Arctic Council Must Include Russian Indigenous Leaders Now in Exile or It will Be Allowing Moscow to Play an Undeserved Role, Activists Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 11 – As the chairmanship of the Arctic Council passes from Norway to Denmark, leaders of the numerically small peoples of the Russian North who’ve been forced into exile, are calling on the Council to include their groups to be included in expert meetings the Arctic Council regularly assembles.

    If that doesn’t happen and the Council continues to rely on ethnic organizations from the Russian Federation, they say, Moscow will be given an undeserved place in Council activities from which it has been otherwise suspended given Moscow’s control over these institutions (thebarentsobserver.com/news/call-for-arctic-council-to-include-russian-indigenous-groups-in-exile-in-working-groups/429604).

    At least some of the countries on the Arctic Council are sympathetic to this appeal and are likely to act on it. But others may see it as threatening east-west conversations by threatening understandings about who can play a role in these meetings that have been followed more or less consistently in the past.

    More than that, however, this case is a reminder of why it is so critical to follow what the Kremlin is doing in the NGO area because often Russian NGOs continue to be treated as genuine even when Western governments recognize Russian officialdom as a danger and take actions against it.

    Indeed, the handling of Russian NGOs is the latest update of the Cold War-era lament by some in the West that Moscow sends us spies and we treat them like diplomats while we send them diplomats and they treat them like spies.  

Moscow Readying New Moves to Further Restrict Ethnic Diasporas

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 12 – At the end of last month, Russia's Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs submitted draft legislation that would significantly restrict the ability of diaspora organizations in the Russian Federation to accept any foreign funding (nazaccent.ru/content/43877-fadn-vneslo-v-pravitelstvo-zakonoproekt-ob-ogranichenii-finansirovaniya-nacionalnyh-nko-iz-za-rubezha/).

    Because that is a government proposal, it is virtually certain to pass and become law. Now, the LDPR has proposed also preventing anyone who has been declared a foreign agent to serve in a leadership position in any diaspora organization (nazaccent.ru/content/43932-v-gosdume-predlozhili-zapretit-inoagentam-rukovodit-ili-finansirovat-diaspory/).

    The fate of that proposal is less certain, although in the current environment, it too is likely to pass and become part of what is an expanded Kremlin effort to restrict the activities of diaspora groups inside the Russian Federation. The most likely to be hit first are those whose diasporas are large and especially active.

    Among the first to be targeted in this new campaign are groups like the Circassians which Moscow has been trying to take total control of and those like the numerically small peoples of the North and Siberia who are so small in numbers that they are unlikely to be able to form diaspora organizations unless they have outside help.

Tatar Youth Organization Formed in Orenburg Last Year Increasingly Active

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 12 – Berge, Tatar for “Together,” is a Tatar youth organization in Orenburg, the land bridge between Bashkortostan and the nations of the Middle Volga, on the one hand, and Kazakhstan, on the other. Formed last fall, it is led by Ilfat Batyrshin, who has now given an extensive interview about it.

    The 27-year-old chef and businessman is a native of a Tatar village in Orenburg and has sought to make contact with other Tatars in that oblast and promote the survival and flourishing of his national community (milliard.tatar/news/ilfat-batyrsin-interes-u-tatarskoi-molodezi-k-svoei-kulture-v-orenburgskoi-oblasti-est-xotya-popadayutsya-i-te-komu-eto-bezrazlicno-7446).

    According to Batyrshin, the group operates under the slogan “We are Together. We Can Do It and We are Moving Forward;” but he acknowledges that most of those who take part in its activities are products of Tatar-speaking homes. Those where Russian has displaced Tatars show much less interest.

    The Berge organization has regular meetings and hosts a variety of cultural events, he continues. It also seeks to develop ties with Tatar activists in Tatarstan and elsewhere in the hopes that such cooperation will inspire greater action among that national community in what is now a predominantly ethnic Russian region.

    The group maintains sites on social media, Batyrshin says; and in this way, it reaches out to a larger audience than just those who take part in its activities immediately. For background on the Orenburg corridor and the importance of Tatars and Bashkirs there, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russian-commentators-adopt-updated.html as well as the sources cited therein. 

Teaching Immigrant Children Russian Not the Panacea the Kremlin Believes, Experts Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 11 -- A recent spate of violent crimes by the almost 800,000 minor children of migrant workers in the Russian Federation is sparking demands in some quarters that Moscow ban such immigrant children from accompanying their parents when the latter come to Russia to work.

    Such an approach would almost certainly contribute to an acceleration in the decline of Central Asians and Caucasians willing to come to Russia. Consequently, the Kremlin has placed its hopes on Russifying such migrants by insisting that they learn Russian, a policy that reflects Putin’s view of the centrality of language as far as ethnic identity is concerned.

    But experts at the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science (Rosobnadzor) say that teaching immigrant children to speak Russian will be insufficient to correct the problems that these young people present (versia.ru/testy-po-russkomu-yazyku-ne-reshat-problemu-rosta-prestupnosti-sredi-detej-migrantov).

    They are proposing other methods, including special classes in schools, to acculturate immigrant children although it is far from clear whether the Kremlin is prepared to commit the kind of resources that such an effort would entail or even whether those steps in addition to promoting Russian language would be sufficient.

    A discussion at the end of Soviet times highlights why just promoting Russian language competence may not be the panacea that Putin and his regime think and that it is even possible that ensuring that Central Asia and Caucasian youth who do learn Russian will have experiences that could further alienate and radicalize them.

    At that time, it was recognized by many Soviet experts and some Western ones that a notional Central Asian who did not know Russian and could not get an important job would see that not as a form of ethnic discrimination but as the result of his own failure to have the linguistic competence needed to get it.

    But a Central Asia who did learn Russian and still was passed over for such a job would inevitably conclude that he was being discriminated against because of his nationality, something that in many cases would lead anyone passed over to adopt an increasingly nationalist and anti-Russian position.

    And it was even recalled by some Western observers, including the author of these lines, that the experience of other countries confirms this: After all, British control of India was not threatened so much by Hindi speaker peasants as by an English-trained lawyer named Gandhi; and the Irish did not become radically nationalist until they stopped speaking Gaelic.  

Few Russian Couples Now Living Together Plan to Get Married Anytime Soon or Even Ever, New Poll Finds

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 11 – Only 22 percent of Russian couples now living together plan to get married in the next year with more than a third of these saying that they do not plan to marry at any point in the future, according to a new Russian Field poll, whose findings represent a challenge to Putin’s promotion of traditional values.

     Of the 1600 Russians surveyed in this poll, 53 percent were married, 15 percent were living together without official registration, and 33 percent were living alone. Those between 30 and 59 are most likely to be married; those under 30, to be in unregistered unions (actualcomment.ru/brak-ne-v-planakh-2505120950.html).

    More bad news for the Kremlin came from the responses of Russians to another question: 89 percent of those married or living together said that they did not plan to have a child in the coming year. Ten percent said they did, and one percent indicated that they were ready to adopt.

    The most likely to plan to give birth or adopt of course are the members of younger age groups and also those with a family income above 80,000 rubles (800 US dollars) a month. Analysts suggest that this reflects more than just general economic difficulties but the sense that having children will lead to poverty (kommersant.ru/doc/7712466).

Numerically Small Peoples of Russian North and Siberia have Suffered Vastly More Combat Deaths in Ukraine Relative to Population than have Russian Residents as a Whole

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 11 -- It is widely recognized that non-Russian peoples have suffered more combat losses in Ukraine relative to population than have Russians, but an Arktida portal survey suggests that the numerically small peoples of the North and Siberia, those who can ill afford any losses if their nations are to survive, have in many cases suffered the most.

    The nationality that has lost the most in this regard are the Telengits, a Turkic ethnic group in the Altai Republic who number only 3700. They have suffered 10.26 deaths per 1000 population – more than one percent – compared to an average for the Russian Federation as a whole of 0.67 percent (kedr.media/news/arktida-korennye-narody-ponesli-neproporczionalno-vysokie-poteri-v-hode-boevyh-dejstvij-v-ukraine/).

    The figures for other numerically small peoples of the North and Siberia are slightly less but still daunting and an indication that the Russian authorities have found it even easier to recruit soldiers from these ethnic groups than from among larger non-Russian ones which in many cases have their own republics and are thus better able to defend themselves.

