Russian and Chinese Aggressiveness an Objective Requirement of Their Rulers and ‘a Kind of Rebirth of Leninist Idea of World Revolution,’ Savvin Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – Dimitry Savvin, the editor of the Riga-based conservative Russian portal, Harbin, says that the aggressiveness of Moscow and Beijing are the product of the objective requirements of their rulers and represent “a kind of rebirth of the Leninist idea of world revolution.”

    According to him, “in the early 1990s, it seemed that totalitarian regimes were becoming a thing of the past” and that “the communist system was either collapsing or undergoing a liberal market transformation.” But “as very sad historical experience has shown,” that was not the case (harbin.lv/prichiny-vneshney-ekspansii-neokommunisticheskikh-i-neosovetskikh-rezhimov).

    What happened then was “not a fall at all” of communism but rather “just another mutation,” Savvin says; and “the neo-communist and neo-Soviet systems have not only survived and stabilized but also beginning their external expansion” to meet the need of their elites to remain in power by destroying those forces abroad that would otherwise defeat and oust them.

    Lenin believed in a world revolution because he recognized that if he did not defeat the forces of liberalism and the free market, he would never be able to construct socialism, a position that those who followed him continued, despite some twists and turns including a belief that socialist countries would win out during an extended period of peaceful competition.

    But it became obvious that an arrangement of unlimited dictatorship with a relatively free market could not last for long; and for a brief time in both Russia and China it appeared that those holding dictatorial power would cede it in order to take advantage of free markets and not be pushed into the dustbin of history.

    In the 1990s, Savvin continues, it looked like that was happening: “The Russian Federation officially rejected Marxist-Leninist ideology and the in the Chinese Peoples Republic was confirmed ‘wild capitalism under a red flag.’” But in both, “the previous ruling stratum and previous apparatus of power was retained.”

    Rulers in both places know,” the conservative writer says, that “the neo-NEP of Bukharin and Deng Xiaoping can’t compete peacefully with liberal democracy and the market system. Sooner of later, the neo-NEP will lose.” Moreover, “isolationism is not an option: it can only delay the catastrophe for a few decades.”

    That confronts the two elites with a choice: “either to accept the obvious and natural, beginning the smooth dismantling of the neo-Soviet and neo-communist system to quietly and peacefully "leave history;" or to continue the struggle with military methods - on a global scale with the goal of destroying liberal democracy and the market economy on the planet as a whole.

    Given that the odds the leaders in Moscow and Beijing will chose to give up power and leave the scene on their on volition is vanishingly small, Savvin continues, what the world is confronted with is almost certainly “a second edition of the concept of a world revolution” carried out by leaders who are prepared to do anything to maintain their power.

    “If the Free World, in the person of its elites and its intelligentsia does not recognize this danger,” Savvin concludes, “then in the course of several decades it may simply cease to exist.”

‘Yes, There was Sex in the USSR’ Focus of New Book-Length Study

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – One of the most famous and widely repeated statement to come out of the USSR was the declaration by Ludmila Ivanova who declared in the course of a Soviet-American telebridge in July 1986 that “we have no sex [in the USSR] and we are strictly opposed to it.”

    That immediately became both the subject of mirth because everyone including presumably Ivanova herself knew that wasn’t true but also evidence in the minds of many Russians and others of just how out of touch with reality the Soviet leadership was at least in words if not, of course, in action.

    Now, Rustam Aleksandr, a Russian scholar at the University of Melbourne, demonstrates just how out of touch the Soviet government was in a new book entitled There was Sex: Intimate Life in the Soviet Union (https://individuum.ru/books/seks-byl-intimnaya-zhizn-sovetskogo-soyuza/; reviewed by Semyon Vladimirov at meduza.io/feature/2025/04/08/seks-byl-novaya-kniga-rustama-aleksandera-ob-intimnoy-zhizni-v-sovetskom-soyuze).

     Aleksandr attracted widespread attention for 2022 study of homosexuality in the USSR, a book entitled The Closeted: The Life of Homosexuals in the Soviet Union, which has now been translated into English (meduza.io/episodes/2023/03/14/govorim-ob-istorii-lgbt-v-sssr-snachala-bolsheviki-dali-soobschestvu-polnuyu-svobodu-a-potom-uvideli-v-nem-shpionov-i-rastliteley-armii-i-flota and books.google.com/books/about/Red_Closet.html).

    According to Vladimirov, Aleksandr’s three most important conclusions are that Soviet society was puritanical except at the beginning and the end, that Soviet law enforcement was less obsessed with sex than were party officials, and that there were a large number of Soviet academics who tried to pull back the veil of secrecy on sex the Kremlin wanted maintained.

    His new book helps to explain why the Putin regime has moved in the directions it has, simultaneously allowing more sexual activity of various kinds than was the case earlier but presenting itself as a defender of traditional values, including hostility to the very kinds of behaviors its members likely favor and participate in.

With Talk of Peace, Russians Massively Signing Up for Military Service Apparently Hoping to Get Big Bonuses and Credit for Volunteering at Less Risk of Having to Fight

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – Since talks about an end to the fighting in Ukraine began earlier this year, Russians are signing up in unprecedented numbers, apparently in the hopes of getting the sign-up bonuses still being offered and credit for doing so without the risk of actually going into battle.

    That conclusion is suggested by two new articles which report that both in the regions and in Moscow, the number of men signing up has gone from a few dozen a day to more than a hundred since talk of peace in Ukraine has become more frequent (verstka.media/v-moskve-rezko-vyroslo-chislo-zhelayushhih-podpisat-kontrakt-s-minoborony and sibreal.org/a/na-fone-peregovorov-o-mire-v-regionah-naraschivayut-kampaniyu-po-naboru-kontraktnikov-/33362214.html).

    As both report, Russian officials are celebrating these increases as evidence of growing patriotism and the impact of the government’s propaganda machine; but in fact, they point to just the reverse, the way in which Russians are asking what’s in it for them and seeking to game the system to their individual benefit.

    There are likely at least a few in the Kremlin who understand that and who recognize that this does not bode well if Putin does not end the fighting in Ukraine soon or tries to launch another war without better justification – and there should be some in Western governments who realize what this means in terms of Putin’s negotiating position.

Conflict between Estonian Government and Moscow Church Intensifies

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – The Estonian parliament has adopted a law that requires that what had been the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate not only change its name and end its financial and administrative ties to the Moscow Patriarchate but sever its canonical ones to that church and subordinate itself to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

    Both the Estonian Orthodox Christian Church as the EOC MP is now known as a result of earlier Tallinn actions and the Moscow Patriarchate are outraged at what they both see as unwarranted and illegal state intervention in the religious life of the church and say they cannot and will not agree (ru/faith/2025-04-10/1_9232_lawabiding.html).

    Once the measure is signed into law, the EOCC will have two months to comply. If it doesn’t, its parishes and religious establishment will lose their status as legal persons in Estonia, cease to be able to own property or maintain bank accounts, and the church will be “liquidated” by the Estonian government.

    That will be the definitive end of what had been the Estonian “compromises” under which there have been two Orthodox churches in Estonia since the 1990s, one subordinate to Moscow and one to Constantinople. Many hope that the  EOCC will fuse with the Constantinople church.

    That is possible, but it is also possible that EOCC parishes and bishoprics will go .underground and become a source of new tensions between Moscow and Estonia, with the Moscow Patriarchate leading demands that the Kremlin do something to protect what the Patriarchate believes is part of “the Russian world.”

    On the complex history of Orthodoxy in recent years, a history whose tensions have been exacerbated by Putin’s war in Ukraine, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/01/tallinn-set-to-demand-moscow-church-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/tallinn-pushes-hard-to-end-estonian.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/estonian-orthodox-church-of-moscow.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/01/moscow-patriarchs-policies-making.html.

Russians as Old as 60 May Soon Be Counted as ‘Young,’ Possibly Presaging Radical Increase in Retirement Ages

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 10 – Over the last several weeks, senior Russian officials have proposed changing the definition of young people in their country to include people as old as 60, a move that could presage a radical increase in retirement ages, easing Russia’s worker shortage and reducing the amount the government must spend in support of retirees.

    Gennady Onishchenko, vice president of the Russian Academy of Education, favors boosting the upper limit of the young to 40. Healthcare minister Mikhail Murashko wants to boost it to 44; and Veronika Skvortsova, head of the Federal Medical-Biological Agency, seeks to raise it to 60 (nakanune.ru/articles/123373/).

    Their proposals come after the World Health Organization suggested raising the upper limit of the young to 44 and after the Russian government boosted the age from 30 to 35 in 2020 and has been talking about shifting it upwards again to 40 or even higher because people are living longer and are healthier for more years than ever before.  

    While some may dismiss these ideas as ridiculous, some experts are suggesting that the Kremlin is behind them and wants to use an increase in the upper limit of the young as the basis for increasing retirement ages in Russia, thus solving many of its labor shortage problems and reducing the pension burden on the state.

    Among those is Yury Krupnov of the Moscow Institute of Demography, Migration and Regional Development. He suggests that the Russian government might use such an increase to boost retirement ages to as much as 75 or even more in its pursuit of expanding the workforce and limiting the growth in the number of pensioners.

    Given how angry Russians have been about any increase in pension ages in the past, that possibility is likely to spark for anger, dissent and even open protests if the boost in the upper age limit of the young goes through – and if it becomes obvious that Moscow is doing this not to come into line with the WHO but to make Russians work more years before getting pensions.  

Russia Launches First Super Icebreaker with No Foreign Components

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – Russia has launched the Yakutiya, the fourth super icebreaker in its new class of such ships – the Artika, Ural and Sibir are already underway, the Chukotka and Leningrad are under construction, and the keel of the Stalingrad is to be laid later this year – but the first to be assembled without any foreign-produced components.

