SSR by three times (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/07/stalin-frequently-modified-russias.html).

Afghan Islamists Attack Chinese Nationals in Tajikistan

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – For the first time, Afghan militants connected with the Islamic State have attacked Chinese citizens in Tajikistan following a declaration that such attacks are in response to Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang and represent the beginning of “an anti-Chinese jihad,” Andrey Serenko says.
    The attack took place on Nov. 18 near the Afghan-Tajik border where Chinese specialists are helping the Tajiks to develop a gold mine, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta journalist says. According to Tajik officials, one Chinese worker was killed and four wounded; according to unofficial reports, these numbers were far higher (ng.ru/kartblansh/2024-11-24/3_9141_kb.html).
    Serenko says that the Islamists came into Tajikistan from Afghanistan and then returned there, a sign that “to put it mildly, there are very serious shortcomings in the protection of the state border” between the two countries. He doesn’t mention that Russian forces play a key role in protecting that border and have clearly failed in this case.    
    This is not the first time that Afghan militants have crossed the border and attacked Chinese citizens, but it is the first time that a group identifying itself with the Islamic State and promising to launch a jihad against China has done so, something that raises the stakes of what has just happened.
    China already has a significant security presence in Tajikistan, both in direct support of Dushanbe and in the form of PMCs. Up to now, it has shared responsibility for security there with Russia; but this latest attack could easily tip that balance and lead to an expanded Chinese presence along the Afghan border.
    For background on those possibilities, which could prove explosive, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/08/chinese-private-military-companies-now.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/china-increasing-its-military-presence.html and jamestown.org/program/russia-china-dividing-responsibilities-in-tajikistan-is-conflict-possible/.

Most Russians Resemble Putin in Their Basic Dispositions and Thus Support His War, Eidman Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – When Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022, few Russians were on his side; but now the majority is, not so much because of propaganda or fear, but because most Russians share Putin’s basic dispositions and thus are in their own situations little Putins, Igor Eidman says.
    The Russian commentator who now lives in exile in Berlin argues that most Russians share Putin’s “imperial ambitions, his cruelty, national arrogance, xenophobia and homophobia, patriarchal sexism, and masculine authoritarianism” and thus have come to back the war “as a natural continuation of all this” (t.me/igoreidman/1858 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/takie-kak-putin).
    When he was still living in Russia, Eidman continues, he “constantly encountered people like Putin, cruel authoritarians full of imperial arrogance, Muscovite, national or other. There have always been almost 100 percent of such people in the security forces,” but they exist far more widely than that.
    “I have met many Putins in completely different environments” – as physical education teachers, factory workers or even university instructors, “Putins as bandits and Putins as government officials.” And thus he concludes that “the average Russian man is most often a Putin as well.”
    Eidman concludes with a confession that strengthens his argument: “I myself was partly a Putin, when morally I found myself on the side of the empire during the First Chechen war, and even now I understand that I have not yet completely squeezed the Putin out of myself.”

Many Russians Terrified about What Will Happen when Veterans of War in Ukraine Return Home, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 24 – While some Russians are undoubtedly eagerly awaiting their return of men from the war in Ukraine, others are terrified about what these veterans will do, given that some of these veterans are former criminals and others hardened by the war may create havoc or even kill people when they come back, Alla Leonova says.
    In a 3500-word article, the Novosibirsk journalist for the Horizontal Russia news portal describes the crimes, including murder, returning Russian veterans have already inflicted on that city’s residents and the fears others there have about the future (semnasem.org/articles/2024/11/22/ves-dom-boitsya-chto-on-vernetsya-s-vojny).
    These stories give a face to the statistics the Vyorstka news agency recently released showing that returning Russian veterans have been involved in the murder of almost 500 people at home since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine (verstka.media/veterany-svo-ubili-i-pokalechili-v-rossii-pochti-500-chelovek).
    Such fears do not mean that these Russians want the war to continue, but they suggest that as the number of veterans returning home does increase, hostility to them as a group is likely to increase, putting the Putin regime’s effort to cast the veterans as the future elite of the country on a collision course with the attitudes of the Russian people.

OVD-Info Launches 'Repression Dashboard' to Fight Growing Western Apathy and Fatigue over Negative Stories on Russia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 21 – OVD-Info which for 13 years has gathered information on repression in Russia has now launched what it calls the Criminal Repression Dashboard to make such data more widely available for analysis and to fight what its activists call growing Western apathy about negative information coming out of Putin’s Russia.
    The new data source is available at repression.info/criminal/ and these reasons for its launch are discussed by its organizers who have long run a 24-hour hotline for Russians targeted by the Putin regime and who have been arrested or otherwise threatened at meduza.io/en/feature/2024/11/21/political-persecution-in-russia-by-the-numbers.
    One can only welcome the appearance of this new tool but only regret both the work that OCD-Info has had to do and the fact that it has had to set up such a tool because it must deal with an international community increasingly indifferent to the increasingly vicious behavior of the Russian authorities.  

84 Percent of Russian Men who Kill Their Wives were Drunk at the Time, Court Data Show

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 22 – Even though the Russian government decriminalized family violence in 2017, Russian courts are still called upon to adjudicate the most serious cases, including murder, although in most cases, the courts hand down sentences at the lower end of the range established by law, according to a study by the Vyorstka news portal.  
    But perhaps most striking was its finding that in the first half of 2024, 84 percent of Russian men convicted of killing their wives were drunk at the time of the murders, according to Russian court data (verstka.media/kalendar-domashnego-nasiliya and sibreal.org/a/bolshinstvo-ubiystv-zhenschin-v-rossii-sovershayut-pyanye-muzhchiny/33210631.html).
    In many countries, alcohol use lies behind murders and especially those within families; but the Russian figure is especially high – and the role of alcohol in family violence there is likely even higher if one considers all the acts of violence by Russian men against Russian women.

Nearly Half of All Ethnic Kazakhs who have Returned to Kazakhstan Since 1991 Come from China

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 22 – Since Kazakhstan gained independence in 1991, 1,144,900 ethnic Kazakhs who had been living abroad have returned to that country. Nearly half of them (45.9 percent) come from China, another 39.2 percent from Uzbekistan, and the remainder from other former Central Asian republics and the Russian Federation.  
    More than half are of working age, and only 9.4 percent are pensioners, according to the Kazakhstan Ministry of Labor and Social Defense of the Population. A fifth have higher educations, but three percent have no education at all (zakon.kz/obshestvo/6457606-kazakhstan-prinyal-11-mln-etnicheskikh-kazakhov-s-1991-goda.html).    
    Most came in the 1990s when they were known as oralmany, and the influx has slowed to about 10,000 annually in recent years; but discussions about them remain lively because the history of their departure from Kazakh lands and their role in both those countries and the Kazakhstan to which they have returned is enormous.
    Many of those who had been living abroad are descendants of those who fled during the troubled early years of Soviet power and especially during the sedentarization and collectivization campaigns at the end of the 1920s and the early 1930s that most Kazakhs now count as an act of Muscovite genocide against their nation.
    Kazakhstan has an extensive program of support for such people, who are referred to as kandasy, including providing them with the funds to purchase property and adapt to conditions there (zakon.kz/pravo/6455073-prisvoenie-statusa-bezhentsa-v-kazakhstane-obnovleny-pravila.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-in-name-kazakhstans-oralman.html).