    The numbers of combat deaths relative to population that Arktida gives for these peoples are as follows: the Telengits with10.26 deaths per 1,000 followed by the Eskimos with 6.04, the Chukchi with 5.8, the Udygey with 5.28, the Nganasans with 4.37, the Nentsy with 4.03, the Itelmens with 3.85, the Koryaks with 3.74, the Saami with 3.27, and the Khanty with 2.45.

    Other peoples in this category who have suffered more deaths per 1000 members  than have the ethnic Russians include the Dolgans, the Selkuts, the Chelkans, the Evens, the Nivkhs, the Komi-Izhemstsy, the Shors, the Mansi, and the Ulchi with losses ranging from a high of 1.84 deaths per 1,000 population to a low of 0.81.

    Among the numerically small peoples of the North and Siberia, only the Evenks, the Nanays, the Tubalars, the Yukagirs, and the Teleuts have lower per capita losses than the Russians. Their death rtes range from a high of 0.66 per 1,000 just under the Russian rate to a low of 0.45.  

    Lana Pylayeva, an expert on the rights of numerically small peoples, says that the differences reflect the relative dispersal of these peoples territorially. Where they live in dispersed communities, the number impressed into service and then dying in Ukraine is smaller. But where they live compactly, like the Telengits, the Russians simply took all the young men.

Iranian Vice President's Statement that Iran and Tajikistan are ‘Second Homes for Each Other’ Limited in Meaning

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 11 -- Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, says that Iran and Tajikistan are “second homes for each other” because of their “broadening of economic and energy cooperation.”  However, there is a danger that his words will re-enforce or even spread a major misconception about the two countries.

    Aref made this comment in the course of a meeting with Daler Juma, Tajikistan’s minister for energy and water resources, and focused on the results of the latest meeting of a joint commission on economic ties rather than on something broader (parstoday.ir/ru/news/iran-i210978).

    But the Iranian official’s words are at risk of being misunderstood because Iranians and Tajiks speak mutually intelligible languages and thus are frequently assumed to share a common culture. However, that is a mistake: the Iranians are Shiite Muslims while the Tajiks are Sunnis, a divide which limits the appropriateness of speaking of them as closer than they are.

    Moreover, while their languages are similar, they use different scripts – Iran uses a Persido-Arabic one while Tajikistan uses a Cyrillic-based one – and their different religious traditions reflect even broader cultural divisions, facts of life that must not be forgotten in any analysis of Iran’s role in Tajikistan in particular and Central Asia more generally.

    Unfortunately, that does not always happen given that the four other Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan – are all Turkic linguistically and share a common Sunni Islamic faith and so many are inclined to counterpose Tajikistan with its Persian-linked language as necessarily opposed to them.

Despite Drone Attacks, Russian Officials Still Classifying Locations of Bomb Shelters

Paul Goble

   Staunton, May 9 – In any country, one can find absurdities which often say a lot about what a particular country is like. Russia is no exception: One of its most absurd features is that the location of bomb shelters in Russian cities is typically classified by the government so that no one except officials knows where they are.

   In a discussion of this and other absurdities he finds in Russia, Moscow journalist Aleksandr Podrabinek says that this phenomenon will likely be viewed by future generations as evidence that their country was once a madhouse (svoboda.org/a/durdom-ili-tsirk-aleksandr-podrabinek-o-volnah-bezumiya-v-rossii/33408337.html).

    He gives as examples of this approach that in Kostroma, officials of the emergency services ministry have classified the location of all 63 bomb shelters; and in Moscow, few of the locations of the 12,000 bomb shelters in the capital are known because officials there have classified them.

    Podrabinek does acknowledge that the situation in Moscow is somewhat better than in many other cities: it has a subway system where many people know to go if bombs fall or drones attack, something that most other Russian cities don’t.  And all this taken together calls attention to a fundamental truth.

    In Putin’s Russia today, he writes, “bomb shelters are built not for the people but for reports to more senior officials and as a military secret because for the authorities, state security and secrets are much more important than the lives of any useless citizens who number in the country about 140 million.”

Petersburg Writers Resist Efforts to Force Them into Medinsky’s Organization

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 10 – Since 1991, there have been two writers organizations in the northern capital, the independent Union of Writers of St. Petersburg, headed by Valery Popov and the St. Petersburg Section of the Union of Writers of Russia led by Boris Orlov. The former has generally be considered a bastion of liberal opinion and the latter of patriotic thinking.

    Last month, Vladimir Medinsky, head of the Union of Writers of the Russian Federation, visited St. Petersburg and announced, alongside St. Petersburg governor Aleksandr Beglov, that the first would go out of existence in early May and its members would join the RF Union (gorod-812.ru/v-peterburge-pytayutsya-konsolidirovat-pisatelej/).

    But the schedule Medinsky announced hasn’t been met, an indication of resistance to this latest attempt at centralization. And some in St. Petersburg says that in some sections of the independent union, not a single writer wants to join any organization headed by the often outrageous Medinsky.

    Moscow may led this attempt die quietly because any effort to enforce it would almost certainly precipitate the kind of resistance in St. Petersburg that would highlight Moscow’s weakness when faced with concerted opposition, especially in a place where independent media and Western diplomats could be counted on to report it.

Russian Diplomat Changes Date of VE Commemoration on Svalbard but Not Moscow’s Message

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 9 – Andrey Chemerilo, Russian consul general on Norway’s Svalbard, marked VE Day on May 8 with a speech and two small gatherings, as Western countries do, rather than on May 9, as Moscow does, but did not change Moscow’s messages about the meaning of that holiday not only for Russians but for the entire world.

    The change in date likely means less than it might seem given that the head of the largest Russian company on the Norwegian archipelago organized a larger and noiser demonstration than the one the diplomat had, and both made it clear that such memorials were about mobilizing what they called “anti-fascist” efforts now.

    The Barents Observer covered both events and added a commentary from a Norwegian expert on Russia’s actions (thebarentsobserver.com/news/putins-man-in-svalbard-moves-victory-day-celebration-to-western-standard/429496 and thebarentsobserver.com/news/militarized-memory-kremlinorchestrated-immortal-regiment-rally-on-svalbard/429583).

    Kari Aga Myklebost with UiT The Arctic University of Norway said that “these Kremlin-orchestrated propaganda events are the result of an increasingly ideologized Russian public sphere and Moscow’s desperate need to showcase popular support for the brutal warfare in Ukraine.”

    He said that he believes these events were staged on Svalbard to provoke a reaction from Oslo and are likely to “be used as pretext to accuse Norway of Russophobia and discriminating against Russians … deliberately making use of the freedom of expression and assembly in Norway to promote its militaristic and revanchist policies.”
    For background on Svalbard and Russia’s moves there in recent years to exploit its unusual status, see jamestown.org/program/moscow-warns-oslo-on-svalbard-but-suggests-deal-with-united-states-on-arctic/ and jamestown.org/program/moscows-first-move-against-nato-could-take-place-in-norways-svalbard-archipelago/.

A Second Airport in Russia Becomes a Source of Tension Not Because of Its Name but Because of Its Location

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 10 – Moscow’s decision to rename Volgograd’s airport “Stalingrad,” the name the city bore in Stalin’s time and during the second world war, has attracted international attention as a sign that the Kremlin is increasingly open to giving the city its former name back in the future.

    But a second airport, now under construction in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic in the North Caucasus, is also triggering concerns not because of its name but rather because of its location, one that a Karachay activist says shows Moscow’s fears of Turkish influence and its tilt away from the Turkic Kabards (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/411193 and interfax.ru/russia/985079).

    Ruslan Kipkeyev, a Karachay activist, says that Moscow is becoming “ever more suspicious of small peoples with a strong identity” and that it “is worried about the strengthening of the Turkic factor” in the North Caucasus, especially “given the strengthening of Turkey” more generally.

    The latest example of this, he continues, is Moscow’s decision to build the Arkhyz airport within the Karachay-Cherkess Republic but “far from the territory” in that republic where the Turkic Karachay are the dominant ethnic groups. “This is being done,” Kipkeyev says, “to isolate the Karachay, weaken their influence, and exclude any geopolitical risks.”