    That fact may be of particular importance to Vladimir Putin who has declared that the Northern Sea Route, which requires icebreakers to operate, is equivalent to the Trans-Siberian Railway as far as Russia’s economic and geopolitical future are concerned (thebarentsobserver.com/news/latest-nuclearpowered-icebreaker-steams-north/428022).

    What if any constraints the lack of foreign components will place on the new ship is as yet unknown, despite Russian suggestions that Moscow can do without such systems; but the electronics on a ship like the avionics on an airplane are seldom visible at first but may become the most important in operations.

    But it seems clear that these limitations may be important after all, given Russia’s troubled history of building ships and Putin’s own call this week for opening Arctic shipping to international cooperation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/moscow-facing-growing-problems-with-itshtml and thebarentsobserver.com/news/belligerent-putin-raises-his-bets-in-the-arctic/427497).

Kyiv Views Middle Volga and North Caucasus as Likely to Be First Regions to Become Independent of Moscow

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, a senior member of the Verkhovna Rada, says that he and others in Kyiv view the peoples of the Middle Volga and the North Caucasus as the nations most likely to be the first to secure independence from Moscow and thus must be the focus of Ukrainian efforts to speed that process.

    He says that the independence of the peoples now within the borders of the Russian Federation is critical for Ukraine because once Kyiv recovers its land up to the 1991 border, it must have relations with partners committed to independence rather than face a totalitarian state opposed to its existence (ukr.radio/news.html?newsID=107066 reposed and translated at abn.org.ua/en/liberation-movements/ukraine-is-trying-to-prepare-the-elite-of-the-enslaved-nations-of-russia-yurchyshyn/).

    Yurchyshyn says Kyiv has two other tasks in this area: providing Ukrainians with more information about the peoples within the borders of the Russian Federation and convincing Western countries that Russia’s disintegration won’t lead to nuclear war but rather become the very best course to achieving lasting peace.

    That Yurchyshyn should talk about the importance of transforming what is now the Russian Federation, about the significance of improving the understanding of the Ukrainian people about the peoples within the borders of that country, and about the requirement that Kyiv help convince the West that the demise of Russia as a requirement for peace is no surprise.

    But one thing that he did say may come as a surprise: his belief that Tatarstan and the other peoples of the Middle Volga will be among the first to leave the Russian Federation and gain independence given that they are surrounded by what Moscow has proclaimed “Russian” regions and thus do not have direct access to other countries.

    Yurchyshyn’s mention of the Middle Volga region and Tatarstan in particular suggests that Kyiv is increasing its focus on what some have called the Orenburg corridor, the land between Bashkortostan and Idel Ural in the north and Kazakhstan in the south, a narrow strip of land that represents the land bridge that would make independence possible.

    Kyiv has talked about this in the past. That it is returning to this issue now is something worth watching. (For background on this issue, see jamestown.org/program/kazakh-nationalists-call-for-astana-to-absorb-orenburg-outraging-moscow/, jamestown.org/program/the-orenburg-corridor-and-the-future-of-the-middle-volga/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatars-and-bashkirs-must-recover.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/ukrainian-interest-in-orenburg-corridor.html.) 

   That the Ukrainian parliamentarian did not mention the Ukrainian regions inside the Russian Federation known as "wedges" does not mean that they are not on Kyiv's radar screen but only that raising that issue in the current environment would allow Moscow to denounce Kyiv as "imperialist." (On these regions, see jamestown.org/program/moscow-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-in-russia-and-their-growing-support-from-abroad/, jamestown.org/program/kyiv-raises-stakes-by-expanding-appeals-to-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/ and jamestown.org/program/the-kuban-a-real-wedge-between-russia-and-ukraine/.)

Embarrassment, Anger, and Pride Prompting Chuvash Activists to Try to Save Their Language

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 10 – Embarrassed that they don’t know their national language when members of other nations know theirs, angry that Russian officials and Russian speakers generally treat them as inferior, and pride in their own nation and its past are combining to prompt ever more Chuvash to take actions to try to save their language.

    Members of the one million-strong Christian Turkic nation of the Middle Volga, two-thirds of whom live in their titular republic and have watched the use of their language decline dramatically over the last decade, are taking a variety of actions to change that last trend, the Regional Aspect portal says (regaspect.info/2025/04/11/vse-my-russkie/).

    In a 4,000-word article which has its title “Are we all Russians?” from the experience of some Chuvash who sing a song entitled “We are all Chuvash” translated by a Russian into “We are all Russians,” their various paths in life to this point and their current efforts are described in detail.

    In Soviet times, Chuvash was not taught in most schools; but from the 1990s to 2017, it was a required subject and 84 percent of all pupils studied it. Now, after Putin’s decision to make the study of non-Russian languages completely voluntary, the share has fallen to less than half, something that puts the future of Chuvash at risk but is also angering many.

    The older generation, especially in the villages, still knows Chuvash, but it has done little to pass it on to their children. And one of the most remarkable aspects of the rebirth of interest in Chuvash is that it has come from and been led by young adults who feel they have been deprived of an important part of who they are.

    Many of those involved are teachers of other languages who have been shocked into what it means that they don’t know their own. One Chuvash student of Esperanto who is now a leading Chuvash activist was challenged by another Esperanto speaker with the question: “Do you know that if you don’t learn Chuvash, in 50 years, your language will be dead?”

    Others have come to linguistic activism through art and music because of their familiarity with the way in which those aspects of life are interconnected with language. A karaoke program is getting more people to learn Chuvash, and Internet courses have sprung up to teach Chuvash to people not only in the republic but far beyond it.

    But perhaps the most striking characteristic of this new language movement is the gender of those leading it. Until a few generations ago, Chuvash culture  was completely patriarchal; but now it has acquired a woman’s face, activists say – and the leaders of this linguistic and cultural revival are almost exclusively female.

Russia Lacks Enough Ethnic Specialists to Address Nationality Issues, Duma Told

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 10 – The Russian Federation currently lacks the number of ethnic specialists needed to address nationality issues, participants in a hearing of the Duma Committee on Nationality Affairs said; and without them, it will be difficult for Moscow to address them successfully.

     Academician Valery Tishkov, former nationalities minister and former director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, said that having enough such experts is critical for solving a large number of domestic and foreign policy tasks (nazaccent.ru/content/43808-v-gosdume-zayavili-o-nehvatke-kadrov-v-sfere-mezhnacionalnyh-otnoshenij-i-etnologii/ and t.me/v_v_ivanov_z/2601).

    Vladimir Ivanov., chairman of the Duma committee said that to address the shortage, an effective system of the preparation of scholarly workers, instructors and specialists in this area must be developed, the outlines of which he suggested had been set by a labor ministry directive already in 2018.

    This year, Ivanov continued, work is continuing on that project with particular attention being given to economic development projects in the Far East and Far North, a focus that means more ethnic specialists must be drawn from the numerically smaller peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East.

    While those participating in this session were expressing positions that reflected their particular interests, the fact that this subject is now being discussed again at the Duma level indicates that the powers that be in Moscow are increasingly concerned about developments affecting ethnic relations that have been arising below the radar screen of the regime.

    The author of these lines, however much he disagrees with Moscow’s policies and the positions some of the scholars at this Duma meeting have taken on various issues, remains proud that in the early 1990s, he oversaw a program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to encourage young Russian ethnographers to remain in the field.

    That program lasted only for two or three years, but it came at a time when many aspirant in Moscow were leaving the field for more lucrative jobs elsewhere. If only a few stayed because of it, I am pleased as I recognize how important it is for countries like Russia to have expertise on ethnic issues. 

Putin’s Russia Now ‘an Empire on Autopilot’ whose Fragmentation Must Be Overcome or whose Disintegration is Inevitable, Siberian Activist Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 10 – Russia today is a country deeply split between a capital “getting rich as an offshore jurisdiction” and the rest which is “getting poor as a forgotten province” and one being run as “an empire on autopilot” rather than the center making any effort to “defragment” things, a Siberian activist says. Unless that changes, Russia’s disintegration is inevitable.

    In an anonymous article for the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal, a writer who describes herself as “a Pomor Siberian Woman” says that the two Russias, one in Moscow and the rest beyond the ring road, now are at “a socio-political divide” with neither seeking to unite with the other (region.expert/autopilot/).

    Moscow is running the country as if on “autopilot,” talking about stability rather than development; and the Russia outside its limits takes payments and orders from the center but tries to go about its own life on its own, she continues. These two “’states’ cooperate ever less often.”

    The Siberian activist points out that pPoor regions are fed by budget injections, military orders and promises of development. But these are not investments – they are rations and a form of pacification. And temporary one at that” as they are not about growth but only “a delay in decay.”

    Indeed, “when economic policy is based on emissions and forced patriotism rather than on increasing productivity and modernization, the result is always the same: degradation. And Russia has already entered it that stage. Only it does not look like a collapse, but like disintegration.”

    As a result, Putin’s much-ballyhooed “power vertical” is “still alive; but it increasingly resembles a steel cable stretched to the limit, one that still holds but dos not integrate,” one that continues to “connect but does not unite.” As for the population outside of Moscow, it doesn’t protest massively but rather seeks to live “in personal isolation” taking and doing what it can.

    The center could move to end this fragmentation and unite the country by promoting development, but that would represent a break with its past practice and seems unlikely. And by remaining on “autopilot,” it is reducing federalism to “a decoration” and making it ever more likely that the regions will ignore the center as best they can.

