Siberian River Diversion May Finally Happen Because Experts Say Russia Needs It Even More than Central Asia Does

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 25 – For more than a century, Russians have talked about the possibility of diverting water from Siberia’s rivers to Central Asia to save the Aral Sea and help Central Asia overcome its water shortages; but these plans have been shot down in Moscow not only because they cost so much but also because they harmed Russia in various other ways.
    But now two Moscow experts on hydrology argue that three developments have changed the situation and that as a result Russia would benefit far more than Central Asia. As a result, there is now a far better chance that the Russian government will back Siberian river diversion (ng.ru/nauka/2025-02-25/9_9200_system.html).
    According to Mikhail Zelikhanov and Stanislav Stepanov of the Russian Academy Sciences, the three developments that have shifted the balance in favor of going ahead with this project are the following:
•    First, global warming has increased the amount of water in Siberian rivers to the point that they flood Russian cities on a regular basis. The costs of repairing such disasters are so large than they make the costs of Siberian river diversion seem relatively small.
•    Second, Russian technology has advanced to the point that any water shifted from Siberia to Central Asia could go through pipelines rather than via canals, thus limiting the amount lost by filtration and evaporation to the point that the costs of the project are much reduced.
•    And third, in the wake of the redivision of the world following Putin’s expanded attack on Ukraine and the ensuing Western sanctions means that Moscow would benefit by creating a network of pipelines to carry water to Central Asia, China and other countries, not only financially but in terms of influence and getting investment from them.  
These arguments are likely to be far more compelling that those advocates of this project have made in the past, although it is  certain that many ecological activists and budget hawks will continue to oppose the measure. And in any case, its construction would take at a minimum several years.
But the appearance of the article by Zelikhanov and Stepanov is a reminder that the idea of Sbierian River Diversion is anything but dead, despite the veto the Gorbachev government imposed on it more than three decades ago.  (For background on support for it since that time, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/only-revival-of-siberian-river.html.)

Kremlin Ignores Third Anniversary of Putin’s Expanded War in Ukraine and For Good Reasons, Russian Analysts Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 24 – Anyone reading the Western press or what is left of its Russian counterpart this week will have been struck by the attention given to the third anniversary of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, but the silence of the Kremlin on this occasion is perhaps more significant, three Russian analysts say.
    Unlike in 2023 and 2024, the Kremlin propagandists have not sought to use the anniversary of the expanded war or “special military operation” as Putin and his minions call it as the occasion for talking about the war and even organizing events concerning it (cherta.media/story/godovshhina-vojny/).
    As three Russian analysts point out, the Kremlin has from its own point of view compelling reasons not to play up this anniversary – and is unlikely to change that even after the war ends unless Moscow gains an overwhelming victory or anti-Putin democrats come to power and mark this date as a day of national shame.
    Mikhail Komin, a Russian political scientist now at the Center for the Analysis of European Policy, says there is “nothing surprising” in Moscow’s silence. “The beginning of any war is not often marked at the state level” unless it involves sorry and regret. The Kremlin doesn’t feel that way about February 2022 and so isn’t going to mark it.
    Margarita Zavadskaya, a Russian scholar at the Finnish Institute of International Relations, says that Russians view this date “more with the start of uncertainty than with the beginning of geopolitical success.” And even Kremlin loyalists don’t agree that “the war has gone according to plan.” Consequently, its better not to talk about its beginning.
    And Andrey Pertsev, a Russian commentator, argues that the Kremlin, which has sought to downplay the impact of the war on Russians at home has no reason to highlight the conflict by playing up the anniversary. From the center’s perspective, it is better if no one talks about it at all.
    That could change after the end of the war but just how depends on the outcome, the three agree. If Moscow wins a great triumph, the Kremlin will probably recall the start of the war but far less than its end; if the Putin regime loses and is succeeded by democrats, February 22 may be remembered more prominently but as a day of national shame rather than anything else.
    This year, those in Russia who did mark the anniversary consisted almost exclusively of those who are against the war and against the Putin regime, hardly those the Kremlin would like to see grow as might happe if it made more of this date (nemoskva.net/2025/02/24/v-rossii-prohodyat-pikety-i-poyavlyayutsya-stihijnye-memorialy-v-godovshhinu-vojny/).

Putin like Hitler Can Be Stopped Only by Force of Arms, Skobov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 24 – Aleksandr Skobov, a Russian activist who did as much as anyone to expose the crimes of Putinism before his arrest in April 2024 – for discussions of some of his articles, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/kremlin-arrests-aleksandr-skobov.html – has now summed up his views on what must be done in a closing statement at his trial.
    He says that Russia is now in the midst of a civil war between those who support the values of civilization and those like Putin who are promoting 21st century post-industrial fascism and that this war will not be won in any courtroom but will require the Kremlin’s military defeat – just as was the case with Hitler (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=67BCD32D373ED).
    Skobov begins by noting that he has sought to analyze Putin’s ideology which traces its roots to “the ultra-conservative conceptions of a special Russian spirituality, a special Russian civilization and a special Russian policy,” conceptions that rest on the idea that might makes right and must not be resisted, the same kind of thinking that animated Hitler.
    Such thinking represents “a revolt of archaic, cave-dweller instincts against the legal and moral limitations on force and cruelty established by civilization;” and it has led from the destruction of the Russian constitution to the destruction of international law which rests first and foremost on the idea that there must not be any annexation by force.
    What Russians and the rest of the world must recognize, Skobov continues, is that Putin doesn’t need any part of Ukraine that has been destroyed by his armies. What he needs and wants is for the world to “recognize his right” to take whatever he wants. If everyone does so, the world will again be headed to a world war.
    Skobov continues: “I grew up among people who had seen war not just in movies! They all hated it. For my generation also as for them, it was axiomatic that this must not b e repeated. But the Putin clique has stolen this axiom from us and replaced it with the obscene notion that ‘we can repeat.’”
    Like its Hitlerite predecessor, the Putin clique “has awoken in people the darkest and basest instincts: the striving to rule over others, to suppress, humiliate, torture, and step on the face of another. It corrupted my people turning a significant portion of them into zombies who have forgotten that you can’t take someone else’s property, attack your neighbor or kill.”
    “I hate force,” Skobov says; but because I do, I am compelled to recognize that those like Putin who support these ideas can be defeated only by force. That means Russia itself is involved in a civil war; and the rest of the world is involved in a world war, whether anyone wants to recognize that or not.
    “Tanks invading a foreign country can’t be stopped by calls for peace and conscience,” he says. “Tanks aren’t affected by shame and can only be stopped by other tanks.” Consequently, those who seek to defend human values must be for “more tanks for Ukraine” rather than just calling for a shameful peace.
    And in his last words before being sentenced for crimes he didn’t commit by a government that has no respect for law, Skobov concludes bluntly: “Death to the Russian-fascist invaders! Death to Puti, the new Hitler, a murderer and executioner! And glory to Ukraine!” Such words, of course, make it highly unlikely he’ll ever escape Putin’s GULAG with his life.

Since Putin Launched His Expanded War in Ukraine, Memories of the 1990s have Again become Central and Contested Issue in Russia, Zavadsky Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 24 – Vladimir Putin’s use of his version of the 1990s – a wild decade in which Russia lost so much – to generate support for himself and his supposed restoration of stability and confidence is widely recognized, but the way in which that decade has again become a center of dispute in Russia since February 2022 has not.
    But Andrey Zavadsky, a Russian scholar at Dortmund University, argues that because popular and diverse memories of the 1990s remain in the Russian population, that decade and memories about it have now reemerged as central issues in political discussions about Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine (ridl.io/ru/pamyat-o-rossii-devyanostyh-i-ee-aberratsii/).
    After Putin launched his war and the West responded with sanctions, he writes, many in Russia talked about how to adapt in a situation which many of them felt was “like in the 1990s,” as Moscow scholar Olga Malinova pointed out in her article, “Memory of the 1990s as a Resource of adaptation to a New Crisis,” Politeia 110 (3): 91-114 at researchgate.net/publication/374073751_Memory_of_the_1990s_as_Resource_of_Adaptation_to_New_Crisis_Analysis_of_Russian_Media_Discourses.
    Just as in the first decade of this century the Kremlin hasagain worked hard to promote a single version of the 1990s not just to set itself apart and justify what they are doing to the Russian people but also to demonize their opponents who view both the current situation and the past very differently.
    The regime once again has been mostly successful, but the fact that many Russians still have living memories of the 1990s and know that reducing its image to only one of the many aspects of developments then means that that decade will continue to echo and be a source of controversy however much the Kremlin wishes otherwise.  

Russia had Almost 600,000 More Deaths than Births in 2024 -- and that Doesn’t Include Losses in Ukraine, Rosstat Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 22 – Russia’s population continued to decline in 2024, the result of fewer births – 1.2 million or 3.4 percent fewer than in 2023 – and more deaths – 1.8 million or 3.3 percent more than last year – and these figures from Rosstat, the Russian government’s statistical arm, do not include Russian deaths in Puti’s war in Ukraine.
    These trends reflect the declining number of women in the prime child-bearing cohort and the aging of the Russian population overall, experts say (newizv.ru/news/2025-02-22/rodilsya-poterpel-umer-rosstat-podschital-ubyl-naseleniya-v-god-semi-436013). But they are both an embarrassment and a challenge for the Kremlin.
    An embarrassment because they took place in what Moscow had declared “the Year of the Family” and a challenge because none of the policies the Kremlin is currently promoting, including restricting abortions and increasing maternal capital, is likely to overcome these trends anytime soon. Consequently, the Russian population will continue to fall.