    What makes this intriguing is that Moscow has worked far more consistently against the Cherkess, one of the subgroups of the Circassian nation members of whose enormous diaspora continue to seek to return to their North Caucasus homeland rather than against the Turkic groups they live among.

    That Moscow is now turning against the Turkic nations, however, does not so much indicate a softening of its position toward the Circassians than a hardening of its dealings with Turkic groups and that the Russian government has decided to take steps to limit it, including putting the republic airport in other than Karachay areas.

    For background on these binational republics and their role as a barometer of Moscow’s views of Turkic and Circassian groups, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/04/new-book-explains-how-and-why-bi.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/08/circassian-demands-for-meeting-on.html and https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/01/larger-nations-dominate-smaller-ones-in.html.

Kremlin Using Russian Community to ‘Manage Popular Anger’ but will Limit Its Activities Lest It Become a Threat to Putin, Russian Nationalist Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 10 – Aleksandr Bastrykhin, head of the Investigative Committee and a longtime friend of Vladimir Putin’s is “the unofficial patron” of the Russian Community organization, many observers believe. As such, he has sponsored this group’s rapid growth but will work to ensure that it doesn’t turn against the regime, Daniil Konstantinov says.

    Instead, the leading Russian nationalist activist and theoretician says, Bastrykhin and his aides will use the Russian Community as a way of managing the anger of the Russian people and directing it away from the kind of actions that could represent a direct threat to Putin and his government (svoboda.org/a/33410192.html).

    Whether the Kremlin will be able to do that remains to be seen, but it is almost certain that the Kremlin would move quickly to suppress the Russian Community as it has done with other Russian nationalist groups in the past if those around Putin suspected that it had grown to the point where it was becoming dangerous, Konstantinov says.

Disintegration of Russian Federation after Loss in Ukraine ‘Defeat for Putin’s Empire’ but Not ‘End of Russia,’ Leya and Taskin Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 10 – Zbigniew Brzezinski’s observation that “Russia can be an empire or it can be a democracy but it can’t be both at the same time” remains true to this day and should be the basis for judging all plans to transform Putin’s Russian Federation into something better, Aaron Lea and Borukh Tashkin say.

    The two Russian commentators make that the starting point in their review of five recent articles about Russia’s future, articles containing arguments that in all except one case fail to recognize that reality (moscowtimes.ru/2025/05/10/rossiya-vmesto-putina-raspad-dezintegratsiya-protektorati-alyansi-konfederatsii-a163021).

    Lea and Tashkin say that almost all of the suggestions of how Russia should be transformed into a democracy at peace with the world lack one important feature: they do not say who will do the work of carrying out this task. It certainly won’t be the current elites who benefit from the existing empire, and it won’t be a population cowed by repression and propaganda.

`    “Consequently,” they continue, “all projects without an answer to the question ‘who’s going to do this?’ aren’t programs but drafts for the archives, architecture without builders and dreams without will and weapons.” That in turn means something else: “there are no hopes for reform within.”

    One option that some calling for reform suggest is the integration of Russia in its current borders into Russia, but there is no basis for that, the two analysts suggest. Russia is too large and too different for Europe to absorb, and Russia’s elites and masses aren’t prepared to join the West unless compelled to do so.

    Such proposals suffer from “one fatal shortcoming: they preserve the territorial unity of Russia” which ever more analysts are recognizing is “the root of its authoritarianism” because “the Russian Federation is not a country but a deception, a colonial empire masquerading as a state.”

    But according to Leya and Tashkin, “Moscow is no longer the center” of this Eurasian empire and its “disintegration has already begun,” a process that has been dramatically accelerated by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, an act that means Moscow no longer attracts those around it but “drives them away.”

    Russians have become “an ethnos without a center” and Russia is now an increasingly “broken structure,” they argue. There is no “people” in Russia, “there is no nation or idea or binding – except for fear.” And the Putin regime has made things far worse than they were in the USSR in the 1980s.

    “In Russia nationality policy is in ruins, the institutes of cultural equality have been eliminated, the lifts for small peoples destroyed from above,” they write; and then they observe that “the USSR for all its terrors established a certain national balance. Todays’ Russia is a dictatorship of the titular majority, trampling on tall the other ethnoses.”

    This leads t the conclusion that “all talk about ‘a united democratic Russia is an effort to apply makeup to a disintegrating territory and that it is much more honest to recognize that this construction will not longer work” while keeping in mind that there are no domestic forces available to transform the Russian Federation.

    Without outside efforts and the disintegration of the Russian Federation, it will remain what it is, an authoritarian regime that oppresses its own people and threatens the world beyond its borders.  Consequently, the world has a compelling interest in promoting the disintegration of Russia.

    Despite Putin’s words, “the disintegration of the USSR was not the end of the world, and the disintegration of the Russian Federation won’t be either.” Instead, it will represent yet another exit “from a colonial matrix.” Moreover, after the disintegration, a new and different kind of reintegration may be possible.

    As a result, they write, this process won’t be “a geopolitical catastrophe” but eliminate the threats the Russian Federation presents and give hope to its peoples.

    How can this happen? The first thing is to ensure that Putin loses in Ukraine and that the West recognizes that the demise of the empire will be messy and varied but far less dangerous than its continued existence. De-Nazifying and de-nuclearizing the remains of the Muscovite state will be difficult, but far less so than not addressing them now rather than later.

Few World War II Veterans in Post-Soviet Countries Remain Alive Now and Almost None will Be by Next Round Anniversary in 2035

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 7 – In the Russian Federation, approximately 7,000 veterans of the USSR’s armed forces remain alive. The youngest are in their 90s. In most of the former Soviet states, there are at most a few dozen; and by the time of the next round anniversary in 2035, there is unlikely to be anyone left in any of these countries.

    Obviously, anniversaries can be and are marked even if there is no one left who lived through them. But the shift from marking anniversaries where veterans are still around to commemorating them when there are none can be difficult; and some are already asking “Will There be a 90th Anniversary of the Great Fatherland War?”

    This question is being posed most often in Central Asia where the numbers of veterans is extremely small (stanradar.com/news/full/57361-budet-li-90-letie-velikoj-pobedy.html) and least often in the Russian Federation where Moscow counts as World War II veterans those who worked in the rear or were in the Leningrad blockade, thus adding some 300,000 to this category.

    The passing of the generation of veterans of World War II in the post-Soviet states is most profound in Central Asia. In Kyrgyzstan, there are only 32 left of the 360,000 who fought in the Red Army 80 years ago. In Kazakhstan, there are 111 of the 1.3 million who did so; in Tajikistan, 17 of the 300,000; in Turkmenistan, the government doesn’t keep track; and in Uzbekistan, 82 (asiaplustj.info/ru/news/centralasia/20250507/veterani-vov-v-tsentralnoi-azii-skolko-ostalos-i-kakie-viplati-poluchat).

    Few if any of the Central Asian veterans alive now will be alive in a decade; and the share of the 7,000 plus Russian veterans will be vanishingly small as well. That will give some governments even more opportunities to rewrite history; but beyond everything else, the commemoration will change – and that change will shift the relations of these countries as well.

Russian Officialdom Revives Soviet-Era Urban Legends about Threats and Russian People Use Social Media to Spread and Exaggerate Them, Arkhipova Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 7 – In Soviet times, officials in 1952 spread rumors that the Jews were poisoning Russians; in 1956, they put out the word that Western intelligence services were preparing to poison Russians during the World Youth Congress; and in 1980, such agents warned that the West would use the Moscow Olympiad to do the same thing.

    This year, in advance of Victory Day, several senior emergency situations ministry generals have issued a similar warning, this time blaming the threat on Ukrainians. And according to independent anthropologist Aleksandr Arkhipova, the population has turned to social media to spread this latest urban legend (t.me/anthro_fun/3402 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/operacziya-otravlenie-ili-novaya-versiya-staroj-gorodskoj-legendy).

    As Arkhipova shows, the versions of the supposed threat offered by the population are simpler than those officials put forward; but they also spread more widely than the officials could ever hope to achieve, sparking fears that at some point may be beyond the regime’s ability to rein in and thus make the use of such propaganda dangerously counterproductive.  