    As for the regions, they now “live in a regime of colonial dependence: political, financial and linguistic. It is not surprising that it is from there, from the periphery, that timid voices about political subjectivity are increasingly being heard. We are not talking about revolutions yet but rather about the gradual peeling off of one’s own meanings from loyalty to the former whole.”

    One might hope that this system would one day “transform itself from within, democratically and painlessly” were it not for the fact that over the last century, that system has “refuted this assumption with enviable regularity” with Moscow responding to calls for unity “not with dialogue but with mobilization,” like an empire rather than a modern state.

    The real question, the Siberian writer says, is whether this disintegration will be managed or not. Given Moscow’s track record, the likelihood is that it will not; but the regions have an interest in having it managed lest they end up in a situation as bad or even worse than the one they find themselves in today.

Kremlin Helping Lukashenka Repress Belarusians by Including More than 4700 of Them on Russian Wanted List

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 9 – Vladimir Putin has benefitted throughout his time as Russian president by the constant references in Russian and foreign media to Alyaksandr Lukashenka as “the last dictator in Europe,” an epithet which distracts attention from the fact that Putin is far more repressive than the Belarusian dictator.

    But now there is new evidence that Putin is providing his fellow dictator with the kind of assistance that allows Lukashenka to repress his own people and remain in power. The Kremlin leader has put the name of more than 4700 Belarusians on Russia’s wanted list (mediazonaby.com/article/2025/04/09/wanted_again).

    This means that these people will be sought not just by Belarusian siloviki in Belarus but by Russian ones in Russia and that the two force structures will now work hand in glove to repress those who oppose the Belarusian leader, something for which Putin must be held accountable.

    That is an increase of more than 1200 over the last five months alone, Media.Zona reports; and Putin’s willingness shows just how far he is prepared to go to support his fellow dictator given that many of those added to the list have been identified by Belarusian activists and human rights organizers as victims of political persecution.

    Until the very end of 2022, there were never more than a handful added in any one month. Then more than 200 were added in December of that first year of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine; and since then, the number of Belarusians on this list has increased often by 200 or more each month.

    Those who continue to talk about Lukashenka as “the last dictator in Europe” should be disabused by this and recognize that he is one of several, including Vladimir Putin, who are working against democracy and human rights and deserve that description at least as much as Lukashenka.

Kremlin Continue Moves against Telegram Channels in a Deniable Way and Far from Moscow

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 9 – Having decided that telegram channels are more of a threat than a useful ally, the Kremlin has launched a campaign to destroy their audience base by making them harder and potentially more dangerous to access – and continues to do so first and foremost by organizing denial of service outages in regions far from Moscow.

    The Kremlin’s attack on the VChK-OGPU channel was itself surrounded by enough confusion that many were unwilling to place the blame on Putin and his regime for the blockage (meduza.io/news/2025/04/07/telegram-otritsaet-chto-kanal-vchk-ogpu-byl-udalen-administratsiey-messendzhera).

    But as it has moved beyond the attack, it has undermined this news venue, one popular with Russians (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russians-attracted-to-pro-regime-media.html) by orchestrating outages far from Moscow, first in the North Caucasus and now in Siberia (newizv.ru/news/2025-04-09/vechnoe-soedinenie-rossiyane-soobschili-o-massovom-sboe-v-telegram-436513).

    That allows the Kremlin to escape criticism from media rights organizations, most of which are based in Moscow or now abroad and perhaps more important to avoid generating the kind of protest among Russians who are increasingly concerned about media freedom (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/freedom-of-speech-now-far-more.html).

    Moreover, it is far easier for Moscow to take such moves in the regions because there, a single company. typically based in the capital, controls the

Moscow Increases Repression of Erzya, Seeking to Crush that Nation’s Traditional Ruling Structure and Replace It with One the Center Controls

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 9 – As it has done with other minorities, the Russian government is seeking to suppress the traditional structure of the Erzya nation and replace it with a pocket body fully controlled by Moscow and its agents. That effort, like so many Kremlin ones, is proving counterproductive because it is so blatant and is sparking more Erzya activism.

    The Erzya is one of two nations Moscow has grouped together as Mordvins in a Middle Volga republic named for that creation. The Erzya form approximately a third of this Soviet-established nation, but the Moksha as the other is known are far more dominant than that figure might suggest.

    Not surprisingly the Erzya have been the more active of the two and far more opposed to both the republic government and the Russian one, although it recent times, the Moksha have become more active as well. Moscow has moved against both, but it has become especially active in seeking to suppress the Erzya.

    The latest Russian moves involve bringing to trial two senior Erzya leaders, putting Erzya leaders in exile on a watch list and creating an alternative to the Erzya’s traditional organization and insisting that this new body and not the one which enjoys authority among the Erzya will be recognized (indigenous-russia.com/archives/43152).

    There is no sign that these actions have intimidated the Erzya and at least some that they have sufficiently outraged that Finno-Ugric nation that Moscow is going to come out the loser in this latest move on the extremely complicated chessboard of politics not only in Mordvinia but in the Middle Volga region more general.

    For background on the Erzya and the emergence of their national movement over the last few years, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/erzya-national-movement-most-active-and.html,windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/01/putin-pursuing-russification-only-as.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/11/erzyan-national-movement-recognizes.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/erzya-congress-calls-for-pursuing.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/09/russian-repression-forces-finno-ugric.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/08/erzyan-emigre-leader-calls-on-west-to.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/04/erzya-can-survive-pandemic-but-not.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/03/as-mordvins-approach-majority-status-in.html  and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/10/ethnic-divisions-among-those-moscow.html.

    For background on the Moksha and their increasingly active national movement, one whose relationship with the Erzya may very well change as a result of Moscow’s moves against the Erzya, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/08/mordvinias-moksha-nation-issues.html,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/emigre-mokshas-unite-to-fight-against.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/12/mordovias-erzya-and-moksha-look-to.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/moksha-emigration-comes-ou t-against-war.html and especially windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/03/as-mordvins-approach-majority-status-in.html.

Freedom of Speech Now Far More Important for Russians than It was at Start of Putin’s Reign – and That’s a Problem for the Kremlin Leader, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 9 – When Putin first came to power and began his assault on the media, many Russians sided with him rather than with outlets like NTV because they placed their hopes in the new president to improve their lives and associated the liberal media with a past that they wanted to escape, Abbas Gallyamov says.

    That pattern defined how many opposition figures still view Russian attitudes about media freedom, the Russian commentator says; but these are no longer appropriate because Russians don’t place their hopes in the aging Kremlin leader but instead see a free media as a means to improve things (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/7589 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=67F6AEB633F66).

    And thus, Russians now see Putin’s attacks on the media, including most recently on Telegram channels, as attacks on them, something that is driving down their support for him and even creating a revolutionary situation because many revolutions begin with concerns about the ability of the media to report the truth.

    Over the last decade, the former Putin speechwriter says, the importance of media freedom for Russians has risen in polls seeking information on what things matter most to them even as the significance of material goods have fallen, Gallyamov says, something neither Putin or most of the opposition fully appreciate.

    In a 2017 survey, only 34 percent of Russians said that freedom of speech was among the most important issues for them. But by 2019, it had risen to 58 percent; and by 2021, it reached 61 percent, almost twice the figure of only four years earlier and a clear majority of the Russian population.

    In part as a result, Putin has been losing popularity; and he has decided that he “can’t count on anything other than repression, even though it needs to be understood that today, the actions of the authorities in this regard are at odds with the values of the majority of the citizens. That means in turn that people’s loyalty will continue to fall.”

    According to Gallyamov, “it is precisely these thing which will lead to the formation of a revolutionary situation as it is well known that dissatisfaction with censorship and the demand for freedom of speech have been at the root of many revolutions from the Great French Revolution to the events of the Arab Spring.”

Ever More Russian Companies Behind in Paying Their Workers, Harming Employees and Other Employers

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 7 – A problem that plagued the Russian economy in the 1990s is now returning, with ever more Russian companies behind in paying their workers and thus using the money they retain to avoid having to borrow money at today’s high interest rates, a pattern that is bankrupting competitors who do pay workers on time and thus leading to spread of wage arrears.

    According to Rosstat, the Russian government’s statistical arm, the number of complaints by workers that their employers had not paid them on time rose to 18,400 in 2024, 37.4 percent more than a year earlier. But independent experts say that this rise is not only but the tip of the iceberg but accelerating (rbc.ru/economics/31/03/2025/67e55fbe9a794700fac68ed1)`

    Official figures suggest that approximately 240,000 workers are now owed more than500 million rubles (five million US dollars), a relatively small amount for the economy overall but a tragedy for those not getting paid, a threat of bankruptcy to competitors who do pay, and a worrisome figure given that overcoming wage arrears is something the Putin regime earlier pledged to do. 

    When workers aren’t paid, the companies involved use the money for other things  rather than borrowing to do so; and that means that wage arrears in a few companies affect others who do pay on time, harming their ability to operate and thus making the failure of some to pay wages in a timely fashion a bigger problem than it might seem.

    Labor union officials and independent Russian experts say that the current situation is not yet at the crisis level it was 30 years ago but that it is rapidly increasing to that level in many sectors of the Russian economy and will likely continue to grow as long as the cost to businesses of borrowing money remain high.

Russia’s Regional Leaders have Taken the Potemkin Village Approach to New Heights Under Putin

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 7 – Under tsars and commissars, Russian officials have always tried to put their best foot forward whenever their regions were visited by the country’s leader; but under Vladimir Putin, regional leaders have taken this approach, known for its founder Prince Potemkin, to new heights.