Circassians Should Create a Worldwide Parliament to Improve Cooperation among Themselves and with Other Groups, Circassian Activist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 23 -- Marianne Sheru, a representative of the US-based Cherkess Center, called on Circassians around the world to create a World Circassian Parliament in order to improve cooperation among themselves, raise their profile internationally, and improve cooperation with other nations and governments.  
    The activist proposed that at a meeting of the International Council of Independent Circassia (ICIC) in Istnabul (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid033ZSi2EBvroCUDayLvxRh11NuyraeD4ZqN9C5zetNBr4Wkk3FA7epuZvsKjXMNV2Zl&id=100081589465202).
    She suggested that such a parliament should come into existence following the creation first of a coordination council of Circassian organizations and activists and then the convention of a new world congress of Circassians so that members of that nation will not only remember their past but take the necessary steps to build their future.
    Three aspects of Sheru’s proposals are worth noting. First, what she suggests is an obvious way to help overcome the attacks on the Circassians that Moscow has launched so as to keep them divided and thus less influential both in the homeland and diaspora and among other nations.
    Second, it represents a new effort by Circassians to reach out to others in the course of their effort to seek independence for their nation, a reaching out that indicates the Circassians more than many other groups views cooperation with others as a guarantee of success in that effort.
    And third – and this is especially important – it brings the often-divided Circassians into line with Russian deputies and a series of non-Russian émigré organizations in forming umbrella groups like a congress in the first instance and governments in exile in the second that may represent the next phase of the drive for independence by such groups.  

Non-Russians Must Overcome ‘Internalized Colonialism,’ Shabashevich Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 22 – Non-Russians within the current borders of the Russian Federation face many problems, but one of the most serious is “internalized colonialism” when members of these groups “adopt the views of representatives of the majority, even if they actually contain prejudices directed against you and people like you,” Dor Shabashevich says.
    The Russian-Israeli sociolinguist gives as an example of this phenomenon when “a Kazakh from an aul near Astraskhan moved to the city, began to interact with ‘fashionable guys’ and at some point declares that he would never date a Kazakh woman” because “they are all stupid collective farmers” (semnasem.org/articles/2024/11/15/zachem-uchit-sohranyat-i-prodvigat-yazyki-korennyh-narodov-otvechaet-sociolingvist).
    And non-Russians say such things even if they speak their own national language or view it as part of their identity, Shabashevich says. Such “internalized colonialism” is a threat to the survival of their languages and thus their nations and should be fought by all those who want these things to survive. But to do so, everyone must first recognize that this problem exists.  

Liberalism Now Defeated in Russia and the US ‘Unfortunately’ will Return and Possibly in the Form of a ‘Liberal Monarchy,’ Surkov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 20 – Vladislav Surkov, sometimes referred to as “Putin’s brain” and a commentator with enormous influence in the Kremlin, says that liberalism has now suffered a crushing defeat in the US just as it did in Russia two decades ago but that “unfortunately” it may return from unexpected directions and in the unexpected form of “a liberal monarchy.”
    In a new essay entitled “The Sexual Counter-Revolution and Liberalism,” Surkov argues that liberalism lost its way and instead of dealing with “real problems” switched “instead to far-fetched and noisy conversations about sex” and insisted that everyone accept that there are multiple genders and not just two (actualcomment.ru/seksualnaya-kontrrevolyutsiya-i-liberalizm-2411201547.html).
    This “latest attempt at a sexual revolution failed miserably,” he says; and “the counter-revolution, thank God, is triumphant. The attack of perverts and paragenders has been repelled.” But the reason for the defeat of this idea is more important because it carries with it a message for the future.
    According to Surkov, “liberalism degenerated into libertinism for one simple reason: freedom itself has ceased to be valuable.” It used to be a privilege but “under conditions of ass democracy … to be free means to be like everyone else. That’s boring, and there is a temptation to live without freedom given the possibility that this will be more fun.”
    “And by the way,” the commentator says, “it will be.”
    “Previous generations paid for American freedom with blood and sweat,” he continues. “The current one got it for free as a matter of course. As a result, freedom itself is something ordinary and no one cares about it. Having achieved its original goals, it has ceased to be one” itself and those who promote it have lost their face.
    What happened first in Russia in 2003 and now in the US, Surkov argues, is this. Because liberals advanced meaningless goals, they were defeated. But that isn’t the end of history that some may imagine because “sooner or later,” liberalism will “unfortunately” return, although it may not look like anything today’s liberals would recognize or claim.
    The liberalism of the future may come from China or from the Arab world, he suggests. And such liberal regimes “do not necessarily have to be democratic. Locke for one actually suggested that democracy was harmful to freedom; and a monarchy is useful instead.” Indeed, if there is such a thing as “illiberal democracy, then there can be a “liberal non-democracy.”
    Consequently, there is good reason to fear the return of liberalism in the West and in Russia; and those who oppose such liberalism need to recognize that possibility and do what they can to fight against it.
    Surkov’s words are in many respects playful and over the top, but they are worthy of note precisely because they likely reflect the way in which the current master of the Kremlin views the situation and how he is likely to present to others of the currently victorious anti-liberal coalitions elsewhere.  