Demographic Losses in RSFSR Hit Far Beyond the Front Lines, Statistics Show

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 7 – When people talk about the demographic losses the peoples of the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, they focus almost exclusively on the losses of the Soviet military or of civilian populations who suffered occupation. But many far from the front lines suffered as well.

    In an important article for the To Be Exact portal, demographer Aby Shukyurov provides details on these losses, separating out as much as the available data permits the losses that the RSFSR suffered from the larger ones suffered by the USSR as a whole (tochno.st/materials/my-izucili-demograficeskuiu-statistiku-vremen-velikoi-otecestvennoi-vosem-grafikov-o-tom-kak-voina-povliiala-na-naselenie-strany).

    Among his most important findings are the following:

•    Of the more than 25 million casualties the Soviet army and population suffered from the fighting, “approximately 13 million” or just over half were those of people from the RSFSR.

•    The civilian population of the RSFSR suffered some 1.8 million, far fewer than that of the Ukrainian SSR – 3.3. million – and about the same as that of the Belarusian SSR – 1.6 million – where much of the war was fought.

•    By the end of the war, the RSFSR population was 19.8 million fewer than Soviet demographers had projected. Some 12.9 million of these losses were among people over the age of four, but the radical decline in birthrates and the growth of infant and child mortality cost the RSFSR 6.9 million more.

•    The number of births in the RSFSR fell by slightly more than 50 percent between the pre-war years of 1935-1939 and the war years of 1941-1945, with the fertility rate declining from 4.3 children per woman to 1.26 by 1943, well below the replacement level of 2.2. The fertility rate rose again after the war to 2.9 in 1947 but never recovered its pre-war level.

•    In the first years of the war, approximately 30 percent of newborns in the RSFSR died because of the spread of illness, the lack of medical facilities and medications, and general social dislocation. By the end of the war, this figure had fallen back to almost what it had been earlier.

•    Some 18 million Soviet citizens were evacuated to the east, many to places with no or at least inadequate healthcare facilities. And even those who weren’t evacuated had to cut back their use of public baths, something that led to the spread of many illnesses.  

Problems in North Caucasus So Complicated that Moscow has Handed the Region to the Siloviki and the Siloviki have Reduced All of Them to Islam, Mukhametov Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 7 – The North Caucasus is so complicated and its problems so numerous that Moscow has decided to hand over the region to Russian siloviki and just wait for better days and the siloviki in turn have reduced everything to a question about Islam, something that distorts the situation, Rinat Mukhametov says.

    The respected specialist on Islam, who edits the NeRussky telegram channel (https://t.me/ar_mukhametov) says that this simplification keeps the authorities from addressing the various problems because the siloviki insist that everything is about Islam (kavkazr.com/a/severnyy-kavkaz-otdali-na-otkup-silovikam-islamoved-ob-otnosheniyah-mezhdu-vlastyami-muftiyatami-i-zhitelyami-respublik/33404421.html).

    That simply is not the case. There are all kinds of problems including disputes about lands, corruption, criminality and splits not only between the Salafites and the Sufis but also within each of those and even with single tariqats and muftiates. Reducing everything to Muslims versus Russians misses the point.

    He cites without naming a senior Russian official who compared work with an ordinary region and with a North Caucasus one. In the former, he had to open a safe in order to solve problems; but in the North Caucasus, he found that on opening a large safe, he found a large number of other safes which had to be opened to solve anything.

    That is simply too much for Moscow to deal with, Mukhametov says; and for the last 30 years, the Kremlin has simply handed over the region to the siloviki who want to present things as simply as possible so that their use of force is justified, something Moscow is prepared to accept “until better times” come and make a different approach possible.

    But this Moscow approach, the specialist on Islam says, obscures the reality that “the situation in the North Caucasus is a reflection and continuation of what is taking place in the rest of Russia. The situation there is not something special. In other forms and under different names, everything is occurring or will occur through the entire country.”

Russians Now Dying in Numbers Nearly Equal to Those Reached During Covid Pandemic, Raksha Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 7 – Last month, independent Russian demographer Aleksey Raksha says, data from registration offices in 13 federal subjects suggests the number of Russians who died in the country as a whole jumped to a figure roughly equal those who passed away at the height of the covid pandemic, driving down Russian life expectancy to below 72 years from birth.

    In a majority of those regions which have reported so far, deaths jumped by 15 to 20 percent from April 2024, a rise not explained by the fact that winter weather had been better or that there was one more working day this year than last (t.me/RakshaDemography/4862 and moscowtimes.ru/2025/05/07/vrossiiskih-regionah-zafiksirovali-anomalnii-skachok-smertnosti-dorekorda-sovremen-kovida-a162916).

    Among the federal subjects where deaths increased by the most were Arkhangelsk Oblast (39.1 percent more this year than last), Astrakhan Oblast (24.2 percent), Buryatia (24.1 percent), and Tula Oblast (20.3 percent). These figures put Russia on course to suffer more than 160,000 deaths in April, the largest for that month except in covid times since 2011.

    This increase in deaths, Raksha says, reduced average Russian life expectancy from 72.5 percent and, when combined with dramatically falling birthrates, further accelerated the declines in Russia’s population and life expectancy figures that have been reported in recent years (t.me/RakshaDemography/4280).

    Rosstat, the Russian government’s statistical arm, has not yet released figures for April. Its latest are from January and February (https://rosstat.gov.ru/storage/mediabank/EDN_02-2025.htm), and those show nothing like the catastrophic trends that Raksha is reporting. How or even if Rosstat will report the declines Raksha suggests very much remains to be seen.

Russia’s Elderly Mostly Women Living Alone with Less Medical and Other Support than They Need, Moscow Experts Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 5 – Last month, the Russian government adopted a new strategy for addressing the problems of the country’s pensioners in place of the document adopted in 2016 (government.ru/docs/54753/). As always, the new document paints a beautiful future; but commentaries are highlighting many of the problems that those of pension age in Russia face.

    One of the most useful of these is provided by Marina Izmailova, a professor at the government’s Finance University (profile.ru/society/starost-v-radost-kak-gosudarstvo-hochet-uluchshit-zhizn-i-zdorove-starshego-pokoleniya-1693971/). Among the figures she provides about Russia’s elderly and their problems, the following are especially important.

•    The number of Russians above pension age now stands at 34.5 million, approximately one resident in four, a figure that is projected to grow by two million by 2030.

•    Because life expectancy among Russian women is far greater than among Russian men, women dominate the Russian elderly with that dominance becoming ever greater with age. Amng Russians aged 60 to 69, there are 11.4 million women and 8 million men. Among those 80 an dover, the comparable figures are 3.63 million and 1.22 million.

•    Since 2017, Russia has increased the number of gerontologists from 200 to 1600 but must increase that figure still more to meet the needs of the increasing number of elderly.

•    Forty-two percent of those over 65 live alone, with the number of invalids now numbering 5.3 million. At present, however, the state provides long-term care for only 173,200 of them.

•    Moscow has organized a variety of programs to keep the elderly active but it must do more to increase financial literacy and access to the elderly lest they fall into deep poverty or become victims of fraud.

Russian Health Ministry Wants to Levy Enormous Fines on Med School Graduates who Don’t Work in Their Field

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 4 – In Soviet times, the government ordered university graduates where they had to work for the first several years after graduation, a way to ensure that the state’s needs were met. Some officials would like to go back to that given that an increasing share of graduates are choosing not to work in the fields they have been trained.

    But the idea is extremely unpopular especially among the already restive young, and so the Russian government is considering how to restore control over where graduates work in at least some fields in ways that will accomplish the same thing but without looking like the restoration of detested Soviet practice.

    Russia currently suffers a shortage of more than 23,000 doctors and 63,000 other medical personnel, especially in government clinics and hospitals; and so it is not surprising that the health ministry has come up with an idea that may soon spread to others. It proposes imposing enormous fines on those who get medical training but then don’t work in that field.

    According to Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the fines the ministry has called for setting will be equivalent to the cost of the training such medical personnel will have received, an amount averaging 3.7 million rubles (35,000 US dollars), an enormous sum for those just beginning their working careers (rg.ru/2025/05/04/shtrafy-dlia-vypusknikov-medvuzov-za-otkaz-ot-otrabotki-mogut-uvelichit-vtroe.html).

