Russian Economy Consists of ‘Islands of Growth in an Ocean of Stagnation,’ Prokofyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 9 – Russia’s economy has transitioned “from a model based on the export of raw materials and integrated into the global chains of the consumer market” into “a model of centralized and mobilized administration of resources where the priorities are defined not by market forces but by the logic of government priorities.,” Dmitry Prokofyev says.

            The economics editor of Novaya Gazeta says that the result is not simply slowed growth across the board but the division of the economy “into two parallel but weakly connected economic subsistems which show diametrically opposite trends” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/02/09/arkhipelag-rosta-v-okeane-stagnatsii).

            One, which enjoys the support of the government, continues to grow relatively well because of subsidies, while the other, which doesn’t, shows declines, thus forming “islands of growth in an ocean of stagnation,” something that is obscured by figures for the economy as a whole, like measuring the average temperature in a hospital. 

            Once this pattern is recognized, the economist says, it is quite easy to understand what is going on; but if one doesn’t recognize the pattern or refuses to do so because of pressure from the powers that be or the impact of regime propaganda, then nothing makes sense – and one falls victim to Kremlin claims that the economy is doing better than most people feel.

            In a 4500-word article, Prokofyev documents this divide, something that allows him to conclude with the following damning observation: “Rosstat data for 2025 do not record a temporary aberration or cyclical slowdown, but the final consolidation and institutionalization of this architecture.”

In fact, he continues, “the division of the national economic mechanism into two economies—one for the state and the elites serving it, and one for the rest of the population—has ceased to be a trend and has become a systemic, fundamental, and integral quality of the Russian economic model.”

And that means this: “future dynamics will be determined not by market forces, consumer optimism, or private investment, but solely by the volume and efficiency of resource use, which the state is willing and able to continually redistribute from the "continent of stagnation" to the "archipelago of growth" and to the "islands of stability" to maintain a fragile, but, as the figures show, still sustainable, balance between these two worlds.”

“This balance,” Prokofyev says, “is both the main achievement and the main challenge of Russia's new economic reality in 2026.”

Following Protests, Budget Cuts and a Reality Check, Moscow Plans to Allow River and Sea Vessels to Remain Service until Age of 50

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 10 – Last year, Moscow officials proposed in a draft law the decommissioning of all Russian riverine and ocean ships after they reached the age of 40, but after the budget for replacements was cut by half, regional protests, and evidence Russian yards couldn’t deliver in time, these same officials have said ships may remain in service until 50. 

            (On the original announcement, protests from regional officials, and backtracking, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/11/to-boost-shipbuilding-russias.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/01/khabarovsk-governor-denounces-moscows.html,  vedomosti.ru/business/articles/2026/02/10/1175139-mintrans-predlozhil-smyagchit-zakon-o-vethih-sudah  and themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/10/srok-sluzhbi-vethih-sudov-v-rossii-uvelichat-do-50-let-iz-za-otsutstviya-deneg-na-stroitelstvo-novih-a186793.)

            This pattern of making bold announcements and then backing away from them has become increasingly common as Putin struggles to find the money for his war in Ukraine and guts all programs not directly related to that. But in this case, this decision poses some real threats to Russia and any countries to which its ships travel.

            On the one hand, the retention rather than replacement of so many older ships means that many of them will be tied up in drydock for repairs, thus limiting the size of the Russian domestic and foreign fleet far more than the statistics about total number of ships in Russia’s possession suggests.

            And on the other, such aging vessels, many of which were scheduled to be decommissioned not at 40 but at 25 or even less, are likely to suffer more accidents both in Russian  waters and in the waters and ports to which these Russian vessels go and thus posing an ever-increasing danger to both.

Northern Sea Route Carried Less Cargo Last Year than the Year Before and Far Less than Moscow had Projected

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 9 – The volume of cargo carried via the Northern Sea Route in 2025 was 870,000 tons less than a year earlier and stood at 37 million tons, less than half the figure that Moscow had projected for either year only four years ago and experts saying there is little likelihood that things will improve in 2026.

            That is the conclusion of research by the Gekon Consulting Center which like all observers of the NSR faces increasing difficulty in coming up with numbers because Moscow has shuttered the digital platform of the NSR and restricted the release of other data (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/perevozki-po-sevmorputi-sokratilis-do-37-mln-tonn/444907).

            The 2.3 percent year on year decline from 2024 to 2025 is a summary figure. There have been increases in some types of cargo such as processed rare earth minerals that almost cover larger declines in raw oil, gas and coal shipments.  Container shipments also grew but from an extremely small base, Gekon says.

            The number of voyages remained constant between 2024 and 2025, but the volume increased slightly and the flows in and out of Russian ports became more export-oriented last year than they had been the year before. According to the study, in 2025, “exports exceeded imports by more than two to one.

            Because of sanctions, few ships from foreign countries made the crossing. Instead, Russia has used ever more foreign-flagged vessels of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” ships that “often do not meet ice class and safety standards” and thus threaten the region’s fragile eco-system in the event of accidents.

Putin has Made Governors Targets of Popular Anger and Their Spending on Body Guards has Almost Doubled since 2022, ‘Vedomosti’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 9 – Vladimir Putin has sought to deflect popular anger away from himself and onto the governors of the Russian Federation’s federal subjects by making the latter responsible for carrying out many of his most unpopular policies. That has prompted the governors to almost double their spending on body guards, Vedomosti reports.

            In 2021, the Russian newspaper reports, the Russian authorities in the countries regions and republics were prepared to spend 59.7 million rubles for the governors’ body guards, a figure that rose to 119.7 million rubles in 2023 before falling back slightly to 112.4 million rubles last year (vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2026/02/09/1174866-s-nachala-spetsoperatsii-gubernatori-stali-bolshe-tratitsya-na-ohranu

            Those figures cover only bids for contracts on body guard services and thus do not include the spending for regular police or special forces that also are involved in protecting the heads of the federal subjects. But they do show that governors are worried about their own security, a fear likely to have risen given that Putin has made them executors of many policies.