    According to a survey of the most extreme forms of erecting a façade to hide reality and suggest that things are really better than they are, regional officials over the last 25 years have taken a variety of steps that would have brought a blush to Potemkin and other practitioners of this tactic.

    The New Tab portal (thenewtab.io/25-let-pokazuhi/)points to the following cases as being especially egregious:

•    Bringing in substitute residents in place of the real ones so that the latter would not be able to complain about what happened to their village during a flood (Barsukovskaya, 2002);

•    Cleaning the street along which Putin was to pass 15 time and removing all the cars usually parked along it (Kolpino, 2009);

•    Bringing in new equipment to a hospital Putin was to visit and then removing it as soon as he left (Ivanovo, 2010);

•    Painting weeds along a roadway to look like flowers (Nizhny Novgorod, 2012);

•    Painting the asphalt of the road on which Putin was to travel (Vladivostok, 2016);

•    Covered up buildings in poor repair along Putin’s route (Volgograd, 2016);

•    Covered puddles with parquet flooring to obscure how bad the roads were and are (Arkhangelsk, 2017);

•    Shut down factories polluting the skies for a few days before Putin arrived so the skies would be blue (Krasnoyarsk, 2017);

•    Painted only those parts of the buildings Putin could see from his route and covered up posters of opposition figures with commercial ads (Ulyanovsk, 2018);

•    Covered up with banners old buildings that hadn’t been repaired in time (Omsk, 2019); and

•    Mowed the grass when there was snow on the ground and brought in special snow removal equipment the city didn’t ever have to remove drifts (Tsivilsk, 2024).

    The portal didn’t say whether these actions impressed Putin or helped the careers of those who engaged in them.

Young Russians Shouldn’t Be Treated as Separate from Russian Society and Will Converge with It as They Age, Volkov Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 6 – One of the continuing characteristics of Russian political discussions is an almost obsessive focus on the distinctiveness of the rising generation, with some hoping and others fearing that they are so different from the rest of society that they will transform the country, according to Denis Volkov of the Levada Center.

    Young people are different not only because of their experiences and the sources from which they get their information, the sociologist says; but they are not a completely different world. Instead, they follow the trends of the broader society and, as their members age, become more like the older cohorts (levada.ru/2025/04/04/molodezh-i-vlast-ot-lyubvi-do-nenavisti-i-obratno/).

    If one keeps that in mind, then the evolution of the attitudes of younger Russians toward the Putin regime over the last two decades makes perfect sense, Volkov continues, whereas if one treats them as if they were a group completely different unto themselves, the results of surveys are impossible to understood fully.

    Young people are different from their elders not only in the sources they turn to for information but also in the level of their interest in political issues. They are more inclined than older people to use the Internet and social media and they are less interested in political issues of the day.

    But – and this is Volkov’s main point – they generally track along the same direction as the population as a whole albeit with differences of varying degrees and as members of that cohort age, they become more like their elders both in their use of media and also in the level of their interest in politics.

    That doesn’t mean that they will ever be the same as their parents in terms of interest or media use, but “it does mean … that young people will inevitably be drawn into the existing information network in our society and will assimilate the dominant ideas and assessments” of that society rather than be completely different.
    “And that in turn means,” Volkov concludes, “that as today’s young people get older, most likely of all, they will become ever more similar in their views to the majority of Russians,” something some will find discouraging and others will welcome.

‘Russian Opposition at Times More Hostile to Siberian Minorities than are the Authorities,’ Vyushkova Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 7 – Mariya Vyushkova, one of the co-founders of the Free Buryatia Foundation who now has resigned from that group and lives in the US, says that the Russian opposition is often “more xenophobic” than are the Russian authorities but that independence may not be the solution unless both Russians and Buryats face up to the reasons.

    Buryats and other ethnic minorities from east of the Urals who have a different physiognomy from Russians have long been at risk of attack by Russian nationalists, but unexpectedly for many, they have been sharply criticized by Russian opposition leaders who oppose Putin’s war in Ukraine (indigenous-russia.com/archives/42967).

    There are many reasons for that, Vyushkova says. The Buryats were the face of the 2014 Russian invasion of the Donbass. Many Russians are trapped into the idea that everything Western is good and everything eastern is bad, and opposition Russians view criticizing them as a way to escape responsibility for what has happened in Ukraine.

    “According to the latest research” carried out by Wake Forest scholar Adam Lenton, she continues, “the opposition public in Russia is even more xenophobic than is Russian society as a whole” in part because those who oppose Putin’s war in Ukraine can then say “’we aren’t guilty; it’s those wild Asians whom we aren’t able to control.”

    Vyushkova says that “this phenomenon can be called a manifestation of ‘Eurocentric anti-colonialism,’ a paradoxical development in which the condemnation of one form of imperialism is accompanied by support for the continuation of another” especially as many Russians think Russian colonialism was both peaceful and positive.

    (Even many Buryats believe that because at the end of the Soviet period, they were among the most successful non-Russian groups, having accepted Russification as a price worth paying for better lives otherwise, she says. Only more recently have they begun to learn the truth about this trade-off.)

    But that doesn’t mean that independence is necessarily the answer, Vyushkova continues. “Backers of independence are becoming more numerous, but as before, there are very few of them; and they aren’t popular. Ethnic thinking remains in second place.” And as for herself, she fears that “independence doesn’t guarantee either democracy or the defense of Buryat rights.”

    She says her greatest fear is that “if independence takes place via ‘a Prigozhin scenario, then this will lead to the establishment of a Trans-Baikal Bandit-Cossack Republic” through which drugs will flow through into Russia and wood and gold will flow in the opposite direction into China. The Buryats will not have any rights or democracy in such a state.”

    There is thus the real risk that “independence will only result in a society with old authoritarian models, one in which the people will be pushed around and cry out for Grandpa Putin … The region is already full of illegal weapons and there are many with combat experience. If former military men end up in power, the criminal world will merge with them.”

    “That is why I fear that in an independent Buryatia, war criminal rather than democrats will be free and that those who opposed the war won’t have any place in this country. Even in an independent Buryatia, I fear, we will be persecuted just as we are now, in the same authoritarian state but in a new form.”

    And Vyushkova concludes sadly that “we don’t want to discuss this, but I think that the first step to the solution of a problem is to acknowledge that it exists.”

Invisibility of Wives of Top Russian Politicians Increasingly Sets Pattern for Wives of Governors, Mileshkina and Fetisov Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 7 – Because of the patriarchal nature of Russian society and because the wives of senior officials in Moscow seldom participate in public life, the wives of governors in the federal subjects generally avoid engaging in public action, reversing a trend in the opposite direction visible as recently as a decade ago, Yuliya Mileshkina and Dmitry Fetisov say.

    The two political scientists who specialize on regional issues say that when Dmitry Medvedev was president, his wife was more active in public and the wives of governors followed course; but now that the wives of senior officials at the center don’t act in public, wives of governors follow suit (club-rf.ru/opinions/3017 and club-rf.ru/detail/7650).

    Both suggest that this trend has been intensified as Russia’s governors have been reduced from independent
centers of power to ordinary officials who, in the view of most Russians, should behave with extreme modesty and not have members of their family act too publicly.

    These experts say that there are exceptions to this rule, but they aren’t numerous enough to constitute a trend. And they add that they don’t expect this to change anytime soon, although they indicate that gubernatorial wives who do take part in public life can make a major contribution.   

Derbent to Erect Synagogue, Mosque and Orthodox Church Next to One Another

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 6 – In what may be a sign of Moscow’s plans to further reify the position of what it defines as the “traditional” faiths of Russia, an official of the Presidential Administration has announced that the Dagestani city of Derbent will create “a spiritual center” over the next two years in which there will be a synagogue, a mosque and an Orthodox church.

    This 35 hectare area will also include a park, museums, libraries and other unspecified “public spaces,” Vladimir Ostrovenko says (t.me/pravitelstvord/27072, t.me/dagminnac/10753 and nazaccent.ru/content/43789-duhovnyj-centr-s-sinagogoj-mechetyu-i-cerkovyu-postroyat-v-derbente-do-2027-goda/).

    Republic officials say that the idea for creating such a religious center belonged to Dagestani Senator Suleyman Kerimov who will finance construction and has been approved by republic head Sergey Melikov, but the involvement of a PA official at the cornerstone laying ceremony suggests Moscow is involved as well.

    On the one hand, siting churches, synagogues and mosques together is not unprecedented. In many Russian cities, such religious facilities are located close to one another for historical or other reasons. But on the other, this effort may prove a harbinger of efforts to formalize such arrangements.

    That is especially likely because all those at the opening stressed how the three traditional religions would work together and even emphasized that the mosque would serve both Sunni and Shiia faithful, something that may allow the authorities to shutter Islamic shrines that serve only one or the other. Moreover, Moscow is known to be worried about religious activism in Dagestan.

    As a result, what looks like a move to support religious life could in fact be yet another move to bring it under tighter central control, with traditional faiths getting facilities if they cooperate and losing out on such possibilities if they don’t.  

‘Tens of Thousands of Russian Soldiers’ have Deserted Their Units Since 2022. ‘Barents Observer’ Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 6 – Based on its own survey of court decisions in northwestern Russia where there have been more than 800 cases and reports from other media outlets, The Barents observer concludes that “tens of thousands of Russian soldiers” have deserted their units and been hauled before military courts and sentenced to up to ten years behind bars.

    Before Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in February 2022, such cases were rare, the news service says; but now they have increased dramatically in number since then with as many cases in a single month as occurred during an entire year in earlier years (thebarentsobserver.com/security/tens-of-thousands-of-russian-soldiers-have-fled-the-war/427843).