    The measure has not yet become law; but if it does, then the Kremlin is likely to push for the imposition of analogous fines for graduates in other fields where there is a shortage, thus reviving a Soviet practice by means of a post-Soviet method, an approach that will be little less repressive but far more acceptable than simply going back to the past.  

Kremlin Mulls Making Zhirinovsky’s LDPR the ‘Russian Party’ for 2026 Duma Elections because of Role of Veterans Returning from Ukraine War, ‘Vyorstka’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 5 – In many earlier elections, the Kremlin has selected one party to attract Russian nationalists lest they fuse with the KPRF. For the 2026 Duma vote, Vyorstka reports, the Presidential Administration is considering having the late Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s LDPR play that role, one especially important because of the role of veterans returning from Ukraine.

            The independent news portal reaches this conclusion after having spoken with several members of the Presidential Administration and leaders of the LDPR and points out that LDPR leaders already have what amounts to a non-aggression pact with the Russian Community organization (verstka.media/kak-iz-ldpr-snova-pytayutsya-sdelat-russkuyu-partiyu).

            While such Russian nationalist parties have not attracted large numbers of voters in the past and while polls suggest that the LDPR would not this time around even by making Russian nationalism its focus, the role of returning veterans is such that the Kremlin wants to make sure that the most passionate of these have a political place to go.

            Indeed, “the veterans issue” may be the most important reason that the Kremlin is plunking for the LDPR as its “Russian nationalist” opposition party, an indication of just how seriously some in the Presidential Administration are taking the political implications of the massive return of veterans from Ukraine once the war there winds down.

            In addition, the LDPR with Kremlin support is seeking to reach out not only to Russian nationalists and veterans but also to regionalist groups with its slogan “Russia is more than Moscow,” an indication that some in the party and the Kremlin believe that regionalist feelings are growing in importance and need to find a home the Kremlin can control.

            Discussions about such roles for the LDPR are only beginning, sources in the Presidential Administration speaking anonymously say, especially because the LDPR leadership lacks the kind of charisma that Zhirinovsky had. And it is quite possible, they suggest, that the Kremlin will decide to try to rope in nationalists, regionalists and veterans by some other means.

            But the very fact that some in the PA are talking about these issues suggests that they are very much more on the minds of people in the Kremlin than in those of the Russian opposition and both Moscow and Western commentaries about the political situation in Putin’s Russia as it enters another electoral cycle.

 

Putin will Declare Any Outcome in Ukraine a Victory and His Alone, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 5 – Putin said recently that he has never regrated becoming Russian president, a reflection of his effort to present himself to the Russian population as “a superman” who is all-knowing and never makes mistakes, Abbas Gallyamov says. And that means that the Kremlin leader will present any outcome in Ukraine as a victory.

    In this, the commentator continues, he will be following Stalin who recognized how important it was that after 1945, the Soviet people saw the Kremlin dictator as the author of the victory over the Germans lest they acquire a sense of their own agency and decide at some future point to challenge him and his rule (pointmedia.io/story/6819ba69e25aea416748a7a3).

    The less evidence there is that the outcome represents a Russian victory, Gallyamov argues, the more passionately Putin and his regime will insist on that because with each passing month, the Russian people will begin to feel the impact of  the war even after its end and begin asking questions that the regime cannot afford to have them ask. 

50 Percent of Russians Expect Positive Changes when War Ends, 30 Percent Expect No Change, and 20 Percent Think Things will Get Still Worse, Survey in Trans-Baikal Finds

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 5 – A social psychologist surveyed Russians in a large city in the Transbaikal about their expectations of what will happen with the war in Ukraine ends, talk about killing stops, and veterans return. About half said they expect the situation to improve, but 30 percent said there’ll be no change and 20 percent believe things will get worse.

    The survey was conducted informally with open-ended questions so the sample is not necessarily representative, but so sensitive are such questions that the psychologist now has reported them only anonymously, although he has offered extensive quotes from many he spoke with (baikal-stories.media/2025/05/06/vnutrennej-voinstvennosti-u-lyudej-tochno-net/).

    One of the issues dividing Russians is what role returning veterans wi will play. Some told the psychologist that they expect the veterans to play a positive role and end corruption given that their experience of fighting at the front has left them fearless. But others expressed an alternative view.

    The latter said that they are afraid about what veterans may do and hope that the authorities will devote themselves to the re-integration of those who have served into society. Both groups suggested that they would like to see the appearance of new values in society, values “based on patriotism and close to those that existed in Soviet times.”

    What none of the people with whom the social psychologist spoke favored was the continuation of the war in Ukraine or the launch of new military campaigns elsewhere, an indication, the researcher said that Russians today are not animated by some “internal militance” that must find an outlet in new wars. 

Moscow Expands Attack on Independent Cossacks with Confiscation of Memorabilia in Key Museum

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 5 – At a time when the Kremlin is providing ever more support to Cossacks it controls, the Russian government is making ever more moves against those it does not, a pattern that often is missed because Russian government media provide a great deal of information on the former but only independent media provide much on the latter.

    As a result, it is sometimes forgotten that there are two groups of people who identify as Cossacks, those who choose to register with the government or are formed and financed by it and who are completely loyal to the Kremlin and those who trace their ancestry to the Cossacks of the past, seek broader autonomy and even independence.

    (On this division, see jamestown.org/program/de-cossackization-modern-day-echoes-of-soviet-crime/, jamestown.org/program/moscow-tightens-control-over-its-cossacks/, jamestown.org/program/putins-pseudo-cossacks-assume-larger-role-but-real-cossacks-refuse-to-go-along/ and jamestown.org/program/cossackia-no-longer-an-impossible-dream/).

    This week, at a time when the Putin regime gives prominent coverage to a prominent role to its Cossacks in commemorating the anniversary of the end of World War II, it is working to suppress the most prominent museum of the history of independent Cossacks in the Russian Federation, some of whom fought against Stalin.

    According to a report by the Kavkaz-Uzel news portal, defenders of the latter are concerned that these attacks, which follow Russian court decisions allowing the government to seize exhibits deemed anti-Russian will in fact lead to the suppression of the Cossack Museum in Elan altogether (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/411060).

Russia Now Relies on Foreign Producers for More than 98 Percent of Its Machine Tools, Moscow Experts Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 5 – Machine tools, the machines that are used to make machines, are the building blocks of any advanced economy. But now, the Russian Federation must import more than 98 percent of such machines from foreign countries, leaving that country in critical dependence on other countries, including on countries with which it has hostile relations.

    Importing is often cheaper than producing such machines especially from scratch, Russian experts acknowledge, but allowing the share of imports in this sector to grow to such a point makes a mockery of any claims that the country is economically sovereign (svpressa.ru/economy/article/462999/).

    And to rectify this situation, experts like Elena Veduta of Moscow State University say, will require more than throwing money at the problem. It will require the restoration of planning so that the production of these machines in Russia itself will be a priority and not an afterthought.

    Even in Soviet times, Moscow imported many of the most advanced machine tools; but in that period, the government set as its task the production of ever more of them. But in the decades since 1991, the Russian government has failed to keep such programs in place and the domestic share of machine tool production has fallen to insignificance.

    At present, Veduta says, Russia is importing 70 percent of the machine tools it needs from China with a large share of the others coming from Turkey or India. Moscow must  recognize that as a result, it is becoming dependent on these countries, whose governments may not always be friendly to Russia.

In 2024, Many Ukrainians who had Switched to Using Ukrainian have Shifted Back to Using Russian, according to Kyiv’s Language Ombudsman

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 2 – The “powerful impulse” which led Ukrainians to stop using the Russian language has slowed and in some areas been reversed, according to a detailed, 341-page report by the Ukrainian government’s language ombudsman Taras Kremena. And in some regions and cities, the situation is becoming extremely unsatisfactory.

    The report is available online at mova-ombudsman.gov.ua/storage/app/sites/14/Звіт 2023/zvit-2024-1.pdf and is summarized at https://ehorussia.com/new/node/32554). For a Moscow commentary thrilled by this development, see fondsk.ru/news/2025/05/04/khotyat-li-zhiteli-ukrainy-chtoby-ikh-deti-uchili-russkiy-yazyk.html.