            Putin’s effort to ensure that any anger Russians feel about policies is directed not at him and his regime but at the governors has been much discussed especially since he launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in 2022. What these figures show is that this has made the governors nervous, and they are doing what they can to ensure that no attack on them succeeds.

‘At a Minimum,’ Russia has Lost 20 Times as Many Killed in Action in Ukraine over the Last Four Years as the USSR Lost in Afghanistan over Ten, Zhelenin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 8 – Recent evaluations of losses in Putin’s war in Ukraine show that, “at a minimum,” Russia has lost 20 times as many killed in action there over the last four years than did the USSR in Afghanistan, over the ten years its invasion forces were in that country, 300,000 KIAs now as opposed to 15,000 then, Aleksandr Zhelenin says.

            A major reason for this, the opposition journalist and commentator says, is that Russian commanders are even less concerned about human losses than were their Soviet predecessors and do not have the mix of weapons that would help them keep such losses low (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/za-chetyre-goda-rossia-poterjala-v-ukraine-v-20-raz-bolshe-ljudey-chem-sssr-za-10-let-v-afganistane).

            Both because they recognize fewer reserves to raise more troops in the event of losses and for humanitarian considerations as well, constraints that Russian officers do not appear to feel as deeply, Ukrainian commanders have worked far harder and with significant success to keep losses lower.

            Zhelenin’s analysis is striking because while the Soviet army was notorious for its lack of concern about human losses as long as it achieved its goals, the Russian army is even worse as far as this measure is concerned, yet another way that Putin’s Russia is moving in a very different direction than most countries.

            But it also means something else: not only will Russia have to cope with the problems of veterans returning from service where their lives were not considered that important by their officers and their political bosses but it will have to deal with the impact of such enormous losses and the reasons for them on the population of the country as a whole.

Hard-Pressed Orenburg Oblast Turns to Better-Off Nizhny Novgorod for Money to Pay Bonuses to Those Signing Up for the Russian Army

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 6 – The governments of Russia’s poorer regions find themselves in a bind: Moscow rates them on their ability to get men to sign up for service in the military but neither leaves enough tax money in the regional government’s pockets to pay or returns enough in subsidies to allow them to compete with better off regions.

            Now, one poor region, Orenburg, has come up with a solution of sorts. It has borrowed money from wealthier Nizhny Novgorod Oblast so that it can get enough men to sign up so as to avoid problems with Moscow (storage.googleapis.com/istories/stories/2026/02/06/rossiiskii-region-vpervie-poprosil-dengi-na-viplati-kontraktnikam-u-drugogo-subekta-rf/index.html).

            According to the Important Stories portal, this is a first; but it does recall the arrangements of the first decades of Soviet power when better-off oblasts were required to help their poorer counterparts -- although the new arrangement has potentially more serious consequences because the regions themselves and not Moscow are behind it.

             The portal’s Sonya Savina says that Nizhny Novgorod in December 2025 transferred to Orenburg 400 million rubles (six million US dollars) to pay for 1,000 bonuses that the poorer oblast had agreed to pay to men who had signed up in the last quarter of that year but did not have the cash on hand to do so.

            Aleksandra Prokopenko, an expert on Russian politics and economics, says that this arrangement resembles “a ‘horizontal’ subsidy in which the expenditure obligations of one budget are covered by another,” an arrangement that was legalized by Moscow in August 2019 but that hasn’t been reported being used except for cooperative projects like bridges.

            “If the goals correspond to the powers of the recipient region, and the Nizhny Novgorod region has sufficient budget funds for this, the parties conclude an agreement with clearly defined conditions: what exactly the funds can be spent on, within what time frame, what results need to be achieved, and how to report,” the expert says.

In this case, Orenburg won’t have to return the funds to Nizhny Novgorod unless the former violates the terms of its agreement with the latter.  That is very unusual, Prokopenko says. “Usually regions do not finance each other’s expenses;” and she adds that she doesn’t think this was “an initiative” by Nizhny Novgorod.

Rather, she suggests, it may well be “one of the ways [for Moscow] to solve the problem at a regional level without allocating additional funds from the federal budget.” Prokopenko is probably correct in that, but the Orenburg-Nizhny Novgorod lash up may open the way to kinds of cooperation among regions that could lessen rather than increase central control.

Both History and Current Problems Behind High Rates of Recidivism and Violent Crime in Urals Region, Russian Police Say

Paul Goble     

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Federal subjects in the Urals region of the Russian Federation lead that country in terms of both recidivism and violent crime, a pattern police say reflects the presence of so many people who were sent to the GULAG as well as their descendants and rapidly intensifying social problems, including the widespread availability of guns.

            The Russian interior ministry has released figures on recidivism rates and violent crime in the federal subjects of the Russian Federation. The oblasts and krays of the enormous Urals Federal District lead the country in both rankings, the data show, often by wide margins (svpressa.ru/society/article/501426/).

            The explanation for this pattern is simple, current and former MVD officials there say. On the one hand, they say, the presence in the region’s population of many who were dispatched to the GULAG or otherwise deported and later to prison camps means a large portion of the population suffers from grievances and is used to viewing law enforcement as the enemy.

            On the other, they say, the region has a high rate of gun ownership because so many trophy guns have ended up there, something that has intensified in recent years, and is suffering from increasing poverty and even more from a widening gap between the wealthiest and the poorest elements of society, characteristics that feed grievance and violence as well.

            What is a particular problem, one former MVD officer says, is that those who have been released from prisons in recent years typically remain unemployed. According to data from 2025, “more than 60 percent of former inmates remain unemployed in the course of the first year after they are released.” Such people often turn to crime to make ends meet.