Moscow Calls 172 Non-Russian Groups ‘Terrorists’ for Seeking Secession and Supporting Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 22 – The Russian Supreme Court has labelled 172 non-Russian organizations within the Russian Federation “terrorist organizations” because of what the judges  say are their secessionist efforts, cooperation in a single body, and support for Ukraine in its defense of what Moscow calls Russia’s “special military operation” there.
    In its decision, the court held that all these groups are in fact “subdivisions” of the Free Nations of PostRussia Forum,  a group Moscow classified as an “undesirable” organization already in March 2023 (epp.genproc.gov.ru/web/gprf/mass-media/news?item=99255941 and epp.genproc.gov.ru/web/gprf/mass-media/news?item=86357057).
    Many who have now been labelled “terrorist organizations” because of their participation in PostRussia forum events deny both that they are subordinate to that organization or that they are terrorists, obviously fearful the court’s decision will open the way to a new wave of repression (themoscowtimes.com/2024/11/22/russia-labels-172-indigenous-groups-as-terrorist-organizations-a87106).
The Putin regime’s lumping together of groups that are not part of any single structure and then using its charge to move against them is now a common feature of Russian jurisprudence as this makes it easier for the authorities to use the courts to attack all such groups (e.g,, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/06/putin-likely-to-use-his-latest-fake.html).
    To lend credence the court’s finding, the Moscow media have featured stories about how Ukraine has always sought to promote non-Russian nationalism and secession and is even now taking new and expanded steps to do so (kp.ru/daily/27664.5/5014970/, ria.ru/20241123/ukraina-1985312135.html and politnavigator.net/razvalim-rossiyu-iznutri-ne-razbombljonnaya-rada-sozdala-komissiyu-po-podderzhke-separatizma-v-regionakh-rf.html).
    For what Ukraine has actually done in this regard since the start of Putin’s expanded invasion of that country, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/ukraine-set-to-adopt-comprehensive.html.

War of ‘Missionaries’ and ‘Migrantophobes’ in Russian Orthodox Church Seen Triggering Demands for Autocephaly in Central Asia

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 20 – The Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is being torn apart in battles between the so-called “missionaries” who see the conversion of immigrants as the salvation of the church and the so-called “migrantophobes” who want to block the influx of migrant workers into the Russian Federation.
    In the past, the patriarchate was able to control this fight by shifting hierarchs who went to far in either direction to other sees, a policy that Kirill, the current head of the church, has continued. But now the fight is becoming so public that his efforts at neutrality are failing (ng.ru/ng_religii/2024-11-19/9_584_disagreements.html).
    Not only are the Orthodox “migrantophobes” increasingly powerful and increasingly coming into conflict with regional officials, but their words and actions are having the effect of stimulating demands for greater autonomy or even autocephaly among Orthodox churches in Central Asia.
    While the number of Orthodox Christians in most of those countries is small – Kazakhstan is an exception – any move toward autocephaly even there would represent another defeat for Kirill and the ROC MP and possibly cost the patriarch his position, given his church’s losses elsewhere.
    On autocephaly demands in Central Asia, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/orthodox-in-kazakhstan-seeking.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/seeking-autocephaly-church-dissident-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/07/orthodox-leaders-in-kazakhstan-now-say.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/number-of-mosques-in-turkmenistan-has.html.  
 

Moscow Uses Business Contacts, Old Allies to Counter Image of Russian Isolation at Baku Climate Talks

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 20 – Moscow used a side event at COP29 to which it attracted both officials from within the Russian Federation and business contacts and old allies from abroad to counter the widespread image that when it comes to climate change as with so many other issues Russia is isolated.
    Among those Moscow attracted to this meeting, Atle Staalesen of The Barents Observer said were former Chechen prime minister Ruslan Edelgeriev, the daughters of Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov and Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev, several Western businessman who’ve become wealthy in trade with Russia, and Erik Solheim a former Norwegian official (thebarentsobserver.com/news/climate-talks-the-russian-way/420948).
    Organized by Ecumene, a Russian organization that focuses on climate change from Moscow’s perspective, the meeting did not so much address climate change as the need, in the view of its participants, to include Russia in all discussions about that subject. It was thus, as the Barents journalist said, an example of “Climate Talks. The Russian War.”

Moscow Eyes New Rail Route South to Iran But Daunting Problems Remain

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 20 – Difficulties and delays in the construction of the Rashta-Astara rail line have prompted Moscow to shift attention to the possibility of building a rail line between the Azerbaijani city of Imishli and the Iranian city of Parsabad as part of Putin’s much-ballyhooed north-south transit route.
    The new link, much closer to the Caspian and less mountainous, might allow Moscow and Tehran to complete this project far sooner, although the problems it has faced in the past with the Rashta-Astara route are likely to make any progress even there slow. (On this shift, see casp-geo.ru/alternativnyj-marshrut-proekt-novoj-zheleznoj-dorogi-iz-azerbajdzhana-v-iran/; on problems in rail construction in Iran, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/despite-hype-baku-and-tehran-still-far.html.)
    The Kremlin hopes that it will be able to open a rail line connecting Russian railways with those in Iran and extending all the way south to the gulf by 2030, but even Russian experts remain skeptical about that prospect, something the shift in route will do little to change (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/12/moscows-effort-to-establish-corridor-to.html).  

Magas Creates Council of Elders as Alternative to Council of Teips

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 20 – Even before the Council of Teips came out in support of protests against the 2018 deal in which Ingushetia handed over 10 percent of the territory of that republic to Chechnya, the republic government has sought ways to limit its influence or even destroy it via criminal charges.
    But now Magas has adopted a new tactic: it has created its own pocket Council of Elders, selected by itself, as an alternative to the council which includes the leaders of the heads of the family groups that have long dominated Ingush society (fortanga.org/2024/11/v-ingushetii-sozdan-sovet-starejshin-pri-glave-respubliki-alternativa-sovetu-tejpov/).
    Although a primordial group which many analysts do not count as an NGO, the Ingush Council of Teips again and again has played the role of a civil society actor; and this latest move is an effort by Magas to suppress it by replacing it with a group that had a similar name but won’t play that role.
    What is especially intriguing about this latest act of repression in Ingushetia is that in making the announcement of this new group, Magas says that the new council will get involved in evaluating inter-ethnic relations in other republics and thus may serve as a model for what the authorities elsewhere might do.  
    For background on the teips and reasons why Magas may have created “an alternative” on paper, it is unlikely to be able to suppress this group and the role of extended families in Ingush society, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/03/islam-and-customary-law-again-more.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/08/ingush-authorities-view-all-ngos-as.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/07/after-crackdown-on-ngos-primordial.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/05/teips-playing-key-role-in-getting.html.

Russian Orthodox Church Revives Mari-Language Services in Mari El in Effort to Hold Its Parishioners

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 20 – The Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in recent decades has been among the leading Moscow institutions pushing for the expansion of the Russian language at the expense of non-Russian ones, even though before 1917, its translations of the Bible helped create literary languages for the latter.
    The ROC MP in the republics in almost every case conducts services in Russian or Old Church Slavonic, but now, in places where attachment to non-Russian languages remains strong and where some people are leaving the church because of its language policies, the Moscow church is making an exception, choosing the defense of the faith over the defense of Russian.
    That is now happening in the Finno-Ugric republic of Mari El where the church, fearful of losing members to traditional faiths or protestant groups that conduct their services in Mari, is offering ROC MP services in Mari as well in a limited number of services each week in two locations (foma.ru/v-dvuh-hramah-joshkar-oly-mozhno-posetit-bogosluzhenija-na-marijskom-jazyke.html and idel-ural.org/archives/chtoby-ne-teryat-maryjczev-yz-pryhozhan-rpcz-vozobnovyla-sluzhby-na-maryjskom-yazyke/).
    How long this will last and how widespread it might be come are very much open questions, but the fact that the ROC MP feels compelled to do this shows that attachment to non-Russian languages is stronger than many think and puts the church on a collision course with the Kremlin in this sphere if in no others.  