    The news service says there were 152 such cases in Murmansk Oblast in the first two years of the war, 114 in Arkhangelsk Oblast during the same period as well as 75 in the Komi Republic, and 136 in the Karelian Republic as well as almost as many more from regions neighboring these.  

    The Barents Observer says that the actual number of desertions is certainly larger as commanders try to hide what is going on and courts either charge men with other crimes or do not report what they are doing. But its documentation of this phenomenon shows that it is anything but limited and may very well be continuing to increase in size.

Anti-Immigrant Campaign Began Earlier than Most Think and without Kremlin Direction They Assume, Verkhovsky Says

Paul Goble
    
    Staunton, Apr. 4 – Moscow’s anti-immigrant campaign did not begin with Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine or after the Crocus City Hall attack but rather in 2020, and it began and has developed less as a Kremlin-controlled effort than as the result of various politicians trying to gain support, Aleksandr Verkhovsky says.

    Most commentators suggest the current anti-immigrant campaign began as an effort to distract Russians from the war in Ukraine or in response to the Crocus City Hall attack, the head of the SOVA Analytic Center says; but in fact, it began earlier and with less central direction (bereg.io/feature/2025/04/04/uroven-ksenofobii-v-rossii-vse-vyshe-mery-protiv-migrantov-bespretsedentno-zhestkie-eto-splanirovannaya-politika-vlastey).
    
    He says that the effort began in 2020 and that attempts to blame it on the war or the terrorist attack are efforts to suggest the campaign is both more rational and more centrally controlled than is in fact the case. It expanded after each of those events but it was not caused by them.
    
    Instead, the demonization of migrant workers was the result of efforts by populist politicians in the Duma and elsewhere to win support by playing to popular prejudices rather than a concerted Kremlin policy at least to begin with and has grown because of their activities rather than because of the actions of the Presidential Administration.

    There is a great deal of evidence for these conclusions, including poll results at various points and the statements of Duma politicians, Verkhovsky continues; but the clearest is the decision to ban immigrant children who don’t know Russian well from attending Russian schools.

    That action plays to populist feelings but it is completely at odds with other Kremlin policies which seek to continue to use immigrant workers and integrate them into Russian society. It is thus not a decision which one can imagine anyone in the Kremlin from Putin on down making.

    Verkhovsky’s comments are significant not only as an explanation of the rise of anti-immigrant propaganda but also as a sign of a more general trend in late Putinism, one in which the Kremlin doesn’t take the lead or make the decisions on all policies but allows others to do so while it focuses on a smaller set of things it cares most about. 

Veterans Joining Radical Russian Nationalist Groups in Increasing Numbers, Bolstering Power of the Latter and Threatening Radicalization, Verkhovsky Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 4 – Aleksandr Verkhovsky, head of the SOVA Analytic Center, says that veterans returning from Russia’s war in Ukraine are joining Russian nationalist groups, both the anonymous and more radical and violent and the more mainstream like the Russian Community which are overwhelmingly loyal to the Putin regime.
 

    Their integration into both kinds has been difficult, in the case of the former because most of their leaders are younger than the veterans, and in the case of the latter because of the statist position of these groups. But their involvement is worrisome because it may radicalize each (bereg.io/feature/2025/04/04/uroven-ksenofobii-v-rossii-vse-vyshe-mery-protiv-migrantov-bespretsedentno-zhestkie-eto-splanirovannaya-politika-vlastey).

    Paramilitarization is unlikely to develop quickly in mainstream groups like the Russian Community or Russian Druzhina, Verkhovsky says; but “it’s a very different story with anonymous, neo-Nazi militants.” They are already actively violent and their attacks rival levels not seen after 2010 when the regime repressed many of them.

    According to Verkhovsky, “the number of serious attacks last year is already comparable to 2011. Fortunately, there have been almost no killings so far. These groups operate with caution, despite being made up mostly of very young people. But there is a risk that as they get older, the level of violence could increase — unless they’re stopped in time.”

    The situation with these groups could worsen with the joining up of veterans; but integrating them will be difficult because most of the members of such organizations are teenagers whom the veterans are unlikely to be willing to defer do, the human rights activist and monitor says.

    If both the mainstream and the radical groups “begin to attract large numbers of veterans, especially those returning with serious psychological trauma, the risks will grow,” he continues. And he notes that “in fact, we’ve seen something like this before, in 2015, when volunteers from the first wave of the Donbass campaign came back” although there were far fewer of them.

    The state managed to control the situation then, but it may have far more difficulty doing so in the future, Verkhovsky concludes.

Environmental Activism, Often a Seedbed of Political Movements, Continues to Expand in Russia Despite Increasing Repression

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 4 – Despite the Putin regime’s increasing repression, environmental activism continues to spread across the Russian Federation, a trend that must be of serious concern to the Kremlin because in the past, such activism often has been the seedbed for the emergence and growth of political movements.

    The classical example of this was in Estonia where protests about phosphate mining grew into the Popular Front, sparking the drive to the recovery of independence in 1991 (region.expert/mari-ann/) and being a pattern neither activists nor the Kremlin have forgotten (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/11/ecological-protest-in-russia-becoming.html).

    That makes environmental protests worthy of far more attention than they typically receive. While the anti-trash actions in Shiyes and the ecological movement in Bashkortostan did attract some, most other actions, typically smaller and situated in most cases further from the center have not.

    That makes an article in The Insider which catalogues what it describes as increasing environmental protests across the Russian Federation despite ever greater repression by the authorities especially important given not only what this means for civil society now but also for what it may mean in the future (theins.ru/obshestvo/279734).

    Acknowledging that increasing repression against environmental activists has typically limited the size of protests, the article points out that it hasn’t stopped them and that “ecological activists in Russia are trying to save the environment despite repressions” often taking action in ways that the authorities find difficult if not impossible to stop.

    These actions have had some successes, and the environmental portal Kedr.media has provided a guide for how activists can “defend nature in Russia without risking their freedom,” methods that it says are “accessible to everyone” and that should allow even more Russians to protest the destruction of the environment (kedr.media/explain/priberi-svoyu-stranu/).

Chuvash Call on Ukraine to Label Russian Actions in Their Republic a Genocide

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 4 – On the heels of a Ukrainian government decision to recognize Russian actions against the Circassians an act of genocide, leaders of the national liberation movement in Chuvashia, a Christian Turkic republic in the Middle Volga, have urged the Ukrainian parliament to do the same for them.

    The Chuvash move (abn.org.ua/en/analysis/leaders-of-the-national-liberation-movements-of-chuvashia-sent-an-appeal-to-the-verkhovna-rada-of-ukraine-regarding-the-genocide-of-the-chuvash/) suggests that Kyiv’s decision to declare Russian actions against the Circassians a genocide may soon be followed by many others.

    Just how many non-Russians will make such appeals and how rapidly Kyiv will meet them remains to be seen. The Circassians lobbied hard for years to achieve their end, and nations like the Chuvash are less well organized and active. But Kyiv now is giving every sign it will be receptive (abn.org.ua/en/liberation-movements/decolonization-continues-bill-on-support-for-enslaved-nations-recommended-for-consideration-in-the-verkhovna-rada-of-ukraine/).

    If Ukraine does so, then ever more national movements inside the current borders of the Russian Federation will be encouraged and to take additional actions to challenge Moscow’s long and often bloody rule over them, possibly kickstarting national movements that have long appeared repressed or dormant.  

Russians Want to Develop Arctic but Fear Environmental Problems, New Survey Finds

Paul Goble
Staunton, Apr. 4 – According to a survey conducted by Arctica and the Russian Field company, Russians favor expanding the exploitation of the Arctic seabed for its minerals but at the same time are quite worried about the environmental problems that such exploitation may entail.
Russian analysts say that this combination reflects the fact that Russians as a whole know relatively little about the Arctic and thus have not yet come down in favor of the full-scale exploitation of the Arctic that Putin and his regime want or on behalf of environmental protection (kedr.media/news/issledovanie-rossiyane-obespokoeny-ekologicheskimi-problemami-arktiki-no-vystupayut-za-rasshirenie-dobychi-resursov/).
Sixty-eight percent of Russians favor developing the oil and gas reserves in the Arctic, the poll finds; but at the same time, 86 percent say that this development should be conducted in such a way to minimize harm to the environment, nine percent more than took that position just over a year ago.
What that means is that Putin will have enormous popular support for going ahead with his expansive economic plans in the northern ocean but that this support could quickly decline if there is a serious environmental disaster there or if Russians learn more about the Arctic and the fragility of its eco system.  
And Russian support for Putin’s Arctic policies could also be at risk if what he chooses to do sparks international conflicts there, given that a majority of Russians say that the Arctic should be developed in a spirit of international cooperation rather than become a cockpit of conflict between the major powers. 

Russians’ Attachment to the State Much Stronger than Their Respect for Putin, Shelin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 4 – New polls show that Russians are far more prepared to turn in those who criticize the state or its actions in Ukraine than to denounce to the authorities those who criticize Putin, an indication, Sergey Shelin says, that their attachment to the state is much stronger than their respect for the Kremlin leader.
    Only 14 percent say they would turn in someone who criticizes Putin while 24 percent indicate that they are prepared to serve as snitches to those who criticize Russia’s action in Ukraine, the Russian commentator says (moscowtimes.ru/2025/04/03/rossiyanin-vesnoi-2025-go-pochti-schastliv-i-gotov-stuchat-a160093).
    The same survey found that 69 percent were not prepared to denounce those who criticize Putin, while only 56 percent were not ready to turn in someone who criticized the Russian war in Ukraine, equally striking figures because the Kremlin obviously views criticism of Putin at least as threatening as criticism of the war, Shelin continues.
    This pattern, which is likely to continue as long as Russians feel that they personally are doing well, reflects two things. On the one hand, it is a sign that repression is far from the only driver of the willingness to denounce others. How well people think they are doing helps explain why they are less prepared to criticize the state than its leader.
    And on the other, it suggests that Russians do make a distinction between the state and Putin and that their willingness to support him no matter what is likely to be less than their support for whatever they view as state policy, the kind of adaptive mechanism that helps explain why Russians in Stalin’s times denounced those the regime pointed to as enemies.