    According to the Ukrainian experts, this trend reflects the tendency of younger Ukrainians to follow the behavior of their parents rather than to be informed by government efforts to promote the use of Ukrainian.  And they urge the government to do more to ensure that ever more Ukrainians will identify Ukrainian as their native language. 

Multi-Child Russian Families Nearly Three Times as Likely to Be Poor than Russian Families as a Whole, Rosstat Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 4 – Judging from just released Rosstat figures, Russian couples who have three or more children are far more likely than their counterparts who decide to stop are fewer to end up poor, a pattern that will certainly undercut Vladimir Putin’s call for Russian women to have up to eight children.

    According to Rosstat, the Russian government’s statistical arm, more than 500,000 of the 2.65 million Russian families which have three or more children have incomes below the poverty line, approximately 20 percent of that group and nearly three times the 7.2 percent figure for all Russian households (moscowtimes.ru/2025/05/05/kazhdaya-pyataya-mnogodetnaya-semya-vrossii-okazalas-nischei-a162749).

    Clearly having more children makes it more likely that they and their families will land in poverty, and that means there will be further downward pressure on the fertility rate in Russia which is also well-below the replacement level of 2.2 children per woman per lifetime and in some major cities as low as 1.0.

Moscow Now Recruiting Muslim Tatars for Its Africa Corps Because They’ll Find It Easier to Work with Muslims in Northwest Africa

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 5 – Moscow has become notorious for recruiting non-Russians and using foreigners to fight in its war in Ukraine. That effort reflects both the lack of a sufficient number of ethnic Russians and the Kremlin’s desire to hide just how much of an impact Putin’s war is having on the population of the Russian Federation.

            But now, the IdelReal portal suggests, it is seeking to recruit men from Tatarstan and Russia’s other Muslim republics to fight in its Africa Corps because their religious and cultural background will make it easier for them to work in the Muslim countries of northwest Africa (idelreal.org/a/sluzhba-v-afrike-tatarstan-i-afrikanskiy-korpus/33404934.html).

            There are Soviet and even tsarist precedents for doing using Muslims in this way, but this marks the first time that Moscow has launched such a broad effort in that regard, something that may backfire on the Kremlin by highlighting its need for men from the Muslim nationalities, which are the only nations in the Russian Federation still showing demographic growth.

Even at Current Rate of Advance, Russia would Need 230 Years to Fully Occupy Ukraine, Experts Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 2 – A year ago, Russians said that at its current rate of advance, Russia would need 1000 years to occupy Ukraine (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/at-current-rate-of-advance-moscow-will.html). Now, Western experts say, Russia has speeded up its advance but still would need 230 years to occupy all of Ukraine.

    Since 2022, Russian forces have occupied 19 percent of Ukrainian territory; but most of that came in the first months of Putin’s war. In the last year, they have expanded control over only 0.5 percent of Ukrainian land (novayagazeta.ee/articles/2025/05/03/pri-nyneshnikh-tempakh-voiny-rossii-potrebovalos-by-230-let-dlia-polnogo-zakhvata-ukrainy-smi-news).

    Neither that figure nor how long it would take Russia to occupy all of Ukraine if it continues at its current pace is obvious either to Russians who are fed a constant diet of stories about Russia “liberating” this or that village or to many in the West who think that Ukraine will simply collapse unless the United States provides more military aid.

    These reactions call to mind one of this writer’s favorite Soviet jokes. It relates that Hitler returned from the dead and visited Red Square at the time of the Victory Day parade. There he watched Soviet tanks and planes parade and gradually an enormous smile broke out on the Nazi leader’s face.

    A Russian came up to him and said: “I bet you are thinking that if you had had such weapons, you would never have lost the war.” “No,” replied Hitler. “I was thinking that if I had a newspaper like your Pravda, no one would ever have found out that I had.” That anecdote only needs to have Pravda replaced with the term Russia Today.

Only Now has It Become Obvious that Russia Can’t Have More Guns without Having Less Butter, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 2 – From February 2022 when Putin started his expanded war in Ukraine to the final months of 2024, it appeared that Russia could escape the bind that most countries have experienced when they mobilize resources for war. That can be done only by cutting spending on civilian programs and reducing the standard of living.

    Indeed, Russian commentator Sergey Shelin says, in the first two plus years of the war, it appeared that not only could Russia increase military spending without harming the population but that such spending would in fact raise the incomes of many civilians (moscowtimes.ru/2025/05/02/rossiya-vse-zhe-podchinilas-pravilu-pushki-maslo-a162613).

    But now, he points out, Russian exceptionalism in that regard has come to an end; and the government, as it continues to increase military spending has reduced spending on and the incomes of civilians, even though this is concealed by the use of inflation and denied by government propaganda.

    To date, Russians have been willing to accept this tradeoff or even to deny that it is happening; but Putin shows no sign of being willing to reduce military spending even if his “special military operation” in Ukraine winds down. And so the Kremlin will likely eventually face the same problem other regimes do.

    And at some point, probably in the not too distance future, the Russian people won’t continue to be willing to sacrifice ever more butter which they need to live for military victories whose importance to them may fade as the costs of such things become more obvious, the Russian commentator suggests.  

Shuttle Trade Returns to Russia, Now to Evade Sanctions

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 3 – In the 1990s, Russians regularly engaged in what became known as “shuttle” trade, with people travelling abroad to buy goods not readily available at home and then returning them for sale. Now, that phenomenon has returned with a vengeance with Russians doing the same thing to bring in goods subject to sanctions and counter-sanctions.

    According to Russian officials, the number of cases the authorities have brought charges on has nearly doubled since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, from 258 in 2022 to 410 last year and continues to grow (https://iz.ru/1853618/ivan-petrov/cepocnaa-karusel-kak-tamozna-boretsa-s-kontrabandoi-strategiceskih-tovarov).

    As was true 30 years ago when shuttle trade began,  the number of Russians arrested for violating the law by such practices is only the tip of the iceberg of a phenomenon that now likely involves hundreds if not thousands of those who still regularly travel between Russian locations and other countries.

Moscow Extends Service Life of Yak-40, Workhorse of Russian Regional Aviation, to 60 Years –and Not Just Because of Sanctions or Production Problems

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 2 – Unable to purchase planes from abroad because of sanctions or to produce enough new ones domestically, Russian officials have quietly extended the service life of the Yak-40, the workhorse of Russian domestic aviation in areas far from the big cities, from 50 to 60 years.

    In addition to these problems, Russian officials have kept the Yak-40 in service so long because with its enormous wheels, it can land on runways made of gravel rather than concrete, something none of the foreign substitutes can do (newizv.ru/news/2025-05-01/budem-letat-na-antikvariate-srok-sluzhby-rossiyskih-samoletov-prodlyayut-do-60-let-436744).

    And beyond the big cities, Novyye Izvestiya notes, most of the airports have gravel runways, something that means that for all practical purposes there is no substitute for a plane that at a minimum is 44 years old – production ended in 1981 – and may now be as old as 60, given that Yak-40s entered service in 1965.    

    Consequently, even if sanctions are lifted and Russian plans to produce an alternative to the Yak-40 are finally realized, Russian regional aviation is going to be dependent on Yak-40s unless or until the runways of smaller airports are paved.

Another Putin Healthcare ‘Optimization’ – Junior Medical Personnel Now to be Allowed to Act as Doctors

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 1 – Both to deal with the increasing shortage of doctors – a shortage now estimated at 23,000 – and to save money for military spending, the Russian government has decreed that as of September 1, paramedics and midwives will be allowed to perform the duties that up to now, only fully trained doctors have been allowed to.

    While many paramedics and midwives are extremely talented and experienced, experts fear that this will have an adverse impact on public health in the Russian Federation, especially in rural areas far from  major cities (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/04/30/mozhet-li-feldsher-zamenit-terapevta-ili-pediatra-a-akusher-ginekologa).

    The decision as to which paramedics and midwives may perform “doctor” functions will be exclusively in the hands of the senior doctor in the local medical point, the health ministry says, an arrangement that will provide some minimal protection but won’t prevent the Russian authorities from putting ever more patients the hands of underqualified medical personnel.