Moscow Moves to Strip Dagestan of Fundamental Right of that Most Multi-National Republic

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 20 – Dagestan, the most multi-national of the non-Russian republics in the Russian Federation, may soon lose a right it alone among those republics had had up to now, the right to determine and declare the list of its smallest peoples, if a proposal by the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs goes through.
    Current Russian law specifies that Moscow will determine and declare the list of nationalities in each republic that are to be considered by the authorities but makes an exception for Dagestan because of its ethnic complexity. Now, Moscow wants to end that arrangement (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2025/02/20/1093252-dagestan-lishat-isklyuchitelnogo-prava-opredelyat-perechen-malochislennih-narodov).
    If the proposal becomes law – and it must first be considered by all the non-Russian republics who like Dagestan may oppose this, although their opposition is unlikely to stop the Kremlin – the Dagestan government will lose the ability to declare as constituent nations of its republics to Moscow.
    That could lead to the downgrading of the smallest nations in the republic, with Moscow deciding to fold them into larger nations, and thus give the center yet another way to weaken Makhachkala and threaten the continued existence of some of the smallest national groups in Dagestan.
    And that in turn could threaten the positions of the three largest nationalities in that republic, not one of which has a majority, a development that could exacerbate ethnic conflicts and likely lead to both the exacerbation of ethnic tensions and the rise of Islamism as the dominant identity there.  

Putin Continues to Call Russia a Federation to Make It Easier for Him to Annex Former Soviet Republics, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 23 – Russia did not become a federation in the 1990s: It remained a unitary state, Vadim Shtepa says. But Putin continues to call the country “the Russian Federation” and is using that term as part of his ongoing effort to reconquer Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.
    “Had Russia declared itself a unitary empire – and Putin clearly sympathizes with such a regime as when he criticizes Lenin for ‘dividing the country into republics,’” the editor of the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal says, “it would be more difficult for Moscow to annex the territories of other countries” (moscowtimes.ru/2025/02/23/postfederalizm-ili-federatsiya-naiznanku-a156038 reposted at region.expert/postfederation/).
    That “would have been seen by many as the continuation of imperial aggression of the past,” Shtepa says, and would have been resisted more widely. But by organizing “referenda” on joining the Russian Federation in “the republics” Moscow created within occupied portions of Ukraine, Putin achieves the same ends but convinces many that he isn’t being an imperialist.
    That is perhaps the most immediately policy relevant insight the specialist on Russian regionalists makes in his programmatic article, itself a summary of his new book, Post-Russia (in Russian; Riga, 2025, 168 pp. ISBN: 978-9934-298-1-6). But it is far from the only one that those seeking to understand Putin’s Russia should take into account.
    Among the others:
•    Because Russia did not become a federation in the 1990s, there is little to revive. Instead, there is an entirely different system which must be created.
•    Since 1991, Russia has moved from a system in which the republics had more rights than the regions to one in which the republics and the regions are equally powerless relative to Moscow.
•    That happened because Moscow was more frightened of the predominantly Russian regions becoming republics or like the republics than by anything the republics might do.
•    That fear has led Moscow to take actions that have made the Russian regions the core of the Russian world Putin continues to promote.
•    The current arrangements won’t last but will instead generate countervailing powers and efforts by the regions and the republics.   

For First Time Since 2015, Amount of Unpaid Back Wages Employers Owe Workers Jumps in 2024 – and by Over 40 Percent over a Year Earlier

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 20 – One of the problems which plagued Russia during the 1990s and which Moscow had worked hard to solve has now come back with a vengeance: for the first time since 2015, the amount of money employers owe workers for unpaid back waves rose in 2024 and by 43.5 percent over the amount in 2023, the Sibreal portal reports.
    The total amount is still relatively small – 508 million rubles (five million dollars) – but it continues to grow and there are serious doubts that the real total is being reported by the government, especially as Rosstat’s claim in that regard is demonstrably untrue (sibreal.org/a/v-rossii-vpervye-za-9-let-vyros-dolg-po-zarplate-srazu-na-43-5-/33319578.html).
    The Sibreal portal documents that workers in state enterprises in regions east of the Urals say they have not been paid what they are owed with their government employers saying that there is no money but they need to keep working so that the institutions will survive and they will eventually be paid.
    The likelihood is that this problem extends to the rest of the country as well and is feeding anger among workers who are already squeezed by rising prices and declining government assistance programs and who see that their government bosses continue to pay themselves and live well.

Infrastructure Problems Limiting Development of Russian Far East as Transportation Hub. Khrushchalov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 18 – In Soviet times, Western specialists were taught to read articles in USSR media by running down their fingers until they reached the odnako or “however” paragraph in which the Soviet authors and then examine that part of the article with care because it was typically the portion that contained both the most important information.
    Changes in Russian media under Putin increasingly are requiring a similar approach, with the initial paragraphs of most articles being celebratory of Russian achievements but with subsequent potions of the articles providing the most critical and typically most important information.
    A new article by Dmitry Khrushchalyov of Business Line portal concerning transportation logistics in the Russian Far East is a classic example of this revenant from the past (eastrussia.ru/material/dalniy-vostok-kak-transportno-logisticheskiy-khab-tekushchaya-situatsiya-i-dalneyshie-perspektivy/).
    In the first paragraphs of his article, the business analyst talks about how much Russia has achieved in making its Far Eastern regions a major transport hub; but in the last four, he discusses why it hasn’t achieved more and what would have to be done for that to happen. The latter are by far the more significant.
    There he openly acknowledges that “there are also obstacles to the path toward the increase in the size of international trade through the region.” In particular, he says, “an aging logistics infrastructure negatively affects the throughput of the Far Eastern Federal District” means it can’t meet demand or expectations.
    If Russia is to succeed, Khrushchalyov says, it must “modernize all elements of the region’s transport infrastructure, including ports, roads, and railways;” ad it will be able to do tht most likely only by means of a joint public-private effort in shich the state creates “favorable conditions and potential benefits” for the private sector.

Four Factors Combining to Push Central Asia into ‘Chronic Phase of Water Shortage,’ Pritchin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 19 – Stanislav Pritchin, head of the Central Asia sector of IMEMO of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says that four factors are now combing to push the countries of Central Asia into what he calls “a chronic phase of water shortage,” one they will find extremely difficult to escape.
    The four are global warming that is leading to a melting of glaciers and greater evaporation of rivers and reservoirs, a rapidly expanding population that is increasing demand, aging infrastructure which isn’t being replaced, and the absence of supernational supervisory bodies to ensure the fair sharing of water flows (kun.uz/ru/news/2025/02/19/k-2028-godu-tsentralnaya-aziya-pereydyot-v-xronicheskuyu-fazu-defitsita-vody).
    The first two are things the countries can do very little about. The third will require a new commitment by the governments there to spend the enormous sums needed to rebuild irrigation and other water facilities. And the fourth will necessitate political will in the region or the intervention of outside powers.

Global Warming ‘Isolating Cities’ Across Russian North and Threatening Military Facilities and Support of Northern Sea Route

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 21 – Many of the cities and towns in northern Russia have been “isolated” this year because the rivers on which ice roads have been constructed in the past to make deliveries either did not freeze at all or froze so late that deliveries were delayed or prevented altogether and that what was delivered was late and came at higher prices.
    Some cities have been completely cut off by the failure of rivers to freeze, and many smaller population centers more have seen the delivery season typically between December and March reduced to a few weeks in February alone (nakanune.ru/articles/123177/ and nakanune.ru/news/2025/01/28/22805017/).
Russia, it has sometimes been suggested, came into existence as a country only because of the combination of two natural phenomena: its major rivers flow south to north and the water of these rivers freezes during much of the year making it possible for those in the south to extend their reach and rule into the north.
    But most consider this a matter of historical interest and ignore the fact that the ice roads remain a major component of Russia’s geography, linking together cities and regions that otherwise are unconnected on the ground. (They are of course now linked by air, but planes can’t carry the amount of cargo that trucks, trains and ships can or do so at anything like the price.)
    The demise of ice roads is affecting not only the population there but the ability of Moscow to man its defense facilities and Northern Sea Route support groups (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/01/global-warming-forcing-russia-to-stop.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/06/for-northern-sea-route-to-operate-year.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/10/global-warming-threatens-key.html).

Russian Jailors Increasingly Demand Inmates Use Only Russian in Correspondence

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 21 – Russian jailors are increasingly demanding that non-Russian inmates use Russian rather than their native language despite in violation of Russian law. Those who refuse cannot count on their letters being delivered to addresses, according to an investigation by the Idel.Real portal.
    Such violations became commonplace when Ukrainians began to be held in Russian prisons and have expanded over the last year when Bashkirs being held in prisons outside their native republic were told they must write in Russian (idelreal.org/a/pishite-po-russki-kak-v-rossiyskih-sizo-zapreschayut-perepisyvatsya-na-rodnyh-yazykah/33320564.html).
    Although this practice has likely spread because in many prisons, there may not be any jailor who knows the non-Russian language and thus this requirement is being introduced for their convenience, it is yet another way that by allowing it, the Putin regime is tightening the noose around those who speak languages other than Russian.

Family of Ingush Head Benefits from Corruption while 2,000 Men from His Republic Fight in Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 19 – Two articles today throw into harsh relief the tragic but fundamental reality that those in the republics who are closely connected with the Putin regime are benefiting from corrupt arrangements the Kremlin supports while those not so connected are fighting and dying in Putin’s war in Ukraine.
    An article jointly prepared by the Metla and EkhoFM news portals shows just how corrupt the family of Ingush head Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov has become since the start of the war (metla.press/2025/obul-armiyu-kak-glava-ingushetii-zarabatyvaet-na-voyne/ and  echofm.online/stories/obul-armiyu-kak-glava-ingushetii-zarabatyvaet-na-vojne).
    It appeared even as the republic newspaper carried an interview with Vladimir Slastenin, the republic prime minister, who said 2,000 Ingush were now fighting in Ukraine, the first time officials there have given a figure (fortanga.org/2025/02/vlasti-vpervye-priznalis-skolko-ingushej-uchastvuyut-v-vojne-protiv-ukrainy/).
    According to the independent news portal Fortanga, which Moscow and Magas have both tried to shut down, a minimum of 129 Ingush have died so far in the fighting in Ukraine (fortanga.org/2025/02/vlasti-vpervye-priznalis-skolko-ingushej-uchastvuyut-v-vojne-protiv-ukrainy/).
    This juxtaposition of reports about who is benefiting and who is suffering because of Putin’s war in one of the poorest republics of the Russian Federation is something that authorities there have tried to prevent; but as the current case shows, they aren’t always successful – and that will likely have consequences for both the beneficiaries and the victims of Kremlin policies.