Payments to Men who Sign Up to Fight in Ukraine and to Those who have Lost Someone There Stabilizing Russian Society, ‘Re-Russia’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 20 – The bonuses the Russian authorities are offering to those who agree to fight in Ukraine and payments to families who have lost a member in that war are stabilizing Russian society at home by injecting large amounts of cash into the economy at a time when its absence could have led to unrest, the Re-Russia portal says.
    Most attention has focused on the bonuses the government has offered to raise troops and the way in which such payments have allowed the regime to maintain force levels without having to resort to what would be an extremely unpopular move toward general mobilization, the portal continues (re-russia.net/analytics/0212/).
    But at least equally important is the way that such payments along with money paid to families who have lost someone in the war help stabilize Russian society by injecting cash into communities that might otherwise become more angry and willing to protest, Re-Russia concludes on the basis of an extensive review of polling data and other analyses.  

Tuvin Capital Now has More Signs in English than in Tuvin and Many of Tuvin Ones Contain Errors, New Study Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 20 – Increasingly, the public space of the major cities in the non-Russian regions of the Russian Federation is dominated not by the language of the titular nationality but by Russian and even English, according to a new study by Buryat and Tuvin scholars about signage in the Tuvin capital of Kyzyl.
    They found that 965 signs there were in Russian, far more than the 89 in Tuvin, which were in fact outnumbered by signs in English (133) (nit.tuva.asia/nit/article/view/1298/1610 discussed at sibreal.org/a/istorik-sergey-chernyshov-o-neprostoy-istorii-yazykov-narodov-sibiri-/33203335.html).
    The scholars also found that there were orthographic mistakes in 62.5 percent of the Tuvain signs and, what is still worse, this was the case on “almost 100 percent” of the signs on Tuvin government buildings, a pattern that both marks the decay of Tuvin in the republic and promotes its further decline.
    That Tuvin and Buryat scholars are focusing on this is of course a welcome development, but it isn’t clear what officials or activists can do in those places to reverse this pattern or even prevent it from accelerating in the future, however many promises officials in these republics make.

Kremlin’s Use of Veterans with Criminal Pasts and PTSD as Teachers in Regular Russian Schools Backfiring

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 18 – Having failed to get even the United Russia Party to agree to push veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine into political office, the Kremlin is now inserting veterans, including many with criminal pasts or suffering from PTSD, as teachers in the early grades of Russian schools, hoping to keep these veterans loyal and to inculcate its version of patriotism.
    The Russian government has even set up a special training center in Moscow to provide such veterans with some training in pedagogy – see vk.com/vershinarus?w=wall-224943658_2%2Fall – but Moscow’s primary interest, Horizontal Russia says is propagandistic (semnasem.org/articles/2024/11/18/cennye-kadry).
    The independent news portal says that the Putin regime believes correctly that the earlier it can inculcate its version of patriotism, the more success it will have in ensuring that the new generation will remain on its side and carry out all the orders that the center gives them. But the system is backfiring, Horizontal Russia continues.
    Many of the veterans inserted in the schools do not behave well and they frighten the children rather than attract them to Putin’s cause. And their parents are outraged that the education of their children is being sacrificed to propaganda and that this propaganda is being carried out by people with few educational credentials and numerous personal problems.
    Educational specialists, the portal says, are recommending that parents who are troubled by this use of veterans of the war in Ukraine as teachers should either shift their children to other schools where such “teachers” have not yet appeared or if necessary homeschool their children so they won’t be put at risk by such teachers.  

After 1,000 Days of Putin’s Expanded Invasion, Ukraine Now Very Much a Real State, Rodnyansky Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 18 – Having resisted the Russian invasion, Ukraine has “won with blood its fight to exist with a free life and its own future,” Aleksandr Rodnyansky says, adding that as a result and exactly opposite to what Putin intended Ukraine over the last 1,000 days “has become a real state, one far from perfect and with thousands of problems but real.”
    As a result, it can be said that Putin has failed and Ukrainians have succeeded, the Ukrainian film maker says, For Putin, Ukrainian statehood has “always been fake,” something he and his band have never really believed in (t.me/alexander_rodnyansky/1900 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/1000-dnej-polnomasshtabnoj-fazy-vojny).
    The Kremlin leader called Ukraine “an anti-Russia project” and expected that the Russian army would be welcomed as “liberators from the oppression of Bandera” and that Russian victory would come quickly with the flight of the Ukrainian government and “the transformation of Ukraine into a version of Belarus.”
    But things didn’t work out as Putin and his ilk expected, Rodnyansky continues. The Ukrainians have resisted, and they will continue to do so, hopefully with the continued assistance of the civilized world. But even if that assistance declines, the Ukrainians will continue to fight to defend their nation and their state.  

After 1000 Days of War, Russia Managed to Expand Its Occupation of Ukraine from Seven to 18 Percent

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 18 – Statistics never tell the whole story about any human activity. That is particularly true about wars given the human suffering they involve. But the numbers in themselves are important, and they provide a framework for discussing the conflict and its total impact.
    That makes the collection of data that the Important Stories portal has assembled from various authoritative sources about Putin’s war in Ukraine worthy of note (istories.media/stories/2024/11/18/1000-dnei-voini-v-tsifrakh/). Among the most important of these are the following:
•    Before Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia occupied seven percent of Ukrainian territory. In 1,000 days of fighting since then, it has expanded its occupation and that now totals 18 percent of Ukraine, a vast swath of that country but far less than Putin promised at the outset.
•    Since February 2022, approximately one million people have been killed or wounded in Ukraine and Russia combined. Most are military personnel, but at least 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and 26,000 wounded since February 2022 – 12 dead and 26 wounded every day of the war.
•    These losses are putting the demographic future of Ukraine in peril. Because of these losses and flight, Ukraine has lost seven million in areas Kyiv controls in addition to the nearly five million who live in areas under Russian control.
•    Approximately a third of all Ukrainians who remain – 10 million people – now suffer from mental disorders because of the war.
•    Russian forces are intentionally destroying Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, having destroyed or damaged the homes of 3.4 million people and reduce the production of electric power by 70 percent.
•    The war is costing Russia and Russians as well. Almost half of all Russian government revenues now goes to military needs, almost 150,000 Russians have died, and the additional number of wounded means that the irrecoverable losses of the Russian army could be more than 300,000.
•    Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine is now the most frequent cause of death among young Russian men, with every second death among that category having died in the war itself.
•    Increased military spending has sparked inflation and wage increases have not kept up.
•    Russians in Kursk Oblast are suffering following the advance of the Ukrainian army into that portion of the Russian Federation. Nearly 400 have died and more than 130,000 have fled.
•    But one of the most serious costs to Russia of the war lies ahead: Returning veterans are committing more crimes and as the number of former soldiers increases, these crimes will increased as well.
•    And many of those Russians who fled the war to avoid mobilization or because of opposition to the war as such won’t return, inflicting yet another cost on Russia and its people. Those who oppose the war but have remained in Russia have suffered as well from repression of various kinds.