    Training doctors takes far longer and costs far more than preparing paramedics and midwives. The latter can do many things as well as doctors in the case of normal illnesses, but they are ill-prepared to deal with special cases and thus may not be able to get those in their care the treatment they need.

    Again and like the massive closing of medical points in rural areas, this latest shift will reduce the costs to Moscow but impose far higher and more fateful ones on Russians, especially those who live outside the capital and other major cities. It is not impossible that this will spark protests, but the Putin regime has shown itself more than willing to suppress them. 

Many Know Non-Russians has Suffered Out of All Proportion from Putin’s War in Ukraine but Few are Aware Many of Them have Protested Against It, Buryat Activist Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 1 – Many people of goodwill around the world are well aware that non-Russian nations within the Russian Federation have suffered disproportionately from Putin’s war in Ukraine, but very few know that many non-Russians have left Russia to avoid serving in his army and/or otherwise protested the Kremlin ruler’s actions, Seseg Jigitova says.

    The Berlin-based Buryat illustrator and activist hopes to overcome that by means of a new illustrated novel, Deep Freeze, so that everyone involved will have a comprehensive picture of how non-Russians have reacted to Moscow’s actions (themoscowtimes.com/2025/05/01/we-need-to-recognize-russias-colonial-violence-buryat-illustrator-seseg-jigjitova-a88922).

    In an interview with Leyla Latypova of The Moscow Times, Jigitova says that far too many people both inside Russia and beyond its border consider only the Russians as historical subjects and think about the non-Russians only in terms of Russian actions toward them rather than nations ready and able to take action on their own.

    Over the course of recent decades that has begun to change, she continues; but this shift in perspective among many non-Russians, some Russians and some in the West has accelerated over the last three years since Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine. One can only hope that will continue.

    But unfortunately, many among those known as “the Russian opposition” have not been able to make this self. Instead, they have continued to live “in a parallel reality detached from the rest of Russia.” Indeed, “it seems they have drifted even further away from reality since 2022,” a trajectory that makes it increasingly difficult for non-Russians to cooperate with them.

    “I often ask myself whether unity within Russia – or indeed any kind of internal civil truth or alliance – is possible at all without a clear and honest recognition of history wrongdoings by Russia and its predecessor states and without it taking ownership of a difficult legacy and without justice [for indigenous people].”

    For any such unity to occur, Jigitova continues, “we need to recognize Russia’s colonial violence and take both collective and personal responsibility for having done too little to prevent the war in Ukraine. We must also recognize that the conviction that Russain identity is superior over all others … was one of the reasons for today’s war.”

    No one must ever be allowed to forget that “Putin is a symptom of this and not the cause.”

    As far as the future is concerned, she says she has hope and envisions a Buryat republic “where all people regardless of ethnicity are free. A republic where people know how to exercise their fundamental rights, understand and respect its difficult history, and live free from Moscow’s exploitative grip. A republic [in short] whose fate is determined solely by its people.”

Redrawing of Single-Member Duma Districts Sharpening Conflicts Now and Creating New Uncertainties, Shaburov Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 30 – The redrawing of the single-member districts for Duma elections this year ten years after the last time this was done is sharpening conflicts within regional elites who had gotten used to the composition of the district electorates and even creating new uncertainties about what the 2026 elections will lead to, Aleksey Shaburov says.

    The Yekaterinburg political commentator says that the changes Moscow officials have introduced because of population changes among and within the federal districts may look small but they are creating the danger of  “serious intra-elite conflicts” (politsovet.ru/84119-narezka-po-zhivomu-kak-cik-pereformatiroval-okruga-v-sverdlovskoy-oblasti.html).

    In Sverdlovsk Oblast, Shaburov says, the regional government was able to reverse Moscow’s plans to reduce that region’s Duma representation from seven to six but it was not able to block changes in the borders of electoral districts within the oblast, and those changes matter a great deal.

    He points to two in particular: the combination of two cities into one district which had been separate and the creation of four districts within the oblast capital by eliminating the areas and hence voters from rural areas that had been part of them earlier. The first puts two economic groups at odds, groups which had been used to having their own man in Moscow.

    But the second it more significant, Shaburov suggests. It means that rural voters, most of whom are loyal to United Russia, won’t be able to overwhelm more oppositionally inclined urban ones, especially in one district in the capital which is dominated by younger and others likely to be more opposed to the powers that be.

    Not only does that open the possibility that United Russia could lose seats but it guarantees that the oblast’s representatives in the Duma will be less likely to act as a group and more concerned about representing their specific constituencies, something that could affect how they will act as legislators.

    Of course, the Kremlin can always use administrative measures to ensure the outcomes it wants; but to the extent it hopes that its redrawing of electoral district borders will help in that regard, Shaburov’s words suggest that the center may be disappointed and that local politics within the region is certainly going to heat up.

    For background on this redrawing of election districts and the way it resembled the gerrymandering found in other countries, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/12/window-on-eurasia-under-putin.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russia-has-its-own-form-of.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/02/russian-gerrymandering-and-other.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/09/moscow-gerrymanders-duma-electoral.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/12/window-on-eurasia-under-putin.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/02/window-on-eurasia-does-russian-need.html.

Pro-Kremlin TV Host Urges Wives to Be Patient with Husbands Returning from War and Tolerate Excesses

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 30 – Perhaps the social group that will suffer the most when Russian veterans of Putin’s war in Ukraine return home are members of their families, especially if Moscow continues to urge women to put up with abuse and show patience given the contribution their husbands have made to the war effort.

    Aware that a significant portion of Russian veterans will be suffering from PTSD and that they will be offered little help in overcoming it, many of them may take out their frustrations and anger by attacking family members, drinking heavily or otherwise engaging in anti-social behavior (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/moscows-failure-to-treat-secondary.html).

    Over the last two years, various government-aligned groups have issued pamphlets directed at the wives of veterans and calling on them to show patience with alcoholism, sexual demands and even beatings (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/wives-of-russian-veterans-of-putins-war.html and takiedela.ru/notes/ne-podkhodite-so-spiny/).

    Now, however, a more influential and authoritative source, Sergei Karnaukhov, a cohost of Moscow TV’s Solovyev is saying the same thing, words that have outraged many (https://echofm.online/stories/zhyony-rossijskih-voennyh-vernuvshihsya-s-fronta-obyazany-terpet-poboi-so-storony-muzhej-takoe-mnenie-vedushhego-propagandistskoj-programmy-vyzvalo-diskussiyu-s-uchastiem-predstavitelej-vl).
    
    His remarks have also prompted rights activists to try to get the word to the wives of veterans that help is available because no one should have to be forced to put up with abuse even from those the Kremlin continues to call “heroes” (t.me/alenapopova/6126 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/nikto-ne-dolzhen-terpet-nasilie).

    But Putin’s cult of heroic masculinity and his desire to integrate the returning veterans into his political hierarchy likely means that many women and children are going to suffer and that those who try to come to their aid are likely to face resistance from the courts and the still-highly patriarchal segments of society.

Putin’s Insistence that Nationalism is ‘the First Stage to Nazism’ is Simply Wrong, El Murid Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 30 –Vladimir Putin’s suggestion that nationalism is “the first stage to Nazism” is not only wrong but dangerous because he has the power to mistreat those who espouse nationalism within the current borders of the Russian Federation, according to Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid.

    Moreover, many in both Russia and elsewhere are likely to agree with him and his suggestion in this way that patriotism is good and nationalism is bad, although such a simplified definition of each is wrong as well, the blogger continues (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/24822 reposted at  kasparov.ru/material.php?id=681270D9740C3).

    Nationalism, El Murid says, is “an ideology calling for the construction of a nation state. It is nothing more than that,” while “patriotism is not an ideology at all.” It is simply “love for the fatherland,” a concept “very broad in nature and one which has different meanings for different people … it is an ethnical category but definitely not an ideology.”

    In Russia, of course, “the concept of the fatherland has been replaced by the concept of the state and as a result patriotism is understood” by the leader of that state “as an extremely primitive form of loyalty to the current government. That has nothing to do with patriotism … comparing a very narrow ideology with an ethical category is like comparing cold and salty.”