Putin’s War in Ukraine has Made Rich Russians Richer but Poorer Ones Poorer, Statistics Show

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 19 – Despite the Kremlin’s boasts about income growth as a result of the war in Ukraine, Russian government statistics show that the war has not affected all income groups the same. Instead, economist Berta Shapiro says, since the start of the war, the rich in that country have gotten richer and the poor poorer.
    Moreover, she says, polls show that the Russian people are well aware of this, an understanding that is likely to grow given that the trends she describes are likely to intensify given that job seekers will increasingly want to be paid more than employers can afford to do (theins.ru/ekonomika/278568).
    Even Rosstat acknowledges that those in the richest 10 percent of the population have seen their incomes rise twice as fast as those in the poorest 10 percent, Shapiro reports; and the figures are likely higher than that given that the wealth hide their wealth and the poorer are more seriously affected by rising inflation.
    Other economic changes since the start of the war have widened this gap further. Rising interest rates have allowed the wealthier Russians to earn more, while poorer ones can’t take advantage of these. The withdrawal of Western firms helped those at the top but not at the bottom, while sanctions have hurt those at the bottom more than those at the top.
    And perhaps most importantly, those at the top who have benefited have not been affected by the cutbacks in government transfer payments that represent a sizeable portion of the incomes of those at the bottom of the income pyramid. Indeed, they are largely insulated from such changes.

In Russia, Men with University Educations Live 8.5 Years Longer than Men without and Women with Degrees live 5.2 Years Longer, ‘To Be Exact’ Portal Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 17 – A university education leads to lifestyle choices that have a major impact on life expectancies in Russia, To Be Exact reports. Russian men aged 30 to 54 with such educational achievement live an average of 8.5 years than do those without, and women with degrees live on average 5.2 years longer than their counterparts without.
    It is not just the higher incomes that such people almost inevitably have but rather the lifestyle choices they choose to make including smoking and drinking less than their counterparts without such schooling (tochno.st/materials/rossiiane-30-54-let-s-vyssim-obrazovaniem-umiraiut-v-tri-raza-reze-svoix-rovesnikov).
Almost half of Russian men without university degrees, for example, smoke daily while only 23 percent of those with such degrees do; and among Russian women the corresponding figures are 15 percent and seven percent. A similar pattern holds for both genders with regard to excessive alcohol consumption.
But over the last decade, the differences between those with hgierh education and those with less have decreased as a result of rising levels of smoking and drinking among the more educated and declining levels of both among those who do not have university educations, To Be Exact reports.  
The portal suggests that this may reflect the growth in the share of Russians with higher educations and thus the inclusion in this category of people from lower-status families relative to those who come from families with parents who had higher educations and who made the better health choices their offspring continue.

China’s Expansion of Economic Footprint in Central Asia Sparking Ander and Resistance

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 18 – China now has more factories in Uzbekistan than Russia does, and most of those factories are state-owned, thus giving Beijing a powerful lever to influence that country and others in Central Asia on a wide range of issues (gazeta.uz/ru/2025/02/18/foreign-enterprises/  and tazabek.kg/news:2234234).
    In Uzbekistan at least, China’s new position reflects both its own expansion of its network of factories and the pulling back by most other countries, including Russia, giving China even more economic leverage there. Not surprisingly, some Central Asians are worried about this trend.
    Two examples of this are a Kyrgyz commentary questioning whether Chinese investment in that country will have only the positive influence as Beijing likes to suggest (vb.kg/doc/443006_andrey_belov:_stanyt_li_kitayskie_investicii_chydom_dlia_ekonomiki_kr.html) and speculation in Kazakhstan that Astana and Beijing may soon find themselves in a tariff war (spik.kz/2154-svjazka-kazahstan-kitaj-pod-ugrozoj-torgovyh-vojn.html).

Moscow Moving toward Restoration of Soviet-Style System of Assigning Graduates to First Jobs, Novichkov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 19 – Yet another feature of Soviet life, the assignment of graduates of higher educational institutions, is in the process of returning to the Russian Federation, according to Nikolay Novichkov, a Just Russia-For Truth Duma deputy, says. Indeed, he suggests, the Russian government has already made several steps in that direction.
    While that system had “many minuses” – including being extremely unpopular among Moscow graduates sent to the periphery – it had “pluses too” ensuring that workers appeared where they were needed and that higher schools focused on the economy (mk.ru/social/2025/02/19/sovetskaya-sistema-raspredeleniya-posle-instituta-vozrozhdaetsya.html).
    After the Soviet system of distribution of graduates was disbanded in the 1990s, Novichkov continues, the positive role it played has become ever more obvious and the Russian government has moved to restore it step by step, first by rating universities in terms of how well they meet economic needs and then by working to send graduates to where they are need.
    For three reasons, the economist says, Moscow will be compelled to more further toward the restoration of something like the Soviet system of distribution of graduates: the rate of economic change, the size of the country, and the need to bring higher educational institutions into closer alignment with Russia’s economic needs.
    With talk now about “a Gosplan 2.0,” this restoration will likely become ever more rapid and take the form of a tripartite “agreement among the government, employers and graduates which will allow each of the sies to feel confident they will be able to cope with immediate and long-term developmental needs.”
    Novichkov is likely right about the direction the Putin regime is moving, but he is also right to note that this won’t be an entirely happy development for many Russians who will see this as a more significant infringement of the rights they thought they were acquiring with the establishment of a free market economy.   

‘Biggest Source of Tension’ in Russian Elites in Last Year is Kremlin’s Purge of Defense Ministry, Komin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 17 – “The biggest source of tension within the Russian elites in 2024 was the purge of the defense ministry,” according to Mikhail Komin, who argues that the removal of the most senior officials there, an action which can be called “rotation through repression” is something other members of the Russian elite fear could happen to them.  
    Those fears, the Russian scholar at the European Council on Foreign Relations says have been “intensified” by the purge has not led the transfer of control over rent flows from one clan to another but rather to the dividing up of what had been one can’t patrimony into several (carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2025/01/shoigu-clan-repressions).
    Doing that, Komin point out, “has never before taken place in a single entity such as the Defense Ministry. Instead, up to now, when one group was removed, another one was put in its place, based on the logic that “this helped prevent inter-elite conflicts.” But this shift may lead to a similar approach to other sectors as well.
    Indeed, he concludes, “dismantling major elite groups and encouraging inter-elite competition might become an approach that the Kremlin ends u using more broadly. It would be a logical way to adapt to a long standoff with the West. But it would also lead to an even greater personalization of power in Russia and increased uncertainty for the elite.”

‘A Well-Executed Closure’ of Russia’s Failing Coal Industry Could Lead to Growth in Many Sectors but Putin Regime Won’t Carry One Out, El Murid Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 19 – Russia’s coal industry is headed to collapse because of the loss of markets and possibly even explosions in the form of massive strikes like those which hit the Soviet Union in the last years of its existence, Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid says.
    Those dangers could be avoided and other parts of the economy could benefit if the Kremlin executed “a well-executed closure” of Russia’s failing coal industry, but tragically, there is no sign the Putin regime will do anything but continue to extract what profit it can from this sector until its death leads to the decline harms the broader economy  (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/23626 reposted at charter97.org/ru/news/2025/2/18/630259/).
    And a decision to close the coal industry is among those which can be made only at the highest levels because it is about shifting resources from one sector to others, something the Putin regime has shown itself largely incapable of doing, preferring instead to exploit an industry until it dies and then walk away.  
    If instead of putting the country on a course to industrial actions and economic decline the regime did take action, the closure of the coal branch could create new marks for alternative energy solutions and the growth of training centers so that miners left without jobs could find new and more productive work.
    But the Putin regime is so obsessed with foreign conquests and not with the improvement of conditions at home that there is little or no possibility that it will even consider such a step let alone take it, El Murid continues. And the consequence of that failure is that the collapse of the coal sector will lead to the collapse of other sectors rather than their growth.
    For a useful discussion of just how bad the situation in Russia’s coal industry already is, see novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/02/21/na-ugle; and for the ways in which its approach death has sparked strikes and is likely to again spark more in a sector few now view as a threat, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/economic-protests-in-russia-likely-to.html.

Another Move toward a New Totalitarianism: St. Petersburg to Use CCTV Cameras on Streets to Identify Passersby by Ethnicity

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 19 – In order to fight crime and prevent the emergence of ethnic enclaves, St. Peterburg plans to upgrade its CCTV cameras on its streets so that the authorities can identify passersby by ethnicity, Oleg Kapitanov, head of the nationalities committee in the city’s government, has announced.
    This kind of ethnic profiling is notoriously inaccurate, but other Russian cities are likely to follow St. Petersburg’s lead, yet another example of Russia’s moves toward totalitarian control of its people (https://nazaccent.ru/content/43560-v-sankt-peterburge-budut-opredelyat-etnicheskuyu-prinadlezhnost-prohozhih-s-pomoshyu-videokamer/).
    Moves toward such totalitarian methods of control are taking place at enormous speed in Putin’s Russia now. At the same time that the use of CCTV cameras to determine ethnicity was announced, the Russian government announced new requirements for doctors to share information about their patients.
    As of March 1, all Russian doctors will be required to share information with the police on patients with mental disorders who are deemed “a threat to others” (publication.pravo.gov.ru/document/0001202407220010?index=1). Activists say this order may soon be expanded to include data on other parts of patients’ lives (theins.ru/history/278606).
    In the last decades of Soviet power, for example, the state required doctors to share information about drug use, homosexuality, and other characteristics that the regime deemed improper. What Moscow is now demanding opens the door to the restoration of such requirements and a further restriction of doctor-patient confidentiality.
    That is likely to mean both that doctors will turn in the information the state wants and the state will take action against those so identified and that those in high risk groups will now avoid going to doctors and getting the treatment they need lest the doctors providing the treatment send information about them to state institutions.  