Moscow Patriarchate Taking Full Control of Religious Life in Occupied Territories of Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 4 – Kremlin propagandists have succeeded in attracting worldwide attention to the ways in which the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine has moved to reduce the influence of the Moscow-controlled Ukrainian Orthodox Church. But what the OCU has done in Ukraine pales in comparison with what the ROC MP has in Russian-occupied areas.
    There, the Moscow church working with the Russian military and Russian officials has sought to take full control over religious life, forcing other churches to cooperate fully with it or in many cases shutting down their parishes and other institutions, jailing or expelling religious leaders, and imposing a distinctly Russian pattern of religious activity.
    Those repressive actions -- and what they say about the intentions of Moscow and the Moscow-controlled OCU if Russian forces expand the areas of their control in Ukraine -- have received far less attention, but they are the subject of an important new article in Novaya Gazeta (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/04/03/dukhovnaia-zachistka).
    Mariya Erlikh, a journalist for that paper, says that since the Anschluss of four Ukrainian regions by Russia, the number of religious organizations has dropped from 1967 to 902, with some destroyed, others prohibited, and still others subjected to rules that make it impossible for them to continue to operate.
    According to Karen Nikiforov, one of the authors of the Religion in Flames project, it is impossible to be absolutely precise about the numbers or about how Russia is using the facilities it has taken over. “But we know,” she says, “about cases when religious buildings have been used by the Russian side as military objects, a violation of all international norms.”
    Sergey Chapnin, a specialist on religious life in the former Soviet space now working at Fordham University, adds that “we do not have any reliable data about how the policy of the ROC for the occupied territories has been formulated.” But it is obvious that “the interests of the Moscow Patriarchate and the interests of the Russian state coincide.”
    The ROC MP has moved against the OCU more dramatically than any other church, and today, these experts say, there do not remain any parishes of the OCU in the occupied areas. At the same time, the ROC MP has moved to purge hierarchs and priests from the nominally independent but in fact Moscow-subordinate UOC.
    Chapnin says that Moscow Patriarch Kirill doesn’t know the Ukrainian church and doesn’t trust Ukrainian priests and prelates and so has inserted Russian churchmen in their place. Presumably, with each advance of the Russian army, the Russian church will follow the same approach.
    In addition to Orthodox churches, the ROC MP and the Russian state have worked against other religious groups in the occupied territories as well, including Roman Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists; and much of their activity has been completely stopped.

Russian Business ‘Natural Opponent’ of Putin Should be the Ally of His Political Opponents, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Russians who established their own businesses cannot be pleased by the Putin regime’s current drive to redivide property and thus are “a natural opponent” of that regime and at least potentially an important ally for those political groups opposed to it even though neither has sought to work closely with the other, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.
    From the 1990s on, the two groups have followed a similar trajectory. Having had some independent influence then, they were marginalized by the Putin regime and now take political positions that in most cases are of interest only to themselves, the Russian economist and commentator says (moscowtimes.ru/2025/04/02/tsena-predostorozhnosti-ili-rossiiskii-biznes-kak-estestvennii-protivnik-putinskogo-rezhima-a159817).
    The mistakes which both groups committed and that allowed the Kremlin to push them away from any real power, Inozemtsev continues, “made both in the eyes of society if not enemies then an inescapable evil which also became an important factor in the support of the authorities if enthusiastic and open and in the background and latent.”
    “What is surprising,” he says, “is that both these groups never tried to create the conditions for a constructive dialogue even when this was possible.” Instead, despite their common disdain for Putin, they have gone their separate ways and thus each has been weaker than would have been the case if they had cooperated.
    And this has continued since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, Inozemtsev adds, despite the fact that “by the level of their education, honor, principleness, rationality of their views on the world, orientation toward progress and reaction has made these groups unbelievably close.”
    “More than that, they are situated together by values and norms on the same side of that abyss, on the other side of which is now concentrated the Russian bureaucracy which embodies in itself all the worst which exists in the country. But despite that, these natural allies over the course of many years have positioned themselves as ardent enemies.”
    Any “beautiful Russia of the future,” he continues, “can be constructed only by the joint efforts of business and civil society.” They share many values and “today, the leading group can and even will be forced to become the Russian entrepreneurial class,” however odd that may seem to people in the political opposition.
    “The  most important Russian entrepreneurs are not allies of Vladimir Putin,” and they have been given clear signs that showing loyalty to him is no guarantee that their holdings will not be touched and themselves kept from being punished one way or another, according to Inozemtsev.
    Moreover, he concludes, “no one has a greater motive to seek the deconstruction of the regime and greater competence for the administration of a new Russia that competitive Russian business.” Members of that group have “already long recognized the advantages of democratic administration over a dictatorship.”
    Indeed, “today the Kremlin is sending this group a signal that its time is running out. If even these signal aren’t sufficient to prompt the most successful and independent pa of Russian society to come to its senses, then nothing and no one will be able to save Russia,” Inozemtsev argues.

Ice Will Remain a Problem on Northern Sea Route for at Least 25 More Years, NSR Administrator Tells Putin

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Global warming isn’t having a uniform impact; and in the Arctic north of Russia, there is a clear divide between the western portions of the Northern Sea Route which are now mostly ice free and the eastern ones where ice cover has if anything increased (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/western-sections-of-northern-sea-route.html).
    That pattern is a major reason why the NSR carried less than half of the cargo Putin had called for this year, and it is one that is likely to persist for at least 25 years, NSR Administrator Sergey Zybko told Putin at a meeting in Murmansk at the end of last week (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/76558).
    In making this projection, Zybko called for the construction of even more icebreakers and ice-capable ships than the Kremlin has so far and said that he favored the rapid development of a Russian satellite system to monitor ice patterns in the Arctic so that ships could avoid the most serious bottlenecks (thebarentsobserver.com/news/icebreaker-operator-we-are-seeing-a-more-complicated-situation-with-sea-ice/427599)..
    Officials are now exploring another way around the ice problems in the eastern NSR: the possibility that China will construct a trade corridor on land north from Yekaterinburg to the Yamal peninsula where cargo can then be loaded on ships in a portion of that sea route (sever-press.ru/news/transport/kitajtsam-predstavili-proekt-transportnogo-koridora-ot-ekaterinburga-do-jamala/).
    But the costs of such a project, China’s desire not to be caught up in any sanctions regime, the concerns of some Russians about Chinese involvement of that kind in Russia, and the difficulties Russian shippers have had with intermodal transportation make the achievement of such a plan unlikely anytime soon.

Nearly 90 Percent of Russians Say They’ve Been Affected by the Growing Shortage of Doctors in Their Country

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – A recent poll found that 86 percent of Russian say they’ve felt the impact of the growing shortage of doctors, which the health ministry says now amounts to more than 23,000. Some Russians say they can no longer find any doctor nearby but many more say they cannot get to a needed specialist.
    A major reason for these shortcomings in Russian healthcare is Vladimir Putin’s “optimization” program which has shuttered medical facilities in many parts of the country and concentrated specialists in only a few places in order to save money so that it can be spent on his war in Ukraine (svpressa.ru/blogs/article/457799/).
    But that is not the only reason for this humanitarian disaster. In just over half of the federal subjects of the Russian Federation, more doctors have left in recent years than arrived; and more than a third of the graduates of Russian medical schools are not prepared to work in government medical institutions, largely because of low pay and long hours.
    And yet another cause is what was supposed to be a solution: the use of the Internet to allow for diagnoses and treatments  from a distance. Many doctors dislike that system because it reduces them to technicians and forces them to accept blame for what the machines do, something that makes everyone unhappy.
    So far Russian politicians have come up with no better idea than to force graduates of medical schools to work as doctors where the government assigns them for a number of years after graduation. That system, which would restore one from the Soviet era, is deeply unpopular and might have the effect of reducing the number of those seeking to become doctors further.

Indigenous Peoples of Russian North the Canaries of Global Warming

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Historically, coal miners kept canaries in their workplaces to warn them when poisonous gases were reaching levels at which the miners would die because the canaries would die first. Now, the numerically small nations of the Russian North are playing much the same role with regard to the impact of global warming on human populations.
    Because these peoples from time immemorial have lived in the closest relationship with the surrounding environment, the changes global warming are producing on their world are recognizable earlier than elsewhere and cannot be dismissed as easily as they often are by people living in cities farther south.
    The Arctida portal says that because of the interrelationship of these peoples with the natural world, they are not only losing their food supplies but suffering from changes in their cultures and languages and thus put at risk of extinction (arctida.io/ru/projects/climate-crisis-and-indigenous-peoples).
    These changes have been compounded, the portal says, by the impact of those who as a result of global warming are now able to come into the historical territories of the northern peoples to extract the immense natural resources of that area, often in ways that further degrade the environment of the northern peoples.
    While the Kremlin has largely ignored the problems of the northern peoples and tried to prevent them from telling the world about their problems, scholars at Tomsk State University have recognized that the northern peoples provide an early warning of what global warming will be doing to others in the coming decads.
    In 2023, the Tomsk scholars signed an agreement with indigenous peoples of the Yamalo-Nenets AD to track how climate change was affecting their lives, an accord that has led to an expanded understanding of the process, regardless of what Moscow officials do (tass.ru/arktika-segodnya/18264263).
    But according to Ardtida, this kind of cooperative research needs to be dramatically expanded so that the practical knowledge the peoples of the north have about how global warming is changing their lives will become the basis for changing the lives of others before it is too late to save either.