    Dragging Nazism into all this, El Murid argues, is something that defies logic. “Nationalism has nothing to do with Nazism since the ideology of nationalism itself does not presuppose an existence outside the process of building a nation state.” Once one comes into existence, all kinds of thing may happen, including Nazism which “always leads to its collapse.”

    “In general,” the Russian commentator concludes, “the Russian president’s primitive discussion of these very complex categories reflects either his very primitive intellect or his deliberate manipulation of these incompatible concepts” for purposes of his own.

Russia has Reduced Infant Mortality but Part of This Gain Reflects Falsification, Medical Experts Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 30 – Russia has continued to reduce rates of infant mortality in the Putin years, something it is justly proud of and that is a major factor in boosting life expectancy figures, something the Kremlin sees as critically important. But there is clear evidence that some of the reduction of infant mortality is the result of falsification, the To Be Precise portal says.

    What is going on is this. Medical facilities in at least nine federal subjects are counting as stillborn some of the babies who are born alive but die within the first seven days of life, a practice which means their deaths are not included in infant mortality calculations (tochno.st/materials/mladenceskaia-smertnost-v-rossii-s-1960-x-godov-sokratilas-v-20-raz-no-v-casti-regionov-eta-statistika-iskusstvenno-zanizena).

    Moscow reports that infant mortality fell from 8.2 per 1000 live births in 2013 to 4.2 per 1,000 live births in 2023, the last year for which figures have been released. How much falsifications have led to this reported improvement is uncertain, but the To Be Precise portal suggests it is significant.

    That is because the Russian authorities care very much about the infant mortality figure but do not care nearly as much about stillbirth because the former are viewed as a measure of the regime’s success while the latter are viewed as an entirely natural phenomenon that the regime cannot be held accountable for.

    What the portal did was to compare available figures for stillbirths and neonatal mortality. In EU countries, there were approximately two stillbirths for every infant death in the first week of life. But in Russia, the overall figure was four of the former to one of the latter and in some regions as many as 11 to 13 more. That suggests falsification is going on.

    In nine federal subjects, the number of stillbirths was significantly higher than the number of neonatal deaths. These include Chuvashia, Khabarovsk Kray, Tyumen, Amur and Leningrad Oblasts, Mordvinia, Tyva, the Nenets AD, and St. Petersburg. And falsification likely explains their reporting.

    In the North Caucasus republics, the portal continues, experts suggest that “high early neonatal mortality with relatively low stillbirth rates may be related to the overall high fertility in these regions.” But there as elsewhere, falsification may be getting worse because of the lack of adequate medical facilities to treat new babies and especially those with low birthrates.

West has Missed Rise of Putin’s Fascism Because Kremlin Leader is Imposing It Gradually, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 30 – The reason most in the West missed the rise of fascism in Russia under Vladimir Putin is that the Kremlin leader imposed it only gradually and did not do so via either the involvement of “a spontaneous mass movement” or “a pre-formulated doctrine,” Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

    Instead, Russian fascism “was built ‘from above’ and from ‘whatever was at hand,” the Russian economist and commentator says, a reality that is underscored by the points Putin aide Aleksandr Kharichev has made in a new article (ridl.io/ru/izobretaya-lenivyj-fashizm/; for background on Kharichev’s argument, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russian-state-authority-is-sacred-and.html).

    According to Inozemtsev, “Kharichev’s article is significant precisely because it inventories, years after the regime’s foundations were laid, the ideological scraps that serve as its conceptual props. There’s nothing new or original in it.” Indeed, there could not be’ and “it does not provide any potential for the regime’s development.”

    And that calls attention to something else: “While Putin’s system has already lived twice as long as Hitler’s Third Reich, that likely only reflects the well-known biological fact that simpler organisms or in this case regimes often prove more capable of recovering from problems than do those which have a greater internal complexity.”
    
    Kharichev’s text contains two big ideas, the commentator says: first, that Russia is as it always was and always will remain in that unchanged form; and second, that Russia is about territory, the state and the readiness of the population to serve the state. The first is a radical departure from Hitler’s ideas; but the second is in many ways the full embodiment of them.

    Like Hitler, Putin has an enemy who must be opposed and then destroyed. In Hitler’s case, it was international Jewry; in Putin’s, it is Western liberal democracy. But the two systems are different in that Hitler required the transformation of Germans while Putin wants them to remain what they are, the subservient bearers of Russian traditional values.

    In Kharichev’s summary, Inozemtsev continues, “Putin’s ‘ideology’ becomes an apologia for passivity and non-development – and we see the results of this clear after a quarter century of its chief proponent’s rule: the country has stalled in terms of development if not in fact regressed from where it was earlier.”

Russian Foreign Minister Gives Imprimatur to New Moscow Book Claiming Lithuanian Nation and Language ‘Do Not Exist’

Paul Goble    

    Staunton, Apr. 30 – Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys has denounced a new Russian book, featuring a preface by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which claims that the Lithuanian nation and language “do not exist” and that Lithuanians in fact are Slavs like the Russians.

    Budrys says that this message and the Kremlin’s support for it – the book is now available freely on line from Moscow’s International Relations publishing house – is of a piece with other Moscow books and articles about Russia’s neighbors and should be denounced and then ignored as fake propaganda.

    “In Russia, these activities are funded generously, they see the benefit and the sense in it and they do it,” Budrys says. “The most important thing here is that we also spread our message properly and do not begin to doubt our own history” (delfi.lt/ru/news/politics/glava-mid-litvy-rossiya-cherez-knigi-opravdyvaet-agressiyu-i-iskazhaet-istoriyu-baltii-120105915).

    At the same time, it deserves to be noted as a worrisome repetition of the kind of statements Putin and other Russian officials made about Ukraine prior to the launch of the Kremlin’s expanded war in that country and thus suggests that some in the Russian capital want to do the same thing in Lithuania or at least lay the threatening groundwork for doing so.

Treatment of Smaller Minorities by Larger Minorities in Russian Federation Now Subject of Debate

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 28 – Those who oppose ethnic minorities from gaining independence often argue that such minorities, because they have even smaller ethnic minorities among them, either are already mistreating those groups or would if they became local majorities and consequently, any gains for the larger minorities would be undercut by losses for the smaller ones within them.

    At the end of Soviet times, for example, many Russians argued against independence for the union republics by saying that the titular nationalities in those republics if they gained power would repress smaller groups. Now, some Russian liberals are making the same argument against the non-Russian autonomies within the Russian Federation.

    But they are not alone. Some members of larger minorities worry about how they currently treat the smaller minorities or would be likely to treat after gaining independence. Not surprisingly, many activists in the larger minorities view any expression of concern on that point as threatening their movements by creating an alliance with Russian liberals.

    Such debates have been at the margin of the political life of most republics, but they are now moving to the center in some of them because at least a few activists among the larger non-Russian nations are arguing that the decolonization that many now seek must begin close to home with the larger minorities worrying more about the smaller ones.

    Some of those within the larger non-Russian nationalities who are raising this issue have long been more committed to seeking genuine federalism within the current borders of the Russian Federation than seeking independence for their own nations, something that makes them suspect in the eyes of many nationalists.

    One such is Aleksandr Garmzhapova, a Buryat activist who now lives in the United States, and who is openly arguing that for the Buryats, de-colonization must begin at home with greater attention by the Buryats to the rights of the non-Buryats among them facebook.com/alexandra.garmazhapova/posts/pfbid0ddMwzQN1RMT6LYgFfpcammhm2JV1WyAntRG9ouugFd1cSx2H7YmdBH3yemcTgDxol).

     That has sparked a spirited rejoinder by Buryat nationalists and by other non-Russians who argue that those who want independence should seek it first and then go about ensuring that it means more rights not only for the nationalities who achieve it but also for those new minorities who will inevitably emerge (indigenous-russia.com/archives/43887).

    The position of the nationalists is understandable, but they may be making a mistake: Even those who want to escape from under Moscow’s rule rather than become part of a renewed federation will likely achieve more of their goals if they do worry about the rights of ethnic minorities among them and the creation of institutions to protect them.

    That is because those larger minorities who do will remove from the quiver of Russians and many in the West one of their most powerful arrows against independence and also discover that they will have more allies than they might otherwise acquire. And that will help them regardless of whether they come down in favor of expanded federalism or full independence.