Pro-War Russian Writers Fear Moscow, Having Won the War in Ukraine, will Lose the Peace in Negotiations,, Filippov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 17 – A large share of pro-war Russia writers fear that Moscow, having achieved many of its goals on the ground in Ukraine, will lose the peace in the course of talks about a settlement according to Ivan Filippov, a specialist now living in the Republic of Georgia on the Z community as the pro-war Russian commentators are known.
    Such people still have absolute faith in Putin, he says, but they are worried that anonymous figures in the Russian government will undercut his goals and give away what the Russian military has achieved in Ukraine, reflecting their view that Russian diplomatists have often done that in the past (holod.media/2025/02/17/chto-volnuet-voenkorov-xxviii/).
    Among the examples of such comments Filippov offers are the following:
•    “Negotiations … How strongly and, unfortunately, massively, our people believe in this word” despite Russia’s experiences in the past (t.me/dolg_mini/132).
•    Unless Moscow “liberates” “the Russians of Odessa, Kharkov, Kherson and Kyiv this war won’t end even as a draw. It will end with the defeat of the Ukes but not with our victory” (t.me/Love_Russia_Beauty/16178).
•    “Let me remind you that we are not at war with Ukraine, but with the global West - the same one that is showered with compliments today. And we are not fighting for “dollars at 80” and not for Starbucks to return to Moscow... there are still at least two ‘D’’s left, have you forgotten? DE-MILITARIZATION and DE-NAZIFICATION. Have these goals been achieved? … Unfortunately, the answer is obvious” (t.me/batalyon_vostok/524).
•    “The leader of the country who has talked endlessly about the importance of sovereignty is not exchanging that for the praise of masters in the West” (t.me/chadayevru/3573).
•    In negotiations, Moscow is “betraying not only Russian national interests but the idea of a multipolar world and harming those allies in the first instance Iran and North Korea who believed the bold declarations of Vladimir Putin” (t.me/zakharprilepin/25708).

Save the Caspian Sea Organization Holds International Conference in Astana

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 17 – The Save the Caspian Sea organization, created by Kazakh activists in December 2024, held an international conference in Astana this week to focus attention on the environmental problems facing the Caspian Sea and the risks that they, together with reduced flows of water into that sea, will lead to its death.
    Apparently modeled on the anti-nuclear Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement that Kazakh activists established at the end of Soviet times, the Save the Caspian Sea group unites environmental activists from a variety of countries in the region and more generally (casp-geo.ru/ekologicheskoe-dvizhenie-spasem-kaspijskoe-more-provelo-konferentsiyu/).
    Just how serious they believe the situation surrounding the Caspian was highlighted in the name of the conference “The Caspian on the Brink – YOU.SEA.PROBLEM and by speeches of the organizer, Vadim Ni, and by participants who focused on the contamination of the sea as well as its drying up.
    It is not surprising that Kazakhs took the lead: they have the precedent of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement, and the problems of the Caspian Sea appear to be more intense in the northern portions of the sea than elsewhere (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/07/northern-sections-of-caspian-sea.html).
    Activists from international environmental protection groups also took part as did experts from Caspian littoral states, although Russia was underrepresented given that its government believes that the problems of the Caspian are temporary and will be corrected in time by natural forces (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/07/german-and-dutch-specialists-say.html).

Anti-War Art in Russia Increasingly Anonymous and Influential, Arkhangelsky Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 14 – Anti-war art in Russia is increasingly anonymous lest the artists producing it be harassed or arrested by the powers that be, critic Andrey Arkhangelsky says; but at the same time, it is increasingly directed not just at the elites as art had been for the last generation but at the mass population, a shift that has made it more influential.
    That pattern is true in the case of graffiti, popular music, poetry and films, the critic says; but it has attracted less attention from the intelligentsia and media precisely because it is anonymous but more from the population because it is directed at them (theins.ru/opinions/andrej-arhangelskij/278795).
    In a new essay, Arkhangelsky suggests that there are now several basic forms of this new form of artistic protest including the placement of stickers on products in stores, the use of *** in some words the officials don’t want said or printed, and writing words in reverse or using other forms of coded language that only those who know the code will understand.
    According to the critic, “the main trend in contemporary anti-war art over the past three years is not so much to stand out as to ‘merge with the landscape’ and dissolve into the every day. Now, art strives to be noticed by the most ordinary people, and this can be interpreted as a kind of repentance and moral compensation” for what Russian art has been for the last 30 years.
    Indeed, Arkhangelsky says, “the most important task of present-day anti-war art in Russia today is the search for a new ‘black square of the 21st century,’ a kind of maximally accessible, minimalist and clear artistic statement that can become a graphic symbol of changes in the future.”  
 

Moscow’s Use of Men from Non-Russian Regions as Cannon Fodder Nothing New but Now Much Worse than Ever Before, ‘Free Idel-Ural’ Activist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 14 – That Moscow has drawn a far greater percentage of men in non-Russian republics and poorer Russian regions to fight and in many cases die in Ukraine than has been the case in Moscow and Russian cities isn’t news. Indeed, it has sparked a debate as to whether this reflects economic factors or more sinister calculations.
    But an activist from the Free Idel Ural movement says that Moscow not only has long discriminated in this way but is now doing so in a more extreme way than earlier (idel-ural.org/archives/na-vojne-s-gytlerovczamy-erzya-pogybaly-v-367-raza-chashhe-chem-moskvychy-chto-yzmenylos-s-teh-por/).
    During World War II, he writes on the basis of official data, 8.05 percent of the residents of Moscow in 1941 died, a figure 3.67 times smaller than that for a district in Mari El for which deaths in the war are reported. There almost 30 percent of the population died fighting in the war against Germany.
    But now, in Putin’s war in Ukraine, the difference in deaths in combat between non-Russians and Muscovites is far greater, with the share of the former dying in the fighting in Ukraine 30 to as many as 70 times the percentage of the latter (idel-ural.org/archives/kak-kreml-czelenapravlenno-unichtozhaet-korennye-narody-v-vojne-vzglyad-iz-ukrainy/).
    Such figures make it difficult to insist that this pattern reflects economic conditions alone and adds weight to the arguments of those who say that Putin is trying to protect Russians especially in the largest cities and doing so at the expense of non-Russians who live further away from the Kremlin.  

Not Only Veterans Invoking War in Ukraine to Get Reduced Sentences and Legal Relief, ‘Vyorstka’ Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 14 – Russians who have returned from fighting in Ukraine routinely invoke their participation in the conflict as a reason their sentences should be reduced or suspended altogether, a major problem given that “almost 500” veterans have been charged with serious crimes since 2022, according to the Vyorstka news agency.
    But veterans aren’t the only one seeking to use the war in this way, Yuly Balakhonova, a Vyorstka journalist says, although their success in doing so has received the most media coverage and generated the most popular concern and even anger (verstka.media/svo-kak-argument-v-sudach).
    Among others who have sought often but not always with success to invoke the war are:
•    Relatives of veterans who point to the way that the war has affected them too;
•    Those who have helped gather aid for soldiers;
•    Russians who have had difficulty finding a job or who have seen their incomes reduced because of the war;
•    Companies that had had difficulty meeting their contractual commitments;
•    The Ministry of Defense itself which has had to stop doing some things because of the war;
•    And even people who have been unable to bury relatives because of difficulties in the Russian funerary industry which have intensified since the conflict began.
This report throws into high relief not only the creativity of Russian lawyers and the willingness of the courts to take the war into consideration in sentencing but also yet another way that the impact of those returning from the war will only grow as many more are likely to do so in the future.  

Between 1944 and 1991, the Soviets Named 431,000 Women Hero Mothers; Between 2008 and Now, the Putin Regime has Awarded Only 118

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 14 – There are few clearer indications of the change in demographic behavior between Soviet times and now than in the number of women awarded the status of  Hero Mothers for raising ten children. In Soviet times, between 1944 when the order was created, 431,000 were; in Putin’s time, between 2008 and 2025, there have been only 118.
    That works out to about 900 a year in the USSR and about seven in Russia today, according to statistics gathered by demographers at the Russian University of Finance (profile.ru/society/nagradnoj-short-list-pochemu-v-sssr-byli-tysyachi-materej-geroin-a-v-rossii-edinicy-1661908/).
    Most of the decline reflects the independence of the former non-Russian republics and hence the loss of populations that had higher birthrates than the ethnic Russians did even then and the rapid urbanization of the population whose city residents did not want to have as many children as their rural ancestors.
    But Marina Izmaylova and Natalya Sedova say that another reason is that the Russian government is far stricter because the amount of money given to each is greater. Not only must the woman have given birth to at least ten children and they must all be living at the time of the award, but the family must meet a variety of other standards.
    The demographers say that the marriage must be officially registered, no family member can have problems with the law, all parents are active in public life, all children have the same father, none have serious diseases, and all are doing well in schools or universities. Soviet officials were far less demanding in deciding who would be made a member of this order.
    The two demographers say that these strictures can be discriminatory especially those which exclude people who have problems not of their own making and thus indicate that they would favor a more relaxed approach and higher numbers of hero mothers. But the large sums Moscow and the regions are prepared to pay women who get that status would make that very expensive, even for a government as nominally pro-family as Vladimir Putin’s.