To Be Recognized as a Compatriot, One Should have to Know Only One Republic Language but Be Ready to Study Russian on Return, Khatazhukov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin is again pushing draft legislation that would require anyone seeking status as a compatriot to know Russian well before returning, a violation of the Russian constitution and a standard few non-Russians seeking to return are likely to meet, Valery Khatazhukhov says.
    The president of the Kabardino-Balkar Regional Human Rights Center says that it is clear that Zatulin wants to block the return to Russia of groups like the Circassians by insisting that they must be fluent in Russian before they can return (zapravakbr.ru/index.php/30-uncategorised/1962-yazykovoj-paradoks-repatriatsii-problemy-realizatsii-zakonoproekta-gospodina-zatulina).
    The Duma deputy first sought this change in Russian law three years ago, but his proposal was voted down, at least in part because other deputies recognized that it would violate the constitution which gives equal rights to speakers of Russian and those who know one of the official languages of the non-Russian republics.
    And others were persuaded to oppose Zatulin’s proposal then because of the success that Circassians returning from Kosovo in 1998 and from Syria in 2011 who quickly learned Russian in special courses set up for them at that time and now have fully integrated into Russian society as a result.
    Khatazhukhov stresses that he favors such Russian-language courses for any Circassians who do return but insists they should not be blocked from returning to one of the three non-Russian republics where they speak one of the state languages if they are then willing to learn Russian.
    How much support Zatulin gets, the Kabardino-Balkar rights activist says, will be a measure of just how far the Kremlin has tilted toward Russian nationalists like Zatulin and against its own constitution and the rights of groups like the Circassians who want to return but don’t know Russian now although they are willing to learn that language once they are back.  

Like Its Tsarist and Soviet Predecessors, Russian Federation has had a Hard Time Creating a Structure to Oversee Ethnic Issues

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Like its tsarist and Soviet predecessors, the government of the Russian Federation has had a hard time creating an institutional structure to oversee ethnic issues. The reason has remained the same: Any structure powerful enough to direct these issues would threaten other agencies; and any not powerful enough to do that would become marginalized.
    This week, as the Russian authorities mark the 10th anniversary of the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs (FADN), this challenge remains unresolved, a fact of life highlighted by the Nazaccent portal which recounts the evolution of institutions overseeing ethnic issues in the Russian Federation since the end of Soviet times.
    The chronology it provides of the changes in government structures overseeing ethnic issues makes that clear and is especially useful because comparisons with today’s FADN and earlier bodies are often confusing given that the FADN is far more limited in power than they were (nazaccent.ru/content/43753-ot-upravleniya-duhovnyh-del-do-federalnogo-agentstva/).
    Below is the chronology it provides:
1989 – the State Committee of the RSFSR for Nationality Questions is created.
1990 – it is renamed the State Committee of the RSFSR for Nationality Affairs.
1991 – it is transformed into the State Committee of the RSFSR for Nationality Policy.
1993 -- it is renamed the State Committee for the Affairs of the Federation and Nationalities.
1994 – a Ministry of the Russian Federation for Natinlaity Affairs and Regional Policy is established.
1996 – it is reorganized into the ministry for nationality affairs and federative relations.
1998 – it is renamed the ministry for regional and nationality policy.
1998 – it is divided into the ministry for nationality policy and the ministry for regional policy.
1999 – the ministry of nationality policy is transformed into the ministry for the affairs of the federation and nationalities.
2000 – it is transformed into the ministry for the affairs of the federation and nationality and migration policy.
2001 – this ministry is abolished.
Between 2001 and 2015 when the FADN was created, the Putin regime managed nationality issues in its own way. Between 2001 and 2004, it assigned Vladimir Zorin as the minister without portfolio to supervise work in this area. And between 2004 and 2014, nationality issues were handled by the Russian Federation’s ministry of regional development.  

    As an agency rather than a ministry, FADN has a much smaller remit and far less power to make policy on ethnic issues. And over the past decade, many have suggested that it should be elevated to ministerial status (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/moscow-set-to-re-establish.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/kremlin-said-planning-to-set-up.html and https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/moscow-to-recreate-nationalities.html).
    But Putin clearly prefers to prevent the rise of a ministry that someone might use to hallenge his power and thus appears set to keep the FADN in its reduced circumstances even though that means that there is no single structure in the Russian government with the power to coordinate what is going on regarding ethnic issues or even to define what these consist of.

Russia Now has Only 50,000 km of Fully-Maintained Internal Waterways, Far Less than when Putin came to Power

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 2 – Far more than almost any other country, Russia depends on its domestic waterways, including both rivers and canals, to carry cargo and people. It has 100,000 km of these waterways, but then only half are kept fully operational by increasingly frequent dredging in response to the impact of global warming and falling water levels.
    These figure is less than a third of the length of navigable waterways the Russian government claimed in 2000, the year Putin came to power, and means that getting cargo to many places is increasingly difficult (fedpress.ru/article/3372440 and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/03/length-of-russias-navigable-riverways.html).
    The problem is especially great in the basins of the major rivers of Siberia like the Lena and the Ob, where there are no economically viable alternatives – no highways or railways -- to rivers for moving most goods and even people around. Consequently, along many of those river routes deliveries are becoming less regular and prices rising.
    Those trends are adding to the problems that are driving ever more people to leave these regions and preventing others from moving there. Moscow is promising to dredge more rivers and canals and build some 2,000 more riverboats before the end of this decade; but it is unlikely to achieve the increases in the movement of cargo and passengers it is now promising.
    When analysts consider transportation problems in the Russian Federation, these river routes are often ignored. But given that country’s absence of roads and railways in many places, the problems of internal waterways are going to become ever more important, especially if Moscow fails to keep its promises about development.
    For background on Russia’s riverine network and its problems, see  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/08/russian-river-highways-east-of-urals.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/02/russias-failure-to-develop-its.html and windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2011/05/window-on-eurasia-russias-once-proud.html.  

Putin Putting Survival of Russian Federation at Risk by Exploitation of Regions, Kachalov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Apr. 1 – The Kremlin wants to rule an eternal empire and believes its control over the federal subjects is “unshakeable,” Konstantin Kachalov says; but in fact, the center is putting the survival of the Russian Federation at risk by its colonial policy of harsh exploitation of the regions and republics.
    According to the Russian analyst, Moscow views the federal subjects only as “a resource for its imperial ambitions.” Indeed, it has been guided by that vision to the point that the question now is only “how soon will they turn against the center” and seek independence (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=67EC0B1814472).
    As a result, Kachalov concludes, “the Kremlin itself is creating the conditions of its own” and the country’s “collapse,” outcomes that are increasingly likely in the next five to ten years unless the regime changes course, something under Putin at least, it gives absolutely no signs of doing.
    In 2023, Moscow took 70 percent of the tax revenues from the entire country, spending most of that on war but also on the city itself and leaving regions with less than a third of the taxes they had paid to spend on local needs. That left the governments of the federal subjects in deficit and meant that their GDPs dropped three to five percent, while Moscow grew 2.1 percent.
    People in the regions and republics are angry, and the governors “whose job is to serve the center not the residents” have used force to prevent protests. But, Kachalov continues, “this is not governance but a colonial policy with the regions turning into controlled territories without the right to protest.”
    Not surprisingly, “centrifugal forces are already gaining strength,” he says. Both in Moscow and in the federal subjects should recall what happened to the USSR in 1991, when the center lost the ability to support the periphery, and parts of the periphery then left. Unfortunately, the Kremlin is “ignoring” this precedent and believes “repression will save ‘the vertical.’”
    Kachalov is blunt: “Moscow is preparing its own end by building a system where the regions are just fuel for the imperial machine.” That is “unsustainable” because “economic plunder, political oppression and growing protests are opening fault lines that can no longer be repaired” by force alone.
    “In five to ten years, these forces could tear the Russian Federation apart unless the Kremlin changes course. But it won’t do that because it is incapable of operating in any other way,” Kalachev continues. And the regions, “from Sakha to Krasnodar are increasingly recognizing that their future is not with Moscow but outside of its control.”

Russians Worried about Rise of ‘Closed Migrant Enclaves’ but Don't Want to Call Them Ghettos

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 31 – Aleksandr Grebenkin, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, says that in several regions, “closed migrant enclaves” are appearing, places “where Russian laws do not operate.” But he adds that provisions of the Kremlin’s new migration policy will eliminate this threat.
    “In a number of regions in urban and rural settlements are forming plases of compact resident of mono-ethnic groups, the formation of which as a rule is connected with sites of the employment of foreign citizens,” the Kremlin official says (nazaccent.ru/content/43751-v-sovbeze-zayavili-o-riskah-poyavleniya-v-rossii-zamknutyh-migrantskih-anklavov/).
    This trend, he says, create “additional risks of the rise of stable closed enclaves where in fact often Russian laws do not operate, where radical religious trends and anti-social ideas are propagandized” and where members of these communities hide out after their permitted stay in the Russian Federation has run out.
    Countering their existence is especially important because “unfriendly governments continue to try to use the migration factor to harm the interests of Russia,” Grebenkin says. These states try to stir up protest activity and encourage people living in these enclaves to ignore Russia law.
    Independent experts like Yury Krupnov, a Moscow demographer, and Natalya Voronina, a legal specialist at the Institute of State and Law, agree that this is a problem; but they point out that the government has known about this for two decades and that solutions are not that difficult (nakanune.ru/articles/123335/ and mk.ru/social/2025/03/31/etnicheskie-anklavy-predstavlyayushhie-riski-i-ugrozy-dlya-obshhestva-uzhe-sushhestvuyut-v-rossii.html).
    They suggest that the authorities restore something like the registration system that existed in Soviet times and not allow more than a certain small percentage of people of different nationality or religion to live in it. But taking that step would hit far more than these minorities and likely infuriate many residents of Russia.
    One thing both Russian officials and Russian experts do agree on is that it is inappropriate to call these closed ethnic enclaves ghettos, an approach that continues Soviet practice and is both true and false (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/there-are-no-ghettos-in-russia-moscow.html).
    It is true because most of these enclaves form around a particular employer and do not have a complete social hierarchy as traditional ghettos elsewhere do; but it is wrong because the longer such enclaves exist – and many in Russia are more than 25 years old – the more characteristics of ghettos they share.