In Rural Russia, ‘Closing Schools is Easy but Re-Opening Them is Hard,’ Residents Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 17 – Closing village schools which often have only a few or even only one pukepil is relatively easy: Under Putin era regulations, any school with fewer than 30 pupils can be closed by fiat; and more than half of the rural schools in existence in 2000 have now been closed.
    Moscow argues that such closures and the consolidation that follows are not only economically justified but are the only way to provide young Russians with more educational opportunities, including Internet connectivity and the opportunity for those in consolidated schools to study a far greater variety of subjects.
    But both the employees of these schools, who often outnumber the students, and the residents of the villages more generally actively oppose such closures because they know that “closing schools is easy but re-opening them is hard” and that if the school shuts down, so too will the village.
    Consequently, they resist. Takiye Dela journalist Ksenisya Shorokhova reports on a school in the Siberian village of Ponomarevka where there is only one pupil left but where seven people are employed to give her an education and where residents hope keeping the school open will mean that their village can recover (takiedela.ru/2024/11/nikuda-my-bez-tebya/).
    They fear that if the school is closed, their village and its way of life will be under a death sentence; and so they are resisting. Local officials are supporting them where they can and apparently taking what steps are open to them to keep the school open so that their village and all its residents will have a future.
    For them, that possibility is far more important than any talk of economic rationality.  

Putin’s Order to Promote Patriotism Repeats Stalin’s ‘Almost Word for Word,’ Kerzhentsev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 16 – Vladimir Putin’s May 2024 directive to use history lessons in the schools to boost patriotism and a willingness to sacrifice one’s life for Russia repeats Stalin’s May 1934 order to do the same thing in the Soviet Union “almost word for word,” according to Boris Kerzhentsev.
    The historian and commentator traces the evolution of Kremlin policy toward history and its use as a propaganda tool in the first decades of Soviet power and then says that the changes Putin has introduced are virtually the same (moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/16/istoriya-v-zakone-kak-gosudarstvo-ispolzuet-proshloe-dlya-podgotovki-pushechnogo-myasa-a147872).
“Like Stalin, Putin’s ‘ideological front’ is rapidly turning into a real military front, on which people fooled by propaganda are dying senselessly. To be sure, foreign agents are not yet mentioned in the text of Putin’s ‘Foundations,’ but this is most likely a matter of time,” Kerzhentsev says.
Indeed, he continues, “some propagandists are already close to, as before, demanding from a high rostrum that ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ be shot ‘like mad dogs,’” as Stalin’s notorious prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky did. And thus one must conclude that despite everything, “for almost a century, nothing has changed in Russia.”
“Using its unlimited resources of violence, control and coercion, the government constantly steals the country's truth about the past, composes its own alternative version of history, and declares it the only true one. And it does so not for the love of writing, but purely for the sake of ensuring the self-preservation of the regime,” Kerzhentsev concludes.

Russian Army which has Looted in Ukraine Now Looting in Russia’s Kursk Oblast as Well, Officials There Compelled to Acknowledge

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – In the early stages of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, there were widespread reports that the Russian invasion force was engaged in the looting of Ukrainian households. Now, the same thing is taking place in portions of Kursk Oblast where Ukrainian troops have never been.
    After ignoring the problem for most of the last three months or even denying it for three months, Russian officials have been compelled to acknowledge it because it is so widespread (zona.media/article/2024/11/15/kursk, zona.media/news/2024/11/14/_sluchai_maroderstva and t.me/kurpepel/834).
    Not only does this highlight the decline in military discipline in a force that is increasingly made up of former convicts who have been pardoned by agreeing to go to fight in Ukraine, but it raises the specter that when such troops do return home, they are far more likely to engage in criminal activities, unconstrained by the fact that they are again among Russians.

Since Start of Expanded War in Ukraine, Russians More Inclined to See Themselves as ‘Masters of Their Own Fate,’ Moscow Institute of Sociology Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 17 – Since Vladimir Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, Russians are more inclined than before to view themselves as “masters of their own fate,” either because they feel that they personally are more in control of what happens to them or because they feel their country is in control of the situation.
    That is one of the findings of new research reported by the Moscow Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences which found that the share of those who felt that way jumped from 48 percent to 62 percent while those holding the opposite opinion fell from 52 percent to 38 percent (ng.ru/economics/2024-11-14/4_9135_sociologists.html).
    The sociologists rooted this shift in the rising standard of living among Russians and declines in the number of poor as people worked more and earned more, but the impact of the war on such attitudes is beyond question, although the balance between the two has tended to shift back as the war proceeds.
    At present, the share of Russians who feel themselves to be masters of their own fate fell to 57 percent in 2024 while the fraction which felt otherwise has risen to 43 percent, an indication that for many economic gains are becoming harder to come by and that the self-confidence they gained from the war is ebbing.

Russian Victims of Crime Can’t Get Compensation Now that Putin has Given Criminals Immunity if They Go to Fight in Ukraine, Experts Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Now that Putin has given criminals immunity if they agree to go to fight in Ukraine, victims of their crimes have been deprived of the opportunity to get compensation for the losses they have suffered, according to two leaders of the Foundation for the Support of Victims of Crime.
    Matvey Goncharov, executive director of that organization, and Aleksandr Koshkin, an expert there, say that Putin’s action not only deprives people of a sense of justice and allows criminals to return to civilian life and commit more crimes but also strips innocent victims of the right to seek recovery for damages (sovsekretno.ru/articles/bezopasnost/polnyy-immunitet/).
    Even though the right to compensation is guaranteed to victims of crime in the Russian Constitution, they say, the powers that be have not seldom supported that right in fact. Now, with the new “get out of jail free” card that Putin has offered the criminals, that constitutional right has largely disappeared.