Ten Percent of Languages in Russian Federation ‘On Brink of Extinction,’ Mari Writer Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 14 – Ten percent of the languages spoken by peoples of the Russian Federation are “on the brink of extinction,” and another 60 percent are “approaching” that status, according to Anatoly Radygin, an ethnic activist who says that the government is not entirely to blame.
    Instead, he suggests, it represents at least in part a moral failing on the part of members of these groups who for one reason or another did not learn their national languages in childhood and aren’t insisting that their children be taught those languages now (vk.com/wall674825577_374 reposted at mariuver.com/2025/02/15/aktivist-bjot-trevogu/).
    Were these parents to do so, they would by their choice be helping their languages to survive; and consequently, they need to face up to their role in the demise of their native languages rather than as is all too often the case now placing all the blame on the Kremin and its Russifying policies.  

Kremlin Tells Russia Media to Play Down Trump Lest He Upstage Putin, ‘Meduza’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 14 – After Trump telephoned Putin on Feb. 12, the Russian Presidential Administration instructed state-run and pro-government media to “downplay Trump’s role and mention the US president less often – lest it appear as though Trump is achieving the results Putin failed to deliver,” according to the Meduza news agency.
    The independent Russian news portal based in Riga says that the Kremlin is “concerned that Russians might start seeing Trump as a more pro-active and decisive leader than Putin.” And “t prevent this, officials directed journalists to emphasize that the outcome of any talks depends entirely on Putin” (meduza.io/feature/2025/02/14/sozvon-putina-i-trampa-kazhetsya-otlichnym-informatsionnym-povodom-dlya-prokremlevskih-smi).
    “A political strategist working with the domestic policy team told Meduza that the Kremlin doesn’t want Trump to be perceived as ‘a strong leader capable of changing the situation.’” That could create a situation in which Putin might “appear passive – in other words, weak – in comparison.”
    The news outlet’s source said that Moscow had “also instructed Russian media outlets to scale back the numbers mentioning Trump, not only with regard to foreign policy but also concerning US domestic policies.” Meduza said that it already sees that some of the Russian government outlets have already adjusted their coverage of the US president.  

Life under Kadyrov Now So Bad Chechens would Welcome Even an Ethnic Russian to Replace Him, Lomayev Suggests

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 14 – That Ramzan Kadyrov is a horrific authoritarian leader isn’t news, but just how bad he may be is suggested by Musa Lomayev who says that life for Chechens under his rule is now so bad that Chechens who fought two wars against Moscow since 1991 would welcome even an ethnic Russian to replace him.
    Lomayev, a Chechen human rights activist and prominent blogger, says that “after Ramzan Kadyrov will come not a Chechen or even a Caucasian but an ethnic Russian who will first of all save the Chechen people” from Kadyrov’s repressions and “give them the chance to more or less breathe for a time” (poligonmedia.appspot.com/musa-lomaev/).
    At that time, Lomayev continues, “all the crimes which have been committed and are being committed now on the territory of the Chechen Republic will be attributed to Ramzan Kadyrov.” To the extent that is the case, Moscow’s reliance on Kadyrov to keep the situation in hand may prove to be an increasingly bad bet.  

West Needs a New Containment Policy to Ensure Defeat of Putin’s System, Three Prominent Russian Scholars Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 13 – Regardless of how Putin’s war in Ukraine ends, the West must adopt a new containment strategy in response not only to the Kremlin leader’s aggression up to now but to prevent more such attacks and to ensure that the West rather than Russia defines the outlines of a new world order, according to three opposition Russian scholars.
    Dmitry Gudov, Vladislav Inozemtsev, and Dmitry Nekrasov suggest that while comparisons with Hitler in 1940 are popular, they ignore two things – Putin has nuclear weapons which Hitler did not, and the Russian people after Ukraine are more like the Russian people in 1945 who didn’t want another war than the Germans of 1939 who believed they could win one.
    Their arguments are presented in a 26-page pamphlet that was prepared for distribution at the just-completed Munich Security Conference (case-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/NEW-CONTAINMENT-case-6-250210-en.pdf in English; and istories.media/opinions/2025/02/14/kak-sderzhat-rossiyu/ in Russian).
    The three say that the West must adopt modified versions of three principles that it applied during its containment of the Soviet Union: first, it must “ramp up the West’s military and technological capabilities and ensure its strategic unity; second, it must work to drain the Russian world of its financial and human capital by welcoming investment and defectors; and third, it must ensure that other countries do not follow Russia by making clear that they will not have the advantages of being part of the Western world if they do.
    “Just like the Cold War antecedent,” the three write, “the updated containment strategy envisions two goals: avoiding an escalation and biding the time that will foil the Putin regime int eh longer term.” There are good reasons to think that these goals are achievable if the West takes these three steps.
    On the one hand, “the technological gap” between Russia and the West “is growing, and a future energy transition will depreciate Putin’s resource and sow dissatisfaction among the Russians.” And on the other, unlike the Soviet regime, Putin’s is a personalist dictatorship – and history shows that such dictatorships have a shorter lifespan.  
    This new containment doctrine will represent a clear shift from the West’s “steady yet fruitless advances of the 1990s and 2000s to a strategic defense against Russia, China and other forces targeting the erosion of the world order,” thereby overcoming the “critical” error the West made earlier “by helping to modernize both” without either” giving real assurances “they were not going to challenge the existing global order.”

Russian Nationalists who Were Opposed to War in Ukraine have Almost Disappeared, SOVA Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 13 – Russian nationalists who initially formed part of the opposition to Putin’s war in Ukraine, with some of them even going to fight for Kyiv against Moscow, have largely disappeared, SOVA says, the result of both repressive measures taken by the Kremlin and the increasing convergence between Putin’s policies and Russian nationalism more generally.
    The regime’s repressive means have drawn greater attention, but the human rights monitoring organization has highlighted the way in which the Kremlin’s growing support for Russian nationalist ideas and involvement of groups like the Russian Community have played a role (sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/publications/2025/02/d50995/).
    This convergence and the support the regime has given to the extreme Russian nationalists has grown, but it may prove counterproductive, SOVA suggests in its latest report. On the one hand, the use of groups like the Russian Community for police work highlights the relative weakness of the official siloviki.
    And on the other, the regime’s willingness to provide arms and training to the far right and the constant militarization of these groups means that groups now allied with the government may turn on it either with regard to specific issues or against the regime as a whole, much as the radical right did to a certain extent at the end of tsarist times.

80 Percent of Islamist Radicals in North Caucasus Children of Siloviki and Political Elites, Experts Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 13 –Moscow publicists have long insisted that young people from the poorer strata of society with few prospects are the group most likely to turn to Islamist radicalism and take part in militant actions (e.g., volg.mk.ru/articles/2017/04/28/pochemu-terroristy-prikryvayutsya-islamom.html).
    But that assumption has been challenged in recent times by the participation of children of elites in Islamist violence in Dagestan (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/children-of-elites-in-non-russian.html and kavkazr.com/a/radikaljnaya-zolotaya-molodezhj-v-dagestane-syna-eks-chinovnika-obvinili-v-napadenii-na-politseyskogo/33313697.html).
    And it has been shattered by those like Akhmet Yarlykapov, a specialist on the North Caucasus at Moscow’s MGIMO, who are impressed by a study that found that “about 80 percent of the supporters of radical ideology and forms of struggle [there] are children of the siloviki, businessmen, and employees of the administration” (lenta.ru/news/2024/06/24/islamoved-ob-yasnil-verbovku-rodstvennikov-chinovnika-dlya-teraktov-v-dagestane/).
    Other experts agree. Umar Khitinav, a Dagestani activist, says bluntly that the view that people “go underground due to lack of social lifts is wrong: these are not Latin American cartels or the mafia but rather ideological formations” and draw on those who believe in those ideas (kavkazr.com/a/radikaljnaya-zolotaya-molodezhj-v-dagestane-syna-eks-chinovnika-obvinili-v-napadenii-na-politseyskogo/33313697.html).
    And Aleksandr Cherkasov, a Memorial human rights activist, says that it is no surprise that children of the elite are being radicalized. They “see the distance between the slogans proclaimed by their fathers and the reality in which their parents live,” and they view radical Islam as a means of escaping from that conflicted situation and “the shackles” it imposes.

Birthrates Remain High and Life Expectancy Increasing in Central Asian Countries

Paul Goble    
    Staunton, Feb. 13 – In the final decades of the existence of the USSR, many observers focused on the rapid increase in the size of birthrates in the Muslim republics of Central Asia and increasing life expectancy there as well. Since that time, attention to those trends has declined, but they are almost as large now as they were 40 years ago.
    Now, the Bugin.info portal has provided the most recent data for four of the five countries there -- Turkmenistan is not included as is still often the case in such surveys – and the figures it gives are striking and suggest these countries will continue to grow rapidly and be the source of immigrant pressure well into the future (bugin.info/detail/rekordy-rozhdaemosti-i-dol/ru).
    Over the last year, the population of Tajikistan has grown 2.2 percent, with the number of births having increased by 4.8 percent and life expectancy risen as well. The population of Kazakhstan grew over the same period by 1.2 percent, with three percent more births in 2024 than in 2023.
    The population of Kyrgyzstan grew by two percent with five percent more births than a year earlier, and the population of Uzbekistan was up 1.6 percent over the same period. That overall growth is less than the rise in the number of births reflects outmigration rather than declines in life expectancy which in fact are increasing across the region.  