Russian Intelligence Targeting Svalbard and Finmark, Using Russian Crews on Foreign-Flagged Vessels to Do So, Norwegian Police Security Service Warns

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 6 – In its annual report on security challenges, Norway’s Police Security Service warns that Russian intelligence is targeting Svalbard, an archipelago that belongs to Norway, and Finmark, the northern portion of Norway, and using Russian crews on foreign-flagged vessels to do so.

            The report says that Moscow’s actions include “cyber and influence operations, sabotage, recruitment of human sources, evasion of sanctions and export control regulations as well as security-threatening economic measures” (pst.no/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Nasjonal-trusselvurdering-2026.pdf discussed at thebarentsobserver.com/security/police-russian-crew-members-pose-a-significant-espionage-threat/444849).

            “To hide” what it is doing, Moscow is using civilian vessels and especially “Russian crews on board civilian vessels registered in a third country.” These pose “a significant threat within the sphere of cover maritime intelligence in 2026,” the Police Security Service warns in its report. 

            According to the PST, “Russian intelligence and security services are active throughout Norway,” but it notes that “the northernmost counties and Svalbard are of particular interest and therefore particularly exposed to intelligence and influence activities. This applies, among other things, to the border areas in Finmark and the Russian presence in Svalbard."

            This new PST report provides the most detailed documentation in the public domain about Russian intelligence operations in Svalbard and the ways in which they may presage a Russian move against NATO there. (For background on this posssibility, see jamestown.org/moscows-first-move-against-nato-could-take-place-in-norways-svalbard-archipelago/ and jamestown.org/moscow-using-svalbard-to-test-natos-readiness-and-resolve/.)

Power to Tax is Power to Destroy, and Moscow is Now Deploying It Against Aboriginal Peoples

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Until last year, non-Russian peoples in the far north and far east were not charged taxes on the land where they practiced their traditional ways of life, such as pastures for reindeer herding and the like. But in 2024, Moscow changed the tax code; and at the end of 2025, these communities were faced with tax bills they couldn’t pay.

            The full impact of the new arrangement is yet to be felt, because the authorities aren’t charging taxes on land if it is in a traditional place as defined by the powers but are if these land plots are beyond the borders of those areas, according to Tatyana Britskaya, an investigative journalist for Novaya Gazeta (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/02/06/chernye-vezhniki).

            In Sakha, she says, officials have defined as “traditional” only places where people actually live and not where they herd animals. That means that only four of 37 land plots the indigenous peoples view as their own are “exempt from tax.” The other 34 “have to pay several million rubles a year for reindeer pastures,” a completely “impossible sum.”

            What this is intended to do, Britskaya says, is to allow the officials to restrict the amount of land that the indigenous peoples can actually call their own without declaring any change in internal borders and thereby open the way to the exploitation of land they in fact have used from times immemorial to development by Russian mining interests.

            What these means is that many indigenous peoples will find that the state has confiscated the lands they need to continue to practice their traditional way of life; and when they give that up, the state will then hand the land over to Russian corporations, which will complete the destruction of these nations.

            The Russian authorities can and undoubtedly will present the new tax arrangements as a matter of simple justice. After all, if other groups use land, they have to pay taxes on it. But in this case, the power to tax is the power to destroy – and with this new tax arrangement, Moscow has accelerated the demise of the numerically smallest peoples of the north and far east. 

‘Daptar’ Portal Launches Bulletin on Femicide in the North Caucasus

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 6 – A dozen years ago, the Mothers of Dagestan for Human Rights organization launched what it described as “the first Internet resource devoted to the problems of Dagestani women” (kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/237901/). In the intervening period, it has expanded its focus on the status of women across the North Caucasus.

            For many stories about this topic, the Daptar portal is the only reliable source; and over the past decade it has achieved some victories against those there who oppress women. But mostly, it has simply chronicled what is going on. Windows on Eurasia has often relied on it to discuss what is happening in the North Caucasus.

            Despite Daptar’s efforts, he tragedies large and small the women of the traditional societies of the North Caucasus suffer because of the attitudes of men and the rulers of these republics both locally and in Moscow that it has chronicled when few others do have only increased in number since 2012. 

            To expand its coverage and protect more women in that region, the Daptar staff has launched a new bullet devoted to the continuing femicide there. Its first issue has now been posted at the Daptar portal side (daptar.ru/2026/02/06/byulleten-daptara-femicid-prodolzhaetsya/).

            Among the stories it features are the following; a Dagestani mullah kills his second wife, rights activists are seeking to get Georgia to investigate kidnaping of a Chechen woman and her forcible removal to Russia, Ingush courts quash charges against a local woman who fled violence for supposedly stealing money, and a Dagestani has been sentenced to eight years in prison upon returning from Syria.

Almost Half of Muslims in Russan Federation At Present want to Have Three or More Children, More than Double the Share of Ethnic Russians who Do

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Fertility rates have been falling among Muslim nationalities in the Russian Federation just as they have been among traditionally Orthodox Christian ones, but it is still the case, experts say, that nearly half of all Muslins in that country want their families to have three or more children, more than double the share of ethnic Russians. 

            While that does not mean that all the Muslims who do will achieve that goal, it strongly suggests that the Muslim nations of the Russian Federation will have more large families and thus form an ever larger share of the population of that country in the future, especially given the demographic decline of the ethnic Russians.

            That is just one of the findings reported by the Russian Orthodox Church’s Mercy portal in an article explicitly intended to dispel many of the myths about large families that now circulate in that country (miloserdie.ru/article/mnogodetnye-v-rossii-ih-pochti-3-milliona-semej-no-o-nih-vse-eshhe-ochen-malo-znayut/).

            Among the most noteworthy of the portal’s findings are the following:

·       There are now more large families now than there were only a few years ago, 2.9 million as against 1.1 million in 2013, because families with two or more children have been giving birth to 30 percent of all children, while those with fewer or none have been giving birth to smaller shares.