Jokes about Ethnic Minorities Open the Way to Their Oppression, Tatar Commentator Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – When people and especially political leaders tell jokes about ethnic or other minorities, Ruslan Aysin says, that is part and parcel of a xenophobic campaign and opens the way to the oppression of these groups -- however much those who tell such jokes try to insist that their critics lack a sense of humor.  
    The Kazan Tatar political commentator is reacting  to the case of Russian actress Valeriya Lomakshina who told a joke about the Karelian language but then was compelled to apologize (idelreal.org/a/iz-etogo-vyrastaet-nadmennoe-otnoshenie-k-nerusskim-narodam-ruslan-aysin-pro-shutku-o-nepopulyarnosti-karelskogo-yazyka-na-rossiyskom-tv/33201895.html).
    Lomakshina’s suggestion during a stand up routine in Moscow that the Karelian national theater was the only place on earth where Karelia is spoken and that Karels who attend programs there make sure they can listen to translations because they can’t understand that language outraged many in Karelia and elsewhere.
    Not only were her words untrue, Aysin continues; but they were hurtful both to Karelians and to other national minorities of the Russian Federation who are now under enormous pressure from Moscow to stop using their native languages and shift instead to Russian and who could see that such a joke was intended to add to this pressure.
    The real tragedy, he says, is that many Russians think what Lomakshina said and now feel empowered not only to laugh alongside her but to engage in repressive behavior toward linguistic and other minorities, a problem unfortunately not limited to Russia but certainly widespread there.  

Willingness of Teachers to Wear Foil Hats to Block NATO Rays Shows State of Russian Society under Putin, Sidorov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – For the last week, the Russian media hves been full of stories about a group of teachers who fell for a Belarusian prankster’s joke about how foil hats could bloc NATO rays from destroying their brains and not only made and worse such hats but taught their students how to do so.
    When the prankster presented himself as a United Russia deputy and called on teachers to fashion aluminum foil hats to block NATO, the results exceeded all his expectations, Vadim Sidorov, a Prague-based expert on regional relations in the Russian Federation (idelreal.org/a/shapochki-iz-folgi-kak-vybor-rossiyskogo-obschestva/33202868.html).
    While government media reacted with restraint and many Russians with laughter, those who reflect on what this incident says about Russian society under Putin can only be appalled. Teachers, who in most places are intended to raise a new generation capable of critical thinking, have shown themselves ready to engage in the most “insane and servile” activities.
    Those who do things like putting on foil hats are certainly going to be willing to falsify elections or attack groups of their fellow citizens if they believe that the powers that be want that, Sidorov says; and consequently, teachers who put on foil hats are only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem  in Russia: servility and insanity.

Russia Now has Two Million Homeless and Their Ranks are Growing because of War in Ukraine, ‘Shelter’ Group Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Although the Russian government does not release any statistics on homelessness, the Shelter (Nochlezhka) organization, the oldest group in Russia devoted to helping the homeless, says there are now approximately two million homeless in Russia and that their numbers are growing because of the war in Ukraine.
    According to Nochlezhka, the three primary causes of homelessness are low incomes, family problems and the search for work in new places (tochno.st/materials/iz-za-krizisov-v-rossii-vyroslo-cislo-bezdomnyx-no-oficialnoi-statistiki-o-nix-net-my-proanalizirovali-dannye-noclezki-o-tom-kto-i-pocemu-cashhe-vsego-popadaet-na-ulicu).
    Their numbers rose during the pandemic and have risen even more since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine which has left many Russians without sufficient money to pay rent, increased problems within some families, and led others to move from one place to another in hopes of finding better jobs.
    Approximately four out of five are men, some are second generation homeless, and one in ten grew up in an orphanage. But despite public views, fewer homeless are alcoholics or drug abusers than are members of the Russian population as a whole, according to the data collected by Nochlezhka.
    Most of Russia’s homeless survive on the basis of temporary work or help from families rather than from social services provided by the government. Indeed, the group says, the only government service such people, who now form one in every 70 Russians, can rely is the government’s ambulance service.  

For the Sixth Time, Completion of Repairs to Russia’s Most Powerful Submarine Delayed, ‘Izvestiya’ Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Vladimir Putin and following him the Russian and Western media regularly announce the launch of some new ship in the Russian navy and point to it as evidence of Moscow’s growing naval power. But none of these sources focus on another aspect of the situation: the lengthy periods such vessels are not in service because of refitting.
    The case of the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft carrier which now may end its life as a casino or artificial reef, is of course well known. But the problem is far larger than that: many ships in Russia’s navy are sidelined for refitting and repair for extensive periods, often far larger than originally announced.
    That makes an Izvestiya account of the sixth delay in the return to service from refitting and repair of the Admiral Nakhimov, Russia’s largest and most powerful nuclear submarine, both indicative and instructive (iz.ru/1790913/iuliia-gavrilova-maksim-manaev/dobavili-srok-vykhod-admirala-nakhimova-v-more-otlozhen).
    Again and again, Russian officials have announced that the submarine was about to return to service and even announced precise dates, the Moscow newspaper says. But every time, these dates passed and officials had to announce new dates, as well as new cost overruns on this project.  
    To be sure, naval vessels require repair and refitting and are offline significant portions of time in the best of circumstances. But any evaluation of Russian naval power must take into consideration that some of its most ballyhooed ships are not really in service for very long periods and the authorities have no confidence as to when they will in fact return to duty.

Patrushev Calls for Strengthening Russia’s Position on the Caspian

Paul Goble    
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Nikolay Patrushev, former secretary of Russia’s National Security Council and currently head of its Naval Collegium, has called for a significant strengthening of Russia’s defense capacity on the Caspian to counter what he says are threats coming from NATO and Western special services more generally.
    At a meeting in Dagestan, he called for strengthening the FSB’s forces in the region so as to guard Russia’s borders; but his real concerns almost certainly lie elsewhere and are focused on expanding the power of Russia’s Caspian Flotilla and its ability to determine which trade routes operate (casp-geo.ru/nikolaj-patrushev-prizval-usilit-ohranu-rossijskoj-granitsy-na-kaspii/).
    In Soviet times, Moscow treated the Caspian as a Russian lake; but since 1991, the other littoral states have developed their navies to the point that Russia’s position has been challenged (jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-no-longer-only-force-that-matters-there/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/russia-not-keeping-up-with-naval-build.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/kazakhstan-navy-demonstrates-growing.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/iran-launches-new-flagship-for-its.html and  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/azerbaijani-naval-exercises-highlight.html).
    Two years ago, the Russian naval doctrine was updated to include a section calling for the expansion of the Caspian Flotilla (jamestown.org/program/new-russian-naval-doctrine-assigns-expanded-role-to-caspian-flotilla/). Patrushev’s words are a sign that Moscow has not achieved what it wants and that it will devote far more attention to this as funds become available.
    Any such Russian moves have the potential to trigger a new naval competition on the Caspian and complicate the flow of oil and gas as well as other goods in both the east-west and north-south axes.   