Alphabet Change Dividing Populations and Reducing Literacy Rates in Central Asian Countries, Uzbek Scholar Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 13 – The decision of some Central Asian countries to shift from a Cyrillic-based alphabet or even to modify in part the Cyrillic alphabets the Soviet system put in place has divided the populations of these countries between older groups who know the one and younger who know the other and reduced overall literacy rates, Gulnara Mansurova says.
    The Uzbek academician argues that while the shift from a Cyrillic-based alphabet to a Latin script-based one may ultimately help people in these countries learn English and integrate in the broader world, these short-term consequences have fueled opposition to alphabet change (stanradar.com/news/full/56794-gramotnost-v-agonii-kak-smena-alfavitov-razrushaet-obrazovanie-tsentrazii.html).
    Such opposition has appeared not only in countries that have begun the process but in others considering it, Mansurova says; but also in places where there has not been a total shift from one alphabet to another but even to the partial modification of the existing alphabets to better reflect the sound values of the language.
    The consequences she points to have been known widely and for a long time. Indeed, the objections to alphabet change now are nearly identical to those made almost a century ago when Moscow first changed the alphabets of the Central Asian languages from Arabic to Latin script and then shortly thereafter from Latin script to Cyrillic.
    But the problems such shifts entail may be even larger now or at least longer-lasting than they were then. On the one hand, the populations of these countries are far more literate now than they were then and thus negative impacts on literacy are greater. And on the other, the Central Asian regimes do not have the power or will the Soviet government had to force changes.

Moscow’s New Changes in How Immigrants are Counted Behind Reports Their Actual Number is Increasing at Unprecedented Rates, ‘To Be Precise’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 13 – Rosstat has just reported that in 2024 a record number of immigrants came to Russia, but that figure is an artefact of how Moscow gathers and counts information about arrivals than it does any actual changes, Danya Gurbanova and Ilya Klimkin of the To Be Precise portal say.
    The two journalists point out that Moscow now counts as immigrants people it did not count as such earlier such as students and uses electronic rather than paper reports about their number and the number of those in other categories (tochno.st/materials/v-2024-godu-v-rossiiu-vieexalo-rekordnoe-cislo-migrantov-kak-minimum-za-poslednie-26-let-veroiatno-eto-sviazano-s-izmeneniiami-uceta).
    Demographers with whom Gurbanova and Klimkin spoke say that it is impossible to make comparisons before of data sets before and after these accounting changes and to tell exactly how large any distortions introduced are. That will be possible only if Rosstat releases more information than it has up to now.
    They base their conclusion on several cases over the last two decades where widely reported changes in the number of immigrants to Russia had less to do with changes in the actual number than changes in the way data about them were gathered and then collated and reported. But they call for caution in any use of new data sets until more is known about them.  

Russia’s Soft Power in Decline since 2007, Moscow is Using ‘Sharp Power’ Instead, Grantseva Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 13 – The current dismantling of American government soft power institutions has increased attention to what has been happening with their counterparts in Russia. According to Vera Grantseva, Russia’s soft power has been in decline since at least 2007 and instead has been ramping up what she calls its “sharp power” instead.
    The Russian specialist on public diplomacy at the Paris Institute of Political Studies says that unlike soft power which seeks to gain support for its country of origin by offering a positive message, sharp power seeks to win its positions by attacking others and sowing discord in their ranks (meduza.io/episodes/2025/02/10/kak-rossiya-ispolzuet-svoyu-myagkuyu-silu-i-pravda-li-chto-vliyanie-kremlya-v-mire-vyroslo-dazhe-nesmotrya-na-voynu-v-ukraine).
    Grantseva argues that Russia made this shift as it became more authoritarian and the state exerted ever greater control over the traditional tools of soft power – educational exchanges, recruitment of students, and the like. And as that has happened, “its soft power had taken on more ‘destructive’ and ‘negative’ aims.”
    Now, in contrast to the past, Russian efforts in this sector seek “to ‘destabilize and undermine’ instead of fostering cooperation and finding common ground.” And “today, Russain influence looks for ‘weak points’ in its adversaries.”
    As that happened, Moscow devoted less attention to “disseminating Russian perspectives in a world dominated by Western and especially American thinking” and shifted “from defense to offense,” especially in such projects as Russia Today, “which shed its earlier goals of building cultural and educational ties and was effectively ‘repurposed as a tool of aggression.’”

Kirill’s Crack about Critic Possibly Being from Western Ukraine Speaks Volumes about Moscow’s Attitudes about Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 12 – Until very recently, it was a commonplace among Western commentators on Ukraine that Western Ukraine, the portion that Stalin annexed to the USSR, was fundamentally different from the rest of that republic and even was the primary source of anti-Russian attitudes in Ukraine as a whole.
    But sociological investigations by Ukrainian scholars have shown that there has been almost a complete convergence in attitudes about Russia between Western Ukraine and the rest of that country (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/01/putins-invasion-has-led-to-almost.html).
    Consequently, talk in the West about divisions between Western Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine as far as attitudes toward Russia are concerned has become less common. But strikingly, it remains a prominent feature of discussions in Moscow about Ukraine and even appears to shape Kremlin views about how Ukraine might be partitioned to Moscow’s advantage.
    The latest example come from Moscow Patriarch Kirill who snapped back at a priest from Mozhaisk who said the church should be trying to help Russians find the way to Christ rather than to become better patriots of the Russian state and active supporters of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine (meduza.io/en/feature/2025/02/12/are-you-from-western-ukraine).
    Kirill said that he’d “never heard that before” and then pointedly asked whether the priest was “by any chance from Western Ukraine?” The Meduza news agency reported that the hall “filled with the sound of laughter and applause,” especially after the patriarch told the priest to “go sit down and seriously reflect on what you just blurted out.”
    But Kirill’s remark is no laughing matter. Instead, it reflects both his unstinting support of almost anything Putin does and the belief both in the Kremlin and in the Patriarchate that Ukrainian opposition to Moscow is rooted in Western Ukraine rather than being part of the mentality of Ukrainians in the country as a whole.
    That has not only sparked suggestions in Moscow that Stalin made a major mistake by annexing Western Ukraine but also forms the core of Putin’s ideas about partitioning Ukraine where he assumes that without Western Ukraine, an eastern Ukraine annexed to Russia won’t be a problem (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/stepashin-says-stalin-made-major.html).
    That notion is almost as certainly wrong as it is widespread in Moscow, and that in turn means that even if the West stops supporting Ukraine and Moscow is allowed to annex large swaths of Ukraine to Russia, that will not end the conflict. Ukrainians in the east just like Ukrainians in the West will continue to resist whatever Moscow elites think.  

Lukashenka Asks Poland and Vatican Not to Send Any More Polish Catholic Priests to Belarus

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 11 – Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka has again asked Poland and the Vatican not to dispatch Polish priests to his country because of his belief that they are behind or at least in support of groups opposed to his rule (kresy24.pl/lukaszenka-koscioly-maja-dzialac-jak-kolchozy-bez-ksiezy-z-polski/).
    After Belarus became independent in 1991, Poland was one of the major sources of Catholic priests for the new and reopened Roman Catholic churches in that country. But Minsk has become ever less welcoming because of its fears that the Roman Catholics are working against Lukashenka.
    Between 1989 and 2024, the number of Catholic congregations in Belarus rose from 282 to 500, but most of that growth occurred in the first decade of that period and little of it in the last five years when Minsk has adopted a more hostile attitude (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/orthodox-church-only-confession-in.html).  
    Lukashenka is also being pushed to oppose Catholic priests from Poland and the West by Moscow. There, both the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate are worried about Catholicism in Belarus, with the former fearful that the church’s rise will threaten Putin’s ally Alyaksandr Lukashenka and the latter that this trend will weaken the Moscow church in Belarus.
    These fears have been growing over the last several years, following the prominent role Catholics played in the protests following the last “elections” in Belarus and the spread of autocephaly movements among Orthodox churches in the post-Soviet states (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/04/moscows-greatest-fear-about-orthodox.html).
    And they have fed anti-Catholic attitudes both in Moscow and in Minsk (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/01/anti-catholicism-spreading-in-moscow.html) and have now led to direct attacks on the Vatican for what one Russian author says is its direct involvement in the rise of an anti-Russian and anti-Belarusian Catholic movement in Belarus.

Despite Official Opposition, At Least Half of Chechnya’s Population has Turned to Faith Healers and Fortune Tellers since 2009

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 12 – Ramzan Kadyrov has not only promoted Islamic values but cracked down on those who turn to faith healers and fortune tellers, forcing the latter to publicly apologize in often humiliating circumstances. But despite that, since 2009, at least 700,000 Chechens have visited such people often reportedly in search of a kind word and hope.
    In that year, Kadyrov created the Grozny Center for Islamic Medicine and put it in charge of this program and turning Chechens away from such practices by demanding that they publicly apologize for taking part (kavkazr.com/a/k-gadalkam-idut-za-nadezhdoy-kak-vlasti-chechni-presleduyut-okkuljtistov/33309770.html).
    On the one hand, such efforts are consistent with Islam’s ban on such practices; but on the other, the insistence of public apologies is not because the Muslim faith also opposes humiliating forms of punishment which such public and often televised apologies by those involved certainly are.
    And like most things in Kadyrov’s Chechnya, there is a clear double standard between what the powers there punish ordinary people for doing and what they allow officials to get away with, as the famous case of the head of the Gudermes district showed after  he went to a healer to try to help him become a republic minister (tsn.ua/svit/skandal-u-chechni-chinovnik-poprosiv-chaklunku-privorozhiti-kadirova-282324.html).

Restricting or Even Banning Abortions Won’t Boost Population Growth, Russian Sociologist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 11 – Restricting or even banning completely access to abortions will not boost Russia’s population growth and has “more a symbolic character,” according to a Russian sociologist. The reason is simple: the number of abortions has long been falling because the country’s “contraceptive culture” has fundamentally changed.
    The sociologist whom Novaya Gazeta cites anonymously lest he and the publication get in trouble says that Russian men and women now prefer safe sex, significantly reducing the need for abortions safe for “exceptional circumstances” (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/02/11/chislo-abortov-i-tak-neuklonno-snizhaetsia).
    Bans only lead to a criminal record, and the way Russia is proceeding in this area, with bans in some federal subjects but not others, ignores the fact that people can travel from places where they are banned to others where they are not, completing vitiating the intentions of the authors of such bans, the scholar continues.
    What would boost birthrates, he says, “in the first instance,” would be an improvement in the quality of life of the population, real support for families and improving conditions for the education of children. The state must stop looking only at births and focus instead on the situation of children and their parents over the longer term.
    Not all the news on this front is bleak, the sociologist says. Those portions of the population given to a larger number of children (three or more) are now having more children than they did a decade ago. But those are the poorest Russians in rural areas and Muslims, hardly the groups the Kremlin wants to be seen as counting on.
    But the larger part of the population now makes plans for how many children it will have, and thus declining birthrates are a measure of how potential parents see the impact of children on their own life styles and how they see the future of the country as affecting any children whom they may have.   
    Consequently, the declining number of children in Russia is far less about the changing size of the prime child-bearing cohort of women than about these factors – and unless the country changes direction, the number of births is hardly likely to go up by much because the size of that cohort isn’t going to expand by a significant amount anytime soon.  