·       Data on families with children are unreliable because until last year the regions were allowed to set the rules for which families were counted as being large. In Kamchatka, only families with five children were counted as large; in the Far North, those with just two; and other regions set different ages to which the families had to raise their children in order to be counted.

·       Russian families have three or more children for a variety of reasons, ranging from desires and plans to accidental pregnancies that lead to an increase in the number of children.

·       Every third Russian family with three or more children is poor, and, according to the portal, “the more children, the higher the risk that the family will be in that income group.

·       A small but growing group of families with three or more children is to be found among richer parents.

·       Psychological studies have found that people in families without any children or who have three or more feel better about themselves than do families with one or two offspring.

Sexual Violence Cases Tripled over Last Year in Russia's Belgorod Oblast Neighboring Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – The Russian interior ministry has reported that sexual violence rose sharply in Belgorod Oblast, which is on the border with Ukraine and where there are many Russian soldiers involved with Putin’s war in Ukraine, in 2022 and 2023, fell slightly in 2024 and then tripled in 2025.

            This trend has attracted widespread attention from independent Russian media (verstka.media/belgorodskaya-oblast-lider-sredi-regionov-rossii-po-chislu-iznasilovanij-v-2025-godu, meduza.io/feature/2026/02/05/belgorodskaya-oblast-lider-po-chislu-zaregistrirovannyh-iznasilovaniy and t.me/tochno_st/752).

            But the Russian government has stopped publishing the data that would be needed to make a definitive diagnosis of why this is happening. Detailed statistics about sexual violence cases stopped being published in 2022, conviction data ended in 2024, and court rulings in such cases are classified and unavailable to researchers.

            The independent researchers say that it is likely that the amount of sexual violence in Belgorod is related to the fact that there are a disproportionate number of Russian men who are being prepared for combat in Ukraine. But they acknowledge that this can’t be conclusively proved because there have not been similar increases in such crimes in other border regions.

            Regional government experts suggest that the rise in numbers over the last several decades there what they call “multi-episode crimes,” such as abuse within families that often a continues for a long time (media.mvd.ru/files/application/5422615). But that explanation calls attention to the fact that many of the victims of such crimes in Belgorod.

            Indeed, according to interior ministry sources, 42 percent of the victims of such crimes were children, a figure that rose to 66 percent in 2023, the first full year of Putin’s expanded war and the last for which such data are available (media.mvd.ru/files/application/5958851). However that may be, many will blame the war for this rise and fear the return of veterans.

Another Result of Putin's War in Ukraine: Violence in Russian Schools Ever More Frequent and More Lethal

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 4 – For most of the past 25 years, Russians have referred to the relatively rare cases of violence in their country’s schools as “Columbines,” a reference to the 1999 mass shooting in an American high school. But as the frequency and lethality of violent attacks has increased, ever more of them have had to confront the domestic roots of Russian school violence.

            London-based Russian commentator Vladimir Pastukhov says that “the surge in attacks by pupils on their classmates” in Russian schools is hardly random. Instead, it is a reflection of the way in which violence now “permeates the atmosphere” of the Russian Federation at a whole (t.me/v_pastukhov/1810 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/to-li-eshhe-budet).

            According to him, “there is a direct link between these outbreaks of violence and the propaganda of war as a universal way to resolve all and sundry conflicts, a law of interconnected violence so to speak.” And that means in countries like Russia where war has become a cult, there is going to be more violence not just in schools but throughout society.

            Just  how widespread such school violence in Russia has become especially in the last few months has been documented by Radio Liberty journalist Maryana Torocheshnikova (svoboda.org/a/strah-i-nenavistj-v-shkole/33670618.html). She reports that there were at least 11 such outbursts in 2025 and that there have been nearly half that many already in 2026.

            What is most disturbing, she reports that in almost a third of these cases, attackers used guns and children were wounded or even killed as a result. Because of these trends, ever fewer Russians are talking about these as imports and instead viewing them as a product of trends that Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine are producing.

Russia’s ‘Hidden Unemployed’ Now Coming Out of Shadows as One in Seven Russians has Fallen into This Group

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 3 – Moscow has long kept its reported unemployment figures extremely low because it counts as fully employed not only those with full-time jobs but those whose employment per day or per week has been cut back as well as those who have been sent on unpaid leave.

            But as the Russian economy has slipped into recession, the share of working-age Russians who form part of what many observers call “hidden unemployment” has risen dramatically. Now, according to Russia’s Federation of Independent Trade Unions, such people form 14.4 percent of the workforce (ehorussia.com/new/node/34057).

            If one adds even half of these to the official unemployment numbers, this means that ten percent of Russians are unemployed, with a majority of those not receiving any compensation from the government or their employers to help them cope and thus falling ever more often and rapidly into poverty.

            As even the Russian government’s Rossiyskaya Gazeta has acknowledged, this figure or at least one close to it better reflects the problems that now plague the country’s civilian economy, even though many Russian propagandists and Western observers continue to cite the much lower “official” unemployment numbers (rg.ru/2026/02/01/v-rezhime-ozhidaniia.html).

 

Ever More Russians Homeschooling Their Children, Many to Escape Kremlin War Propaganda

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Although relatively few Russian parents homeschool their children, the number who do has been increasing rapidly in recent years, with many of those now deciding to educate their children at home to avoid the increasing militarization of the curriculum in Russia’s government schools.

            Although the some 200,000 Russian children now being homeschooled makes up a miniscule percentage of the roughly 18 million in public schools, the number of those homeschooled has been rising rapidly (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/05/rossiyane-nachali-tisyachami-zabirat-detei-iz-shkol-na-domashnee-obuchenie-posle-usileniya-voennoi-propagandi-a186473

            A decade ago, there were only 17,900 children being homeschooled, roughly one tenth of one percent of the total; now, they form almost one percent of the total, with much of the increase coming in the last four years, the period during which Vladimir Putin has been conducting his expanded war in Ukraine.