Looming Bankruptcies of Russian Regional Air Carriers will Isolate Many Parts of the Country

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 13 – Many cities in the Russian Federation, especially those in the north and east of the Urals are not served by reliable roads or rail connections and thus must depend on air links to tie them to the rest of the country. That makes the potential bankruptcy of some 30 regional carriers into something more serious than a first glance might suggest.
    In countries with a ramified transportation system, problems in one sector are generally solved by shifting to the use of another. But in many places in the Russian Federation, there is no such possibility. And so if one sector, in this case, air travel, suffers a major blow, neither these cities nor Moscow have good substitutes available.
    And what is especially noteworthy is that this problem is being exacerbated by Western sanctions because restrictions on the leasing by Russian carriers of planes from the West and the lack of spare parts because of restrictions on their sale to these carriers appear to be the primary causes of this situation.
    Moscow’s Izvestiya newspaper report that approximately 30 of Russia’s local and regional air carriers now face bankruptcy. These currently carry 26 percent of all domestic passengers in the Russian Federation (iz.ru/1789856/vladimir-gavrilov-stanislav-fedorov/cek-za-bortom-aviakompanii-zaavili-o-riskah-bankrotstv-iz-za-dolgov-za-lizing).
    The Russian government may shift planes from Aeroflot to these routes and even use this crisis to take over the regional carriers. But such a solution would be only a temporary one at best and would most likely impose new burdens on the ability of the national carrier to continue to operate at current levels.  

Russian Political System ‘Unstable’ and People May Turn Overnight on Their Leaders, Zyuganov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – Gennady Zyuganov, longtime head of the KPRF, says that the Russian political system is “unstable” and that “those who are involved in the political system” in Russia are at risk of attack because the people in his country have demonstrated in the past that they can turn from supporters to opponents overnight.
    The KPRF’s fears are undoubtedly shared by many other political figures in the Russian Federation and help to explain why so many of them are afraid to rock the boat even a little lest in doing so they put themselves at risk (agents.media/zyuganov-nazval-politicheskuyu-sistemu-rossii-neustojchivoj-i-predupredil-chto-ona-mozhet-posypatsya/).
    And such fears, likely in most cases far more than the effectiveness of propaganda or repression, go a long way to help to explain why Putin is able to prevent them from acting individually or collectively against him, however much they may disagree with him on this or that policy.

In Disguising North Koreans Fighting in Ukraine as Buryats, Putin Repeating Stalin’s Approach in Korean War, Namsareva Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 14 – To obscure the participation of North Korean troops in his invasion force in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is having the Koreans dress and otherwise present themselves as ethnic Buryats, a nationality from the eastern part of the Russian Federation that has already many men in Ukraine.
    By doing so, Sayana Namsareva, a Buryat scholar at Cambridge says, Putin is repeating what Stalin did in the Korean War, when he ordered ethnic Buryats and other nationalities from Asian portions of the USSR to be dressed up as Chinese in order to conceal Soviet participation in that conflict (themoscowtimes.com/2024/11/14/putin-pulls-from-stalins-playbook-in-sending-north-koreans-disguised-as-buryats-to-ukraine-a86857).
    In reporting this, Mariya Vyushkova, a Buryat activist, argues that both Stalin’s actions in Korea and Putin’s in Ukraine are “two episodes of the same story,” that of “an indigenous minority being exploited in imperial wars by an imperial power. [And] not just using Buryat men as cannot fodder … but also exploiting our name and identity to cover up its true actions.”

Ethnic Ukrainians with Russian Birth Citizenship Facing Increasingly Serious Problems Inside Russia and Abroad, Belyayeva Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Ethnic Ukrainians born in the Russian Federation and who have Russian citizenship from birth face serious problems both in that country and in Western countries if they are able to flee abroad, according to Nina Belyayeva, a representative of the Eastern Slobodzhanshchyna national liberation.
    Inside the Russian Federation, she says, such people many of whom are rapidly recovering their ethnic roots face repressions of various kinds; and when they seek to flee, they face a lack of understanding in the West of their predicament (abn.org.ua/uk/vyzvolni-ruhy/nina-belyayeva-shidna-slobozhanshhyna-cze-ukrayinska-etnichna-zemlya-bilsha-chastyna-yakoyi-nyni-perebuvaye-v-mezhah-rosiyi/).
    Many of those who seek to flee Russian oppression don’t go to Ukraine because of the war and because they lack close relatives there, but when they go to other countries, they often can’t get residence permits or the path to citizenship because of charges that the Russian authorities have brought against them, Belyayeva says.
    Western governments seldom recognize the bind in which these Ukrainians find themselves and are reluctant to offer them permanent residence. Belyayeva says that her group is working to compile a list of Ukrainian activists with Russian citizenship who have been charged with various crimes by the Russian authorities.
    Such a list will help Western countries understand the nature of their predicament and thus become more willing to provide them with asylum of one kind or another. Otherwise there is a great risk that these Ukrainians will be sent back to the Russian Federation because the false conviction that they are Russian citizens first of all.
    There are several million people of Ukrainian heritage in the Russian Federation, most but far from all in regions that the Ukrainians refer to as klins or “wedges.” (On these groups, see see jamestown.org/program/kyiv-raises-stakes-by-expanding-appeals-to-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/ and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-real-wedge-issue-ukrainian-regions-in.html and the sources cited therein.)
    Relatively few of these people are actively identifying as Ukrainians, but enough are to have sparked real concern in Moscow (jamestown.org/program/kremlin-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/). It would be a tragedy if Western ignorance about their history and current status meant that the West would become Moscow’s ally in repressing such people.  
.

Because of Global Warming, 550 Square Kilometers in South of Russia Now Turning Into Desert Every Year, SFU Scholars Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Russians and others have long focused on the ways in which climate change is warming the Russian north and melting the permafrost there, but they have devoted less attention to the impact of global warming on the south of Russia where this trend is leading to desertification.
    Now, a group of scholars at Russia’s Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don are reporting that the desertification of the Russian south is occurring at the rate of 550 square kilometers each year, threatening not only the environment but the economy and forcing people to leave these areas (akcent.site/novosti/36577).
    Rising temperatures are the primary culprit, the scholars say; and they have already seriously changed the region’s biological diversity and are increasingly having an impact on human life in the region. Tragically, however, regional officials are doing little or nothing beyond denouncing it to counter this trend (astrakhanpost.ru/astraxanskuyu-oblast-atakuet-pustynya/).  
    If that continues and if Moscow does not intervene, the SFU experts suggest, then the negative impact of climate change in the southern portions of the Russian Federation will only have broader and more negative consequences for the country as a whole in the coming years and decades.  