Deaths Now Exceed Births in St. Petersburg and Even More in Surrounding Leningrad Oblast

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 12 – In St. Petersburg over the course of 2024, there were 13  deaths for every ten births; and in the surrounding Leningrad Oblast, the situation was even more dire: in that region, there were fewer than six births for every 10 deaths, according to Aleksandr Kukushkin, the head of the Petersburg State Statistical Office.
    Those overarching figures conceal something even worse: births in St. Petersburg fell from 8.6 per 1000 residents in 2023 to 8.5 per 1000 in 2024, a trend that also occurred in the oblast (https://www.rosbalt.ru/news/2025-02-12/smertnost-v-peterburge-v-2024-godu-znachitelno-prevysila-rozhdaemost-5321923).
    Not surprisingly, Kukushkin placed the blame exclusively on the declining size in the cohort of women of prime child-bearing age. It truly has fallen – by 18 percent since 2016 – and plays a major role in the declining number of births. But it doesn’t explain all of that or any of the large and apparently rising number of deaths.
    Those figures also and perhaps even more importantly reflect a lack of confidence in the future with regard to birthrates and Putin’s healthcare optimization and sanctions which have left Russians with fewer opportunities to get care or necessary medicines, but pointing to those factors would likely have been politically suicidal for the Petersburg statistics official.  

Moscow’s All Too Obvious Lack of a Nationality Policy Could Bring On Another 1991, Kabanov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 12 – Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee and a member of the Presidential Human Rights Council, says that the Kremlin “instead of coming up with a genuine nationalities policy” and taking real steps to implement it, “is continuing to imitate feverish activity” by means of agitation and propaganda alone.
    The country’s leadership seems to believe that constant talk about international friendship is “sufficient,” but that is not the case, Kabanov says; and if the Kremlin continues in this way, the consequences could be as disastrous as were those of a similar failure by the regime at the end of Soviet times (iarex.ru/news/145290.html).
    Such declarations about “friendship of the peoples … do not restrain the growth (in the first instance primarily due to immigrants) of Russophobia, radicalism and anti-Russian sentiments aimed at destroying out country,” the Russian official says, in one of the sharpest attacks on the Kremlin’s nationality policy in recent years.
    By focusing on immigration as a problem, Kabanov keeps his words within the framework of acceptable discourse; but the implications of his remarks are far broader and cover a range of issues that at least at present the Putin regime seems to believe it can contain by a whack-a-mole approach of repression.
    And Kabanov makes two additional points which strongly suggest that he is concerned not just about immigrant but about the lack of a nationality policy in general under Putin. On the one hand, he suggests talk about Russia as a multinational and poly-religious country being used as a mantra is dangerous.
    Supporting that principle is fine, he says, if it were not the case that “in practice, this formula did not turn into an attempt to reformat our state into a non-national and non-confessional one.”
    And on the other, the Kremlin seems to have forgotten that constant repetition of one and the same terms, in this case multinational and poly-religious, does not mean that these things will “automatically take root” but in fact could mean that such repetition may cause them to be rejected and with them the system to insists on these terms but doesn’t implement them.

Putin’s Use of Bans Counterproductive but Continue Because He’s Detroyed Alternative Means of Social Management, El Murid Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 12 – Anatoly Nesmiyan, who blogs under the screen name El Murid, says that it is becoming obvious even to the Russian government that the Putin regime’s use of total bans on this or that activity are counterproductive. But the Kremlin continues to use them because it has destroyed alternative means of social management.
    Indeed, El Murid says, there are now “zero possibilities” for the regime to do otherwise; and Russian management today is “reactive,” responding to events that have already occurred but incapable of proactive measures to guide the country (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/23507 resposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=67AC54D57AB96).
    According to the popular Russian blogger, “there has been no talk of any proactive, much less project-based management for about ten years, and the transition five years ago to total terror in relation to the managed object only emphasizes the complete incapacity of the authorities.”
    And that means this: Today, “we are present not just at the decline but at the growing collapse of the regime. But like any complex large-scale process, this is a lengthy one; and we, being inside a disintegrating system, cannot see the entire picture, much like passengers on board an airplane flying toward disaster.”

Economic Protests in Russia Likely to Arise in Specific Professions rather than in the Population at Large, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 11 – Many observers think that high inflation or the collapse of the national currency will lead to protests, Vladislav Inozemtsev says; but in fact, protests are far more likely to come from particular professional groups that have lost out for one reason or another and where the causes and those responsibility of these losses can be easily identified.
    Inflation and currency collapse are things which in the minds of ordinary Russians are phenomena which “affect everyone” and thus “it is pointless to fight,” the Russian economist and commentator says. But the problems of certain branches precisely because they are narrower are more likely to produce protests (moscowtimes.ru/2025/02/11/gde-tonko-tam-i-porvetsya-ili-opasnoe-bezrazlichie-rossiiskie-vlastei-a154884).
    The problems of the coal industry both past and present are an example of this. Miners went out on strike in the past far more often and massively than other groups precisely because they were affected by the policies of those running that sector, Inozemtsev says. And it is entirely possible that the same thing will happen again.
    Consequently, the Kremlin should be paying attention to such sectors and be working on ways to ameliorate the problems their members face rather than assuming that because rising inflation and exchange rate issues are not driving Russians in general into the streets, that the problems of groups like the miners won’t have that result.  

Ethnic Russian Nation Faces ‘Replacement’ by Immigrants Unless Moscow Takes Action, Krupnov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 9 – Yuri Krupnov, a much-published Moscow demographer, says that the ethnic Russian nation replaces “replacement” by immigrants in the coming decades unless it takes action both the promote strong Russian families with more children and to limit the influx of immigrants.
    In an 8,000-word interview for Kazan’s Business-Gazeta, he thus gives new prominence in Russia to the “replacement” theories now circulating in some Western countries and to those in Russia who want to radically limit or even expel migrant workers from the Russian Federation (business-gazeta.ru/article/662599).
    And in dramatic fashion, Krupnov warns that the replacement of Russians by non-Russian immigrants as the dominant population group in the country will happen even sooner that the projected decline of the total Russian population to half of its current size by the end of this century.
    Unfortunately, as events in the Year of the Family have shown, Russian officials are not taking this seriously and report statistics on the growth in family size among all families in the Russian Federation, ignoring the reality that an increasing share of ethnic Russian families are “childfree” and that most of the growth is among non-Russians indigenous and immigrant.
    Unless that changes, Krupnov suggests, a country called Russia may well continue to exist but it won’t have an ethnic Russian population.

Arctic is More than the Ocean and Moscow’s Approach Must be More than Building Atomic Icebreakers, Eidelman Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 9 – If you listen to Vladimir Putin, you might think that the Arctic is only the ocean and atomic icebreakers are the only tool to master all of it, Tamara Eidelman says. But the Arctic includes a vast land area in Russia and atomic icebreakers are not only costly but ineffective in dealing either with the sea or the land involved.  
    The Kremlin leader repeatedly talks about the natural resources on the floor of the Arctic Sea and about the Northern Sea Route and stresses that Russia’s nine icebreakers are making it possible for Russia to dominate this sea, the Russian commentator says (tamara-eidelman.com/p/razgovory-o-vazhnom-arktika-territoriya-razvitiya  reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=67A8F3ADA3E6B).
    But Putin says almost nothing about the fact that the atomic icebreakers cost far more than they contributor and nearly nothing at all about the peoples who live in the Russian North, some for centuries and others because they were and continue to be dispatched there as prisoners of the state.
    Tragically because what Putin says determines what the Russian media and educational establishment communicate, many people assume he is right both in what he stresses and what he ignores. But those few who have looked more closely know he is wrong on both counts, Eidelman continues.
    One of the best ways to learn about the realities of the Russian North is to watch some of the remarkable films such as “Vorkuta. Hostages of the North” that have been shot about it over the years, and another is to turn to the special course prepared by the Arzamas portal (arzamas.academy/courses/76).
    Unless Russians and others learn the truth about the North, the world is at great risk of having ever more atomic icebreakers but losing both the Arctic Ocean and the lands around that sea as a result of environmental degradation and the destruction of the human communities there, Eidman concludes.

Because of Teacher Shortage, Russia’s Educators Could Speak Out with Little Risk of Repression, Chernyshov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 9 – Most Russian liberals and many in the West believe that teachers in the Russian Federation do not protest against the war or speak out against other official policies because they lack of tradition of doing so and fear that they will face repression if they go against the state, Sergey Chernyshov says.
    But in fact, the Russian scholar who now works at the University of Bochum in Germany says, if teachers do speak out collectively, they are unlikely to face sanctions from the authorities, although if they do so individually, the risks may be higher (themoscowtimes.com/2025/02/05/russias-education-system-is-capable-of-resistance-when-they-want-to-be-a87874).
    The reason for that, Chernyshov continues, is that Russia faces a serious teacher shortage; and officials don’t want to fire or otherwise punish educators lest they be forced to try to come up with replacements in the middle of the academic year. – a conclusion he draws from a case where teachers in a Altai school and nothing happened to them.
    Other teachers and perhaps those in other fields where there are critical shortages of personnel should take note of this reality and be ready to protest given that these shortages are a real political resource and one that if used carefully will force the powers that be to back down or even make concessions.  
    Unfortunately, Chernyshov says, that reality is something that neither the Putin regime nor the Russian opposition want to recognize, the former because it doesn’t want to admit that it would back down and the latter because it is far more comfortable insisting that Russian teachers and others obey because of the fear of punishment.  