            There are few official figures about this – and they do not count homeschooled children not attacked to a public school -- and even less data about why parents choose to homeschool. But there are some obvious reasons: rising violence in schools and especially the militarization of the public educational system, a cause that the Moscow Times identifies as a major reason. 

            Many Russian politicians are opposed to homeschooling believing that it keeps young Russians from being socialized in the directions the Kremlin wants. But few are trying to block it altogether because it remains popular in families where at least one of parents does not work or does not work fulltime and thus can manage this form of instruction.

Russian Firm ‘Earlier Proud of Resisting Sinification’ Moves to China to Try to Survive, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 1 – The Irbit Motorcycle Factory, the only firm in Russia that had been manufacturing heavy-duty motorbikes, faced bankruptcy after sanctions were imposed on Russia in response to Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine. To try to survive, it shifted its operations from Sverdlovsk Oblast to Kazakhstan; but it was unable to recover its sales from there,

            Then, the Horizontal Russia portal, which covers developments beyond Moscow’s ring road, reports that the IMF, despite its earlier “pride” in resisting what it saw as “the general ‘sinification’” of the market in Russia decided to move its manufacturing to China (semnasem.org/articles/2026/01/28/ural-pereehal-v-kitaj).

            But despite its hopes, the IMF continued to suffer losses, at least in part, the portal says, because Russians who might have been interested in purchasing its products were reluctant to spend money on motorcycles bearing the name “Ural” that they knew had been produced not in Russia but in China.

            Putin tried to help the firm out by giving an Alaska native a Ural motorbike when the Kremlin leader had his summit in Anchorage with US President Donald Trump. But that did little good for a company that in the past had sold many of its products to foreign countries and now can’t do so because of sanctions.

            At least one reason the IMF has had problems in China is that its leaders as recently as 2016 celebrated the fact that their firm “had not given in to the general ‘sinification’” of industry in Russia east of the Urals and instead had held on in Russia to produce a Russian motorcycle in Russia, something they no longer do (irbit.info/business/imz/).

            To have any chance of surviving, experts in the industry say, the IMF must produce first and foremost for the Chinese market and also come up with new models of lower costs if it hopes to recover any of its former position in the Russian one given that Russians can buy motorcycles from elsewhere rather than ones with Russian names but produced in China. 

Migrant Workers Leaving Russia Because Their Children Can’t Get into Schools There, ‘To Be Precise’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb.  4 – The Two Be Precise portal which gathers statistics on key issues in the Russian Federation has not focused on the number of children who are either citizens of other countries or do not have citizenship at all. Perhaps its most important finding is that their parents who are migrant workers are leaving Russia because their children can’t get into school.

            Because Russian law now requires that foreign students pass a Russian language examination before being admitted, many children are left without the opportunity to study; and in response, their parents are going home so that their children will be able to get an education (tochno.st/materials/v-tri-raza-mense-pervoklassnikov-s-inostrannym-grazdanstvom-posli-v-skoly-v-2025-godu).

            Among the key findings that the portal gleaned from official accounts and discussing this issue with experts, some of whom preferred to remain anonymous because of the political sensitivity of this issue, the following are especially noteworthy:

·       In 2025, there were 7,000 foreigners enrolled in the first grade in Russian schools, a decline from 19,000 the year before. For all grades, the number of foreign pupils fell by 44,000 between these two years and declined the numbers of 2021.

·       In the 2025/2026 school year, 130,000 children who held foreign citizenship and another 3,000 without citizenship are studying in Russian schools in all grades. A year earlier, there were 44,000 and 1500 more for each of these groups.

·       Because of the introduction of the Russian language requirement, 60 to 80 percent of all children of migrants “cannot get into school,” one anonymous expert says. And as a result, “many migrant families with children are leaving” the Russian Federation and going home.”

·       In the current academic year, 96 percent of pupils with foreign citizenship are from countries which emerged from the disintegration of the USSR. Most are from Tajikistan (48,000), Uzbekistan (22,000) and Kyrgyzstan (19,000). Armena with 12,000 pupils in Russian schools and Azerbaijan with 8,000 complete this list.

·       Migrant children who aren’t admitted to schools in the Russian Federation have few prospects and aren’t socialized in ways that the authorities would like. At least some are becoming problems, and many require the kind of intervention they aren’t receiving. 

Key Russian Firm that Identified Major Mineral Reserves in Arctic Shuts Down

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 4 – Despite Vladimir Putin’s push for Arctic development, the Russian Polar Marine Geosurvey Expedition company which pioneered in the location of mineral resources in the polar region has shut down because of massive debts it sees no possibility of paying off.

            That leaves Moscow without that company’s skills, honed over more than two decades of exploration, highlights how the shift of resources for the war in Ukraine is hurting priorities elsewhere and the importance of tracking what Moscow is actually doing rather than just what it claims (fontanka.ru/2026/02/04/76246717/ and thebarentsobserver.com/news/russias-renowned-polar-geological-company-is-closing-its-doors/444728).

            The company announced on its portal that it will close down completely on February 12, a declaration that was met with incredulity and even anger by those familiar with what the company has done and what its absence will likely mean (vk.com/al_feed.php?w=wall-1247763_971960).

            And another asked bitterly but obviously rhetorically "How is it possible to close a company that has no equivalent anywhere in the world at a time when the president has set a course for the exploration and development of the Arctic and the Antarctic?”

In a ‘Revolutionary Development,’ Moscow has Succeeded in Getting Russians to View the State ‘as a Service,’ Central Bank Chief Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 4 – The state is now viewed by Russians “as a service,” Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina says, a development that “marks the completion of another stage in the evolution of relations between society and the authorities” and a truly “revolutionary” one at that.

            The Club of the Regions reports her remark and says that it reflects what the Kremlin has been trying to do for some time given that it is “not satisfied with the role of just a regulator” but wants to be perceived as a servant, something that Club experts say strengthens the Putin regime while forestalling any challenges to it (club-rf.ru/theme/637).