Covid Still Killing Russians and Kremlin Still Using Covid Restrictions to Ban Public Protests, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 31 – The number of people falling ill with covid fell sharply after Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine and the pandemic ceased to be the focus of intense interest. But despite that, Russians continue to die from the disease, and 21 federal subjects use restrictions imposed during the pandemic to ban protests, Horizontal Russia reports.
    The latter is the more important “survival,” the news agency suggests. Infections and deaths are down significantly across the country. Only 225 Russians died of covid during the first quarter of 2025. But officials have retained the restrictions because that is a convenient way to ban public meetings (semnasem.org/articles/2025/03/31/kovid).
    And just as was the case during the worst times of the pandemic, officials apply these restrictions selectively. Pro-government actions aren’t interfered with, but anti-government ones are suppressed, with blame invariably placed on the danger of the spread of covid infections rather than anything else.
    Another legacy of the covid pandemic in Russia involves doctors and other medical personnel who led the fight against it. They were promised bonuses for their dangerous but essential work. In many cases, the Putin regime has not paid them; and a large number have gone to court to try to get the money they are owed.

Departure of Immigrant Workers Not Leading to More Jobs and Higher Pay for Russians, ‘Versiya’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 31 – Moscow officials say that Russia currently suffers from a shortage of five million workers. The departure of many migrant workers has intensified this problem; but despite expectations, this trend has not led to more jobs and higher pay for Russian residents, according to the Versiya news agency.  
    Because changes in the ruble exchange rate make working in Russia less profitable than before and because hostility to migrants has intensified over the last year, the number of migrant workers in Russia has fallen by a million in the past 12 months and will fall even more in the next, Versiya says (versia.ru/gastarbajtery-massovo-pokidayut-rossiyu--rabochie-mesta-i-vysokie-zarplaty-dostanutsya-mestnym).
    But this has not been the boon for Russian residents that many had expected. The migrants often do jobs Russians don’t want or aren’t qualified for, and consequently, the work simply doesn’t get done at the same rate. And at the same time, these shortages aren’t pushing up wages elsewhere because of how segmented the Russian labor market it.
    In it, where migrant workers leave, employers may offer more money to try to retain them or attract others. But those are jobs Russians don’t want or can’t qualify for. And such increases in pay in those sectors do not have much of an impact on other sectors where Russians are employed or seek work.  Any increases in jobs and pay there are driven by other factors.  

In March 2025, Russian Forces Gained Less Ground in Ukraine than in Any Month Since June 2024, the Agentstvo News Agency Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 31 – Moscow’s claims that Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine and that Ukrainian ones are retreating have been so widely broadcast that many fail to recognize the reality that Russia’s invasion gained only 130 square kilometers in the last month, down from a high of 725 last November and the least since June 2024 when Russia seized 114.
    Those figures, originally gathered by the Deep State analysts, are presented in a charge published by the Agentstvo news agency, a group of independent journalists in the Russian Federation (agents.media/v-marte-rossiya-zahvatila-v-ukraine-samuyu-malenkuyu-territoriyu-s-iyunya-proshlogo-goda-vopreki-zayavleniyam-putina/).
    The numbers from the past month parallel those from March 2024 and suggest that Ukraine is holding its own despite Russian claims and despite a reduction in the amount of arms transferred to Kyiv by Western powers. If this seasonal pattern holds, so should Ukraine’s front lines until at least August.  
    Moreover, at the current rate, it would take Russian forces many years before occupying all of its neighbor

Russians Attracted to Pro-Regime Media Outlets in Part Because They Offer More Positive Messages, CEDAR Study Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 31 – Telegram channels are today one of the main platforms for political information in Russia, with half of Russians every day and nearly three out of four every month using them. Moreover, according to surveys, 55 percent of the top 100 telegram channels deal one way or another with current events or political news.
    Indeed, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has declared that telegram channels are “the main source for receiving information” in Russia, a remarkable rise over just the last several years (https://t.me/kommersant/79903; and for data on this remarkable development, see mediascope.net/upload/iblock/2ee/bdbcymunn4gcxjwcgjgjzsw74nrqtmz6/Mediascope_%D0%9D%D0%A0%D0%A4_Telegram.pdf).
    But despite this growth and influence, Russia’s telegram channels have remained relatively little studied up to now. But research by the Center for Data and Research on Russia (CEDAR) has gone a long way to fill this gap and to explain why some telegram channels attract more visitors than others (cedarus.io/research/what-do-russians-read?lang=ru).
    Using content analysis, surveys, and focus groups, CEDAR draws the following conclusions about why some telegram channels attract more readers than others and what those now lagging might do to catch up. Specifically, it says
•    Forty-four percent of those reading telegram channels in Russia read pro-government outlets, while only 14 percent read those associated with the opposition.
•    In addition to these two categories, there are also “neutral” channels which focus on the economy, emergencies, health news, food and science.
•    Opposition media covers a narrower range of issues than do the other two.
•    Channels which have more positive content tend to be more popular not among these groups but within them. Pro-government channels present Russia more positively and that is an attraction.
•    Popularity is not a function of the emotional tone of the channels nor is the share of coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Drawing on these findings, CEDAR recommends that those neutral and opposition outlets which want to attract more people need to cover more different topics, focus on “everyday issues” like the economy, emergencies and health. And they need to play up positive content rather than always be negative. 

For First Time Ever, More Muslims Marked End of Ramadan in St. Petersburg than Did in the Russian Capital, Statistics Show

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 31 – Muslims in the Russian Federation usually celebrate Id al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the holy month of Ramadan, by assembling in and around mosques. Until this year, Moscow, the city where the largest number of Muslims in that country live, has led these statistics; but this year, the northern capital St. Petersburg surpassed it.
    In Moscow. statistics gathered by Muslim organizations show, some 235,000 Muslims assembled at the city’s five mosques, including 80,000 at the Central Cathedral Mosque; but in St. Petersburg, where the number of Muslims is far smaller, more than 300,000 came out (ng.ru/faith/2025-03-30/3_9223_muslims.html).
    The number of Muslims in Moscow visiting mosques on this holiday in fact rose from 205,000 last year; but the figure for Muslims in St. Petersburg rose more rapidly. In reporting these statistics, Nezavisimaya Gazeta suggested that they may reflect greater anti-immigrant actions by the police in Moscow than in St. Petersburg.
    That is likely a part of the explanation, but this pattern highlights the fact that an increasing share of Muslims arriving in major Russian cities is going to St. Petersburg rather than to Moscow where anti-immigrant feelings have been more regularly whipped up by the authorities and that the northern capital is on its way to becoming a major center of Muslim life.
    That in turn means that the Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) both based in the northern capital and represented there are going to be ever more important and deserve at least as much attention as is routinely given to their counterparts in Moscow because in Islam, the number of participants in holiday celebrations is perhaps the best indication of influence.  

New Law on Local Administration Leaves Population with Almost No Way to Participate in Political Life, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 28 – The new law on local self-administration adopted earlier this month leaves the Russian population with “almost no levers to influence local policies,” the Horizontal Russia portal says, because it gives governors the power to disband existing rural districts and recombine them at will.
    Consequently, the portal says, people in the government of those districts are on an increasingly short leash; and the population can only “write the governor, appeal to Putin, or hope for good luck” (semnasem.org/articles/2025/03/26/samoupravlenie-bylo-s-novym-zakonom-u-rossiyan-pochti-ne-ostanetsya-sposobov-vliyat-na-lokalnuyu-politiku).
    Horizontal Russia details seven cases in which governors have already used their powers against local self-administration and then suggests that while the old system of self-administration often failed to work because of a lack of money, it at least gave citizens the ability to organize politically and act in concert to defend their rights and interests.
    That made a major contribution to the development of civic political culture, Yuliya Galyamina, a former deputy in a district in the Moscow suburbs says. But the Russian government’s “reform” means that “the authorities no longer have to be concerned about the participation of citizens in local politics.”
    Sixteen federal subjects including Moscow and St. Petersburg have already gone alone with the change the law calls for (vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2025/03/04/1095775-18-regionov-ne-hotyat), and 26 more say they will do so in the near future. But this transition isn’t going smoothly, and there have been protests in several places (t.me/horizontal_russia/30444).  
    Seventeen federal subjects have announced that they want to retain the two levels of governance. The majority of these are the non-Russian republics, Horizontal Russia says. This reflects the fact that local communities there are stronger and that messing with existing arrangements could destabilize the situation.
    A less important but nonetheless significant factor is that in many non-Russian republics, particular local districts may be far from the capital and difficult for officials to reach, let alone manage on a regular basis without the help of local officials. Then they will be forced to behave in an even more authoritarian manner and work to further depoliticize the population.