It’s a Disaster for Everyone when, as in Putin’s Russia, Abusers Rise to Power, Nikulin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 14 – Among men, there is a certain share of men who unconsciously feel their own weakness seek to compensate by dominating women in their lives, a terrible crime in its own right but one that becomes even worse when as a result of crises in their societies, such men find themselves in positions of political power, Andrey Nikulin says.
    Then, unable to take on the stronger in society, they search out those who are weaker and do whatever they can to oppress them so as to feel themselves strong, even though what they are doing is of course a manifestation of their own weakness, the liberal Russian blogger says (t.me/HUhmuroeutro/36527 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6735AB34CB8FE).
    In healthy societies, abusers are disdained and punished, Nikulin continues, “but when crises arise in social institutions, it is precisely these people who “because of their cohesion as a group and enormous reserve of destructive energy and aggression periodically begin to dominate.”
    When that happens, he says, “then the time of a search for enemies, totalitarianism, repression, and demonstrative persecution and the limitation of rights of those whom they seek to put on their knees begins,” something such people are able to do either by “taking advantage the stunned apathy of society or by infecting a significant part of it with their destructive ideas.”
    Those given to abuse in small things feel weakness in others and take advantage of it, but there is a real problem: “a significant part of the energy that feeds such aggressors is involved in the banal sublimation of their own failures as men … and when choosing whether to develop and grow or to put pressure on and weaken others,” their choice is preordained.
    That is what is taking place in Russia and of course in some other countries as well; and it is proving a disaster wherever it happens.  

In Putin’s Russia, Unspoken but Very Real Ban on Displaying Ukrainian Colors of Yellow and Blue Together Takes Ever More Absurd Dimensions

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 10 – Since the start of Putin’s expanded invasion of Russia, residents of that country have been detained and then fined if they wear clothes or carry bags that feature both yellow and blue, the two colors of the Ukrainian flag. Now, officials in Moscow’s Kuzminky District have had to change their coat of arms because it had both colors on it.
    Officials in that district explained their action by saying that the two swans also featured on their coat of arms had been “drawn incorrectly” and that what had taken place was nothing more than an effort to correct that (lenta.ru/news/2024/11/05/v-moskovskom-rayone-reshili-smenit-sine-zheltyy-gerb/).
But as Moscow journalist Andrey Kalitin points out, it wasn’t the swans that needed changing  but the colors because the Kremlin can no longer tolerate any display of blue and yellow together lest it appear to be an act in support of Ukraine (t.me/akalitin/526 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6730F86C5C8AE).
The investigative journalist suggests that this is a revival of a medieval practice of banning colors that symbolized the wrong thing as far as those in power were concerned. But he notes that such bans have happened more recently -- including in Hitler’s Germany where the Nazis banned the use of red unless it was shown in combination with white and black.

Moscow Using Increasingly Repressive and Deceptive Means to Fill Ranks of Russian Army in Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – Many news outlets have featured stories about how the Russian government is using pardons of prisoners and ever larger bonuses to attract men to serve in the ever-depleting ranks of Putin’s invasion force in Ukraine. But the independent Holod news agency says that Moscow is increasingly using other repressive and deceptive means as well.  
    Among the most widespread of these other means, the agency says on the basis of conversations with those who have been subject to them and groups that seek to protect their rights (holod.media/2024/11/12/rossijskie-vlasti-ispolzuyut-novye-metody-verbovki-na-vojnu/) are the following:

•    Attracting men with false advertisements that promise one kind of work but that after the individuals sign up send them to the front;

•    Threatening former convicts with new charges and prison sentences unless they agree to join the military; and

•    Telling draftees that they will be sent into combat unless they sign up for longer terms of service – and then sending them to the frontlines anyway.

Holod isn’t in a position to say how widespread these practices are, let alone give statistics about them. But these reports do highlight something that many observers have pointed out in recent months: Despite the support of the Russian people for Putin’s war, that support doesn’t extend to volunteering to fight there.

Moscow Plans to Scrap 2003 Arctic Nuclear Clean Up Accord with EU and Norway

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – The Russian government has approved and sent to the Duma a draft law that will denounce the Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Program in the Russian Federation putting to an end Western-supported programs to clean up sites where Soviet officials had dumped nuclear waste in the Arctic.
    That accord, signed by the Russian Federation, the European Union and Norway in 2003, helped clean up nuclear waste in the Arctic and protected Europe from radiation leaks from aging Soviet-era storage containers (interfax-russia.ru/moscow/news/kabmin-podderzhal-denonsaciyu-ramochnogo-soglasheniya-o-mnogostoronney-yaderno-ekologicheskoy-programme).
    But it also had the effect of integrating Russia into international environmental principles and practices. Now, apparently, all progress in that direction has been ended and Russian practices shifted into reverse. As Aleksandr Nikitin of the Bellona Foundation put it, “it’s amazing how in two and a half years you can destroy everything achieved over decades.”
    For background on this problem and an indication of what will now be lost, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/flooding-in-russia-threatens-to-spread.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/moscows-immediate-goal-for-arctic.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/11/hundreds-of-abandoned-ships-rusting.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/08/moscow-finally-addressing-its-nuclear.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/delayed-action-mines-under-russia.html.

Tajikistan Follows Uzbekistan in Arranging to Send Migrant Workers to South Korea

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – Tajikistan has now followed Uzbekistan in arranging to send migrant workers to South Korea instead of the Russian Federation, a shift that may have even greater importance to geopolitics in the longer term than the arrival of North Korean troops in the Russian Federation to fight in Putin’s war in Ukraine.
    At the end of last month, Dushanbe and Seoul signed an agreement opening the way for Tajiks to go to South Korea to work and study beginning in 2025 (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-11-12--tadzhikistan-stremitsja-perenapravit-trudovyh-migrantov-v-vostochnuju-aziju-76774). Such a flow help compensate for the return of Tajiks from Russia.
    This decision follows several years of discussions between the two national governments, with each having compelling interests: Dushanbe because it needs the payments from migrant workers that have fallen given Russian hostility to such people and Seoul because its population is now set to decline with deaths now exceeding births.
    Both sides are working to develop programs to provide Korean-language training to Tajiks interested in working in South Korea, people who hope to earn as much as 2500 US dollars a month. In this, Tajikistan is following Uzbekistan which already has a similar and larger program for its 100,000 migrants in South Korea (gazeta.uz/ru/2024/02/05/south-korea/).
    If this Tajik program takes off, that could lead to even larger departures of Tajik migrant workers from Russia who will now have somewhere to go where they can earn as much or even more than they did in the Russian Federation. And if other Central Asian countries follow Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Moscow will face mounting labor shortages in key sectors.