            While the Putin regime casts its initiative in this regard as a way of “meeting the demands of the citizens in the 21^st century,” in fact, what it has been doing that Nabiullina has called attention to, is the creation of a platform supporting the government. In short, “by making life easier for te average citizen, the state is simultaneously solving its own problems.”

            According to the Club experts, “the state is creating an ecosystem in which it ceoms the chief trusted source of information for millions of its citizens,” “creating an alternative to elections,” and ensuring that those unhappy with particular situations can be offered things of value if they show loyalty and do not protest.

            So far, the Club suggests, this effort has brought the Kremlin enormous success. Whether it will have the resources and will to extend it remains to be seen.

Epstein Scandal Resembles Rasputin Scandal of 1916 and Could Have Equally Fateful Consequences, Akunin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – As the Epstein scandal continues to grow and involve more people in more countries, Russian writer Boris Akunin suggests that perhaps the best way to understand what it is and what it may become is to recall the Rasputin scandal at the end of tsarist times, given that the two have so much in common.

            He argues that “the Epsteinshchina” – inventing a word that combines the figure at the center of this and the Russian suffix for affair -- is “pure ‘Rasputinism,” that is, “an old scandal that in new circumstances has grown to universal proportions” (t.me/EtoBorisAkunin/706 reposted at https://echofm.online/opinions/epsteinshchina).

            Akunin says that in 1916 “there was an indecent man who attached himself to the royal family” of the Russian Empire. Now, there is “an indecent high-society manipulator” who attached himself to some of the elites in a wide variety of countries. In neither case is the individual “remarkable” but the consequences of their actions clearly are.

            Rasputin did not do everything he was accused of doing, and it may be the case that neither did Epstein. But in the former case, it was widely believed that he had and even more widely believed that Rasputin succeeded in penetrating the Russian imperial elite because it was so corrupt; and in the latter, something similar is happening; and the elites are terrified.

            “Epstein has been gone for a long time, his dirty tracks have already been overgrown with grass – and suddenly such a stir,” Akunin says. While some doing the exposes are focusing on Trump’s political opponents, many who support Trump “are perfectly aware of Trumps ‘moral character,’ and they don’t care.”

            Akunin continues: “But the politicians and oligarchs of the opposing camp who have also been caught up in the crossfire have something to lose. And they are losing it.” Indeed, many in Western societies are less interested in Trump that in the moral collapse of “the respectable pillars of society.”

            What such people have concluded on the basis of the Epstein files is “how disgusting you all are up there!” Existing elites are being discredited and that “clearly isn’t accidental” given that these elites really “are tiresome, they have disappointed and many people really want them to disappear.”

            Akunin says that he believes “’the Epstein affair’ is another harbinger of big changes in the countries that are commonly called ‘democratic.’ Of the same kind as the widespread crisis of old parties, the success of far-right movements, the collapse of international organizations and alliances, and the destruction of the old rules of political behavior.”

            It thus appears, the Russian writer concludes his post, that “we are in [another] 1916” and that “ahead of us are upheavals, a redrawing of the world map, a change of elites, different norms of relations between ‘the top’ and ‘the bottom, the collapse of old alliances and the emergence of new ones.”

            “In ten or even five years, the world will be completely different from what it is now,” Akuninn says, a prospect that is both “disturbing and interesting.”

Azerbaijan’s Exit from CIS Now ‘Inevitable,’ Baku Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Azerbaijan’s exit from the Moscow-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) now “inevitable,” an action that will seal “the end of ‘the post-imperial space,’” according to A. Shakur, a foreign policy commentator for Baku’s Minval agency in an article that is already being reposted and translated.

            One of the saddest scenes in the world of theater involves aging actors who no longer have a role to play and can attract attention only when they walk through the foyer of theaters where they may garner attention from an audience that remembers what they once were and wants to see them for that reason, Shakur says (minval.az/news/124514976).

            But there is something even more pathetic than that, he continues, and that is the activities of international cooperation formats that were once relevant because they reflected common interests but are no longer so because those common interests no longer exist. They may hold meetings, but they are no more than aging actors in a foyer.

            “One such outdated structure is the Commonwealth of Independent States,” an organization that is now capable “only of organizing informal summits” but that at the outset in the view of Moscow at least was to be the matrix for the restoration of some unified state centered on the Russian capital.

“In the 1990s, both Moscow and the West seriously considered the chance that the CIS would become the framework under which the former Soviet republics would merge into a new confederation or federation. Publicly, the organization was presented as ‘a civilized divorce;’ but in reality, repeated attempts were made to establish supranational structures within it.”

Given that closer integration projects have emerged, “the CIS itself has in effect entered a vegetative state,” an organization Moscow has “continued to try to use to promote supranational elements, including in such seemly harmless areas as the teacher of the Russian language in other countries,” Shakur writes.

But those efforts and meetings can’t hide the reality that the CIS is already half dead, he continues. The three Baltic countries were never members, Georgia and Ukraine have left after Moscow invaded them, and Moldova is preparing to withdraw. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan may soon follow given their problems with Russia.

If Azerbaijan leaves, that will be the end because Moscow has few resources at present to do anything about this approaching end of the former Soviet space. Its economy isn’t going well, and both its use of force against its neighbors and mistreatment of citizens of these countries in Russia are only driving ever more of these states away from Russia.

Equally or even more important, countries beyond the borders of the former Soviet pace are “strengthening their positions,” including but not limited to the Organization of Turkic States, China, the EU and the US. And Shakur points out that “Azerbaijan’s closest allies -- Türkiye and Pakistan — are not CIS members. Nor are many of its main economic partners.

All this, the commentator concludes, “prompts a fundamental question: what practice purpose does the CIS serve for Azerbaijan, especially given Russia’s continuing ambitions within that framework” including by the use of naked force. “Has the time not come for Baku to leave this platform altogether?”