Number of Scientific Researchers in Russia in Decline Since 1991 On Course to Fall Further, Moscow State University Scholars Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 9 – Since the moment of the disintegration of the USSR, two scholars at Moscow State University say, “the number of people professionally involved in scientific research and development in Russia have continuously declined,” raising questions about the prospects for such research in the future.
    The two scholars are Ye.V. Karavayeva and V.V. Malandin. Their article, “Problems of Cadres Supply for Scientific and Technological Development of Russia Affecting New strategy for the Development of Education until 2040” (in Russian in Vyshyeye Obrazovaniye v Rossii, 34:1 (2025) is available at vovr.elpub.ru/jour/article/view/5317/2416.
    It is discussed in detail in today’s issue of Nakanune by Yevgeny Chernyshov who now teachers at the University of Bochum in Germany (nakanune.ru/articles/123131/). Among the most important data points he presents are the following:
•    While the number of Russian researchers has been constantly falling, the corresponding figures for other major countries have been in every case constantly rising.
•    Between 2015 and 2023, the number of candidates of science involved in research and development fell from 83,000 to 70,000 and the number of doctors of science from 4400 to 1200, 17 percent and roughly four times respectively.
•    Young scientists overwhelmingly have a negative impact about their future in Russian institutions. Not surprisingly the average age of researchers in Russia is 46, “five years more than the age of those involved in the economy,” and a quarter of the Russian researchers are over 60.”
•    Between 2000 and 2023, the number of scientific research centers in Russia fell from 2686 to 1517, while the number of higher educational institutions involved in such research increased but typically by overburdened teaching faculty.
•    Ever fewer young graduates are going into scientific and development research.
•    “Almost 50 percent” of government-funded positions in this sector are in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
•    Moscow is increasing financing of science in 2025 but then plans to keep funding unchanged for the years after that.

A Guide to the Most Popular Media Outlets in Four of Five Central Asian Countries

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 9 – The Bugun portal provides a comprehensive description of the most popular media outlets in four of the five Central Asian countries (Turkmenistan is not covered), the size of their staffs, the salaries they pay, and their readership/viewership as well as the shifting balances among languages and between print and electronic forms.
    For those using these sources or seeking to learn about these countries, this is perhaps the best guide ever published as it compares the media in these countries and provides online addresses for these publications. It should be on the desk of all those working on that region (bugin.info/detail/samye-populiarnye-smi-tsen/ru).
    Here is an example of the information provided about Kazakhstan’s Tengrinews.kz. It was founded in 2010, focuses on daily news, is privately financed, has approximately 50 staffers, has a pay scale lower than most other outlets in that country, issues news in both Russian and Kazakh, has an average of 1.5 million visitors monthly, and uses all the major social networks.

Russian Officials Brag about 8-Hour Flight Time between Moscow and Chukotka but Ignore Days and Weeks It Takes Passengers and Cargo to Get to Airports in North, Sulyma Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 9 – Russian officials like to brag that jet planes have reduced the time it takes to get from Moscow to Chukotka in the extreme northeast of the Russian Federation, but they ignore the days and even weeks it takes for passengers and cargo to and from the airport there because of the absence of year-round roads, Sergey Sulyma says.
    Roads that are passable when the ground freezes are impassable when it melts, the Russian historian who specializes in transportation issues in the high north says; and consequently, people have to plan for long delays when travelling or dispatching or receiving goods (iarex.ru/articles/145222.html).
    The delays are so enormous that talk about the jet age is incomplete unless one acknowledges the absence of roads that can be used when the weather warms up – or even in some districts the absence of roads, even unpaved, altogether, Sulyma reports. And thus all the talk about speeding up of movement along this axis in the country is misplaced.
    He points out that “logistics in the North is a special sphere of activity with its unique characteristics and difficulties. Its complexity reflects the severe climate, territories not connected by reliable roads, insufficiently developed infrastructure, and high transportation expenses.”
    All that should be factored in any discussions about transportation times and costs, but officials usually ignore this problem, Sulyma says; and independent specialists tend to follow their claims without checking up as to whether they are true of not, something that reenforces the current underinvestment in roads and bridges in the North.  

Ukraine War Transforming Russian Nation Just as Profoundly as It is the Ukrainian One, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 9 – Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, many commentators have focused on the way that war has become an important part of the genesis of a new Ukrainian nation; but almost none have focused on how it is playing an analogous function for the Russian nation, Vladimir Pastukhov says.
    “I am deeply convinced that a completely different Russian society will emerge from the war than the one which entered it,” the London-based Russian analyst says (t.me/v_pastukhov/1384 reposted at  echofm.online/opinions/ot-novyh-russkih-k-drugim-russkim).
    That is because the war in Ukraine marks “the end of the history of post-communism with its ‘new Russians’ and the beginning of a fundamentally different era … the main character of which will be ‘the other Russian,’” a completely different person “not having a direct historical and cultural connection with its predecessors.”
    The New Russian of the last 40 years “remained a ‘recast’ Soviet and therefore imperial man, Pastukhov says. Indeed, he says he is “beginning to think that the USSR was really the highest and final form of Russian imperialism,” while “’the other Russian’ is an emasculated and distilled product of the new era in which everything Soviet has been washed away.”
    The other Russian, he continues, “actively imitates an ‘imperial’ one, but in fact he isn’t one. Instead, ‘the other Russian’ of today has the same relationship to the Russian and Soviet empires as the modern Egyptian does to the empire of the pharaohs: He simply lives on the territory of the former empire” but lacks direct connection with it or its symbols.
    “In this sense,” the London-based analyst says, “Putin’s ‘illiberal empire’ is an oxymoron: It may be anti-liberal, although that is doubtful; but it is certainly not an empire.” The other Russians who form it are “no longer” part of an empire but they are not yet a nation,” although the war in Ukraine may yet make them one.
    According to Pastukhov, the Kremlin has a clearer understanding of this than do its opponents and is working to institutionalize itself by shaping the youngest members of society, hoping to “mold golems from ‘the inhabitants’ in the hope of sitting out ‘behind the battlements’ for the time required for the golems to speak.”

Denunciations Again Becoming 'Socially Approved' in Russia, Arkhipova Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 9 – Denunciations are becoming “a socially approved action” in Putin’s Russia, Aleksandr Arkhipova says; and the threat of such denunciations are becoming an ever more powerful means of social control than even the use of denunciations by officials to whom they are sent.
    The independent Russian anthropologist who writes the Fun Anthropology telegram channel is collecting examples of both official calls for denouncing migrants, minorities or opponents of the war and the threat of denunciations by some members of the public against others (t.me/anthro_fun/3296 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/soczialnoe-odobrenie-donositelstva).
    In her latest telegram post, she provides examples of both and calls on her readers to send her additional ones.

Unit Consisting of Soldiers from Various Non-Russian Republics Formed to Fight Russian Invaders in Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 7 – Since Putin began his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022, representatives of various non-Russian nations from the Russian Federation have formed independent units of their own to fight alongside the Ukrainian army against the Russian invaders.
    But an important breakthrough has happened: a unit not consisting of soldiers from just a single nationality from the Russian Federation but one including representatives of a variety of indigenous nations has appeared in Ukraine (vot-tak.tv/84797809/nomad-interview reposted and translated at abn.org.ua/en/interviews/a-unit-consisting-of-representatives-of-indigenous-nations-of-russia-has-appeared-in-ukraine/).
    Formed earlier this winter, the unit called Nomad includes men from Kalmykia, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan and Sakha. It is led by a Kalmyk but explicitly defines itself as a multi-national force and says it will welcome representatives from other non-Russian nationalities into its ranks.
    Three things make this development important. First, it gives new content to the multi-nationalism of the opposition to Putin’s war and the movements to decolonize Russia. Second, it will make it more difficult for Moscow to play one nationality off against another, the favored tactic of Kremlin leaders.
    And third – and arguably the most important – it represents the triumph of Prometheanism as the core of Kyiv’s strategy, one adopted from the pre-war Polish movement of that name. (On that movement and its adoption by Kyiv, see my article at saratoga-foundation.org/p/prometheanism-becomes-the-centerpiece.) 

NB: Vadim Shtepa of Region.Expert reminds that the Siberian Battalion, which was founded earlier, was also multi-national. (On that unit, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/08/siberian-battalion-commander-in-ukraine.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/09/siberian-battalion-seeks-victory-for.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/in-war-for-consciousness-of-russias.html. But that unit was and remains regionalist in its focus. The new Nomad Unit is explicitly about cooperation among non-Russians -- and that is the point I wanted to make however clumsily and incompletely here.

    

Chechens Living in Georgia Fearful Greater Russian Role There Turning to More Radical Versions of Islam

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 7 – The Chechens living in the Republic of Georgia and especially those in the Pankisi Gorge are divided about the protests against the ruling party in that country, but many of them are fearful that Russian influence in Georgia will increase and bring with it an influx of Kadyrov supporters and are turning to more radical versions of Islam.
    That is perhaps the most important message of a survey of the attitudes of Georgia’s Chechens to ongoing protests against the ruling party offered by Mairbek Vachagayev who writes for Radio Liberty’s North Caucasian service (kavkazr.com/a/gruzinskie-chechentsy-i-protesty-v-tbilisi/33303222.html).
    How far this radicalization of opinion has gone is uncertain, but it does mean that the Chechens of Georgia are going to be increasingly at odds with the Chechen diaspora in Europe (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/01/secularist-and-democratic-ichkerian.html) and may ultimately be influenced by the increasingly Islamic message emanating from Ramzan Kadyrov (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/kadyrov-working-to-create-chechnya.html).