On a personal note, the author of these lines owns a poster that won a competition in Azerbaijan 30 years ago. It shows a house of cards labeled the CIS with only one showing a member country, Azerbaijan. The legend on that poster reads “To Be or Not to Be.” Then Baku answered one way; now it appears to be on the way to answering it in another. 

Countries in Organization of Turkic States Adopt Common History Textbook

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 3 – The Organization of Turkic States have adopted a common textbook on the common history of the Turkic peoples, a development that Kazakhstan commentator Seri Maleyev says will create “a common optic” through which these peoples will see their unity as far more important than anything that divides them.

            “The main consequence of the appearance of a common history is the formation of a common cultural code,” one that will unite them in far-reaching ways, he says (altyn-orda.kz/v-shkolah-tyurkskogo-mira-poyavilas-obshhaya-istoriya-pochemu-eto-sobytie-menyaet-uchebnuyu-programmu-navsegda/).

            According to Maleyev, “it is important also that the textbook consciously focuses on period which united and did not divide,” the period before the era of “colonial divisions” of the Turkic world and the conflicts into which some parts of that world were drawn into with other Turkic peoples.

            Whether textbooks alone can achieve the goals the Kazakhstan commentator suggests remains to be seen, But this effort shows that those promoting the re-emergence of a unified Turkic world have already achieved more than Putin in his efforts to promote a common Russian World.

            In Soviet times, Moscow imposed a common history on the various peoples of the USSR. That fell apart in the 1990s when the Soviet Union did. Putin has sought to recreate such a common historical education across the various peoples of the Russian Federation; but he has had absolutely no success in promoting it more broadly.

            And that suggests that those who want to talk about the rise of cultural worlds broader than a single country should be looking at the Turkic one rather than the Russian, even though today Russia because of its nuclear weapons and pretensions invariably attracts more attention in most places.

Russia’s Infrastructure Problems Built Up Over Decades Now So Disastrous that Tariffs are Skyrocketing Beyond Ability of Citizenry to Pay

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 3 – Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and in some cases even earlier, officials did not spend what was necessary to keep power and water infrastructure in good repair; and this winter, an especially cold one in many places, has led to massive breakdowns that are receiving widespread attention in the media.

            But what is really infuriating Russians is not the breakdowns themselves but the decision of the officials to boost communal services tariffs far above the rate of inflation and often the ability of consumers to pay as operators struggle to fix current problems and prevent future ones (newizv.ru/news/2026-02-04/gnilye-truby-za-vash-schet-kak-rossiyan-zastavlyayut-oplachivat-desyatiletniy-iznos-setey-438751).

            In many places, consumers simply can’t pay their bills and aren’t; and as a result, the companies are finding it ever more difficult to come up with the funds to make repairs, utility company officials and academic experts say. And what that means is the situation with communal services in Russia is likely to get far worse before it gets any better.

            Indeed, they suggest, this may become a political problem as people across the Russian Federation are confronted with the twin problems of a collapse of service and higher communal service bills, something that one expert suggests has created “a perfect storm” in the Russian social and political marketplace. 

In Words Kremlin will Welcome, Senior Russian Muslim Leader Says Faithful Should Avoid Praying in Public

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 4 – The approach of Ramadan means that tens of thousands if not more of Russia’s Muslims will gather outside the few mosques the Kremlin has allowed them to open, an event that attracts widespread attention among Russians because it highlights just how many religious Muslims there are in the Russian Federation.

            Moscow officials have tried to discourage the faithful from attending in various ways, but now they have gained an important ally in that effort: Talgat Tajuddin, the head of the Central Muslim Directorate in Ufa, the last Soviet-appointed mufti still in office, and the self-styled Supreme Mufti of Russia.

            The mufti said that while Islam allows for prayer “practically anywhere, believers are required not to inconvenience others and not to disrupt public order,” a statement he made after Dagestan’s nationality policy and religious affairs ministry said that prayer, “not being a political action or missionary work,” is “not a violation of the law” (readovka.news/news/237587/).

            Tajuddin’s position is closer to that of the Russian authorities who are typically upset when thousands of believers come to mosques but are forces to pray outside especially at holidays because the mosques are too small or too few in number to handle believers who want to participate.

             A few muftis in the Russian Federation have taken a similar position, but most have not spoken out on this issue (readovka.news/news/234954/). One creative response to what appears to be government pressure comes from the government of Bashkortostan (nazaccent.ru/content/45103-v-bashkirii-budut-translirovat-pyatnichnye-namazy-iz-mecheti/).

            Ufa promises to televise prayers from the main mosques there so that believers can participate in them without leaving home and going to the mosques where they will spill into the street. Whether such broadcasts will increase or decrease the religious enthusiasm of believers remains to be seen.

Veterans Returning to Impoverished Russian Regions Likely to Have Even More Problems than Those Returning to Most Non-Russian Republics, Rybakova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – Putin’s decision to complect his army from impoverished federal subjects ethnic Russian and non-Russian alike and his demand that these subjects bear primary responsibility for veterans means that such regions and republics will bear a disproportionate burden as soldiers return from the war, Tatyana Rybakova says.

            These federal subjects will have more returnees and fewer resources to help them, making it likely that crime rates will go up far more in them and in the country as a whole, the Not Moscow Speaks journalist says (nemoskva.net/2026/02/02/prishel-soldat-s-fronta-est-li-u-vlasti-plan-ego-adaptaczii/).

            But she adds that the problems the returning veterans represent are likely to be far higher in impoverished but predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays than they will be in what are often as poor or even poorer non-Russian republics in the North Caucasus and the federal subjects east of the Urals.

            Strikingly and perhaps for most unexpectedly, Rybakova continues, “the fewest problems will probably be faced by those veterans from the North Caucasus. As a rule, people from there have a place to return to and fairly large and close-knit circles of relatives” who will try to help them out.

            The chief problem the veterans returning to the North Caucasus will present, she argues, will be women. “On the one hand, traditional societies there are more tolerant of violence against them; and on the other, those returning from the war will mainly have the opportunity to vent their aggression on the women of their families.”

            In Buryatia and Tuva, the situation is also likely to be less bad than in oblasts and krays where ethnic Russians form the majority. In those to republics, the journalist says, “a cult of war and the military” still exists, and that means that society will help returning veterans to adapt even if officials lack the funds to help.

            The situation in impoverished ethnic Russian oblasts and krays will likely be bad because poverty rates are high and there is little in the way of a tradition for society to help veterans and little money available to the regional governments to take the steps the veterans will need, especially those who have been left handicapped.

            Perhaps the worst situation of all will not be in these two types of regions and republics far from Moscow but in megalopolises like the Russian capital to which veterans who can’t get help in their home regions are likely to flee in the hopes of getting help there. Unsurprisingly, the ethnic Russian veterans are more likely to do that than the non-Russian ones. 

Public’s Fears have Different Political Impact in Democracies than in Authoritarian Systems like Russia’s Today, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – When people are fearful, their fears have political consequences, the editors of Nezavisimaya Gazeta say; but these are very different in democracies where the population expects that it will have the chance to change those in charge relatively soon than in authoritarian systems where people have little or no expectation that they can change rulers.

            In democracies, fearful people often blame those in power and seek to replace them, often falling victim to populists who promise solutions but can’t deliver; but in authoritarian systems, the editors of the Moscow paper say, those who fear often rally around the leader even if they blame him or her for their problems (ng.ru/editorial/2026-02-02/2_9428_red.html).

“In systems where power changes little or not at all despite the formal existence of democratic institutions,” they write, “the ruling elite still fears that anxious citizens will behave in the same way as people in the first type of society. Because of this, restrictions may be tightened; and populism or mechanisms of ‘a social state’ may be activated.”

It appears, the paper argues, that “the authorities seem to distrust the stably functioning psychosocial mechanism that they themselves have been preserving and supporting year after year,” one based on the logic that “fear does not lead to questioning the competence of the authorities (except perhaps at a very low level) but on the contrary, to rallying around them.”

As a result, however “paradoxical” it may seem, the paper says, “the approval ratings of the authorities in periods of anxiety in such systems do not decrease, and often even increase.” Moreover, the editors add, such societies if fears intensify, can be “calmed down quite quickly even if the anxiety-inducing context remains unchanged.”

Russian Conservatives See Halal Certification as ‘Threat’ to the State, But Moscow Officials Say It Helps Boost Russian Exports to Islamic Countries

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – Conservatives in the Duma, the Moscow Patriarchate and in Russian society at large say that the practice of certifying foodstuffs and other goods as “halal” and thus cleared for use by Muslims represents “a threat” to Russian national security and to Russian identity more generally.

            In the latest issue of NG-Religii, Andrey Melnikov, the editor of that publication, surveys the statements of several of these nationalists in this latest expression of anger by some members of one group to practices of another; but he says that they are unlikely to get their way, however much noise they make (ng.ru/ng_religii/2026-02-02/9_611_halal.html).

            The reason is simple: Russian officials say that halal certification helps Russia to export foodstuffs and other goods to Muslim countries, something that the powers that be do not want to give up. Consequently, halal products are almost certain to continue to appear on the shelves of Russian stores.

Not One Russian University Remains in World’s Top 200, ‘Krisis-Kopilka’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – Not a single one of Russia’s universities ranks in the world’s top 200. The highest-ranking Russian school is Moscow State University which ranks 227^th, down 12 positions from last year and 29 places from 2021, the year before Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine, according to the annual rating by the University of Leiden.

            Other Russian universities ranked even lower: St. Petersburg State University stood at 533^rd, the Higher School of Economics at 824, the Urals Federal University at 898, Kazan State University at 1053^rd, Novosibirsk State University at 1189, and the Moscow Physical Technological Institute at 1244^th (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/105337).

            No Russian university made the top 50 in physics or mathematics, traditionally Russian strengths. Moscow State was the highest at 68^th in physics, and the Higher School of Economics was the highest Russian university at 315^th with Moscow State University ranking only 479^th in the world.

            Other studies of scholarly productivity in Russia also show declines since the war in Ukraine began. In 2024, for example, 21,608 patents were issued in Russia, 1800 fewer than the year before and 7100 fewer than in pre-war 2020. An another has been the brain drain as Russian scholars leave to work abroad either because of differences with the regime over policies or because of the insertion of unqualified but well-connected rectors supervising their work. 

Kazan Spiritual Academy to Expand Because ‘Russian Orthodox Church Needs Specialists on Islam,’ Its Rector Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – The Kazan Spiritual Academy is expanding to include a doctoral program because the Russian Orthodox Church needs “specialists on Islam” to work with and potentially convert Muslims living in the Russian Federation, according to Nikita Kuznetsov, the academy’s rector.

            By so doing – and Kuznetsov’s efforts which enjoy Moscow’s approval are described at ng.ru/ng_religii/2026-02-02/9_611_academy.html – appears set to reclaim the role that Kazan played in the 19^th century when Turcologist Nikolay Ilminsky oversaw translations of the Bible and other efforts to bring Orthodoxy to the Muslim peoples of the Russian Empire.

(On Ilminsky’s activities and the continuing influence they have had in the thinking nof the Moscow Patriarchate’s thinking, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/04/moscow-patriarchate-reviving-ilminsky.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/01/russian-orthodox-church-wants-to.html.)

In his interview with an NG-Religii journalist, Kuznetsov did not say that the expansion of the academy is a harbinger of a major new push to convert Muslims; but it is likely to be the case that at least some of the graduates of his institution will be involved with such an effort, a move that could unsettle relations between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Volga.