Non-Russian Activists Now Focusing on Telling the World Russia is an Empire which Must Be Decolonized, Latypova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 25 – Many of the most active groups in Russia since Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine were anti-war organizations in the non-Russian republics from which the Kremlin has drawn a disproportionate number of soldiers to fight and die in that war, Leyla Latypova says.

            But the failure of these groups to force an end to the war combined with repressions at home and the forced emigration of the leaders of these organizations, The Moscow Times who specializes on the non-Russian republics says, has prompted these groups to change their focus (themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/25/russias-exiled-anti-war-movements-are-learning-to-play-the-long-game-a92049).

            While none of them has dropped its opposition to Putin’s war, ever more of them are focusing on cooperating with each other and promoting the view that Russia is an empire and will continue to threaten its own people and the world until it is fully decolonized, another uphill struggle because many in the West assume everything will be fine once Putin leaves.

            Latypova draws this conclusion on her observations of and conversations with the leaders of non-Russian groups in the emigration, including those from Tyva, Sakha, and Buryatia. She notes that some ethnic Russian emigres have also made that shift, but overwhelmingly, Russian émigré groups still focus on the war in Ukraine rather than on the need for decolonization.

            The shift The Moscow Times journalist points to is important for three reasons. First, it is a sign that Putin’s effort to suppress non-Russian groups has backfired because it has made them more nationalistic than they ever were before. Second, it has deepened the divide between these non-Russian groups and their ethnic Russian counterparts, making cooperation more difficult.

            And third – and this is by far the most important – it has become the basis for a new unity among the non-Russian movements and likely among non-Russians themselves who now see their task as the dismantling of the Russian empire rather than just stopping the war and who are working to reach out to governments around the world to deliver that message.

Putin Earlier won Support by Promising Stability and Predictability, but His War in Ukraine has Destroyed Both, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 24 – With his war in Ukraine that is now entering its fifth year, Vladimir Putin has undermined the stability and predictability that for the first two decades of his rule had been the basis of his popular support among Russians, Abbas Gallyamov argues (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/9775 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/proshhaj-stabilnost-2).

            “People used to know what a waited the country tomorrow and the day after,” the former Putin speechwriter turned anti-Putin commentator. “Now all that remains is a memory; and if there is no stability, then there is no reason for people to cling to Putin” as they have in the past.

            According to Gallyamov, Russia “has suddenly become so unsettled that it seems things can’t get any worse;” and it is that sense which is “the main domestic political outcome” of his war in Ukraine, a situation which in the final analysis is of Putin’s own making. Had he not started the war,  he could have continued in unquestioned power for far longer.

Russian Housing Most Built in Soviet Times Now Facing Collapse and Under Law Can’t Be Fixed

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 25 – One in every 15 buildings where Russians live is now so old that under Russian law, any repairs are considered “economically unfeasible,” thus leaving millions  of Russians in a gray area where their residences have not yet been declared unsafe but that they need repairs that the authorities are not willing to authorize because of the buildings’ ages.

            Such housing stock is set to grow to 54 million square meters by 2030 and 216 million square meters by 2040, according to a study by the Moscow Institute of Economic Forecasting (forecast.ru/_ARCHIVE/Analitics/OM/REK_12_09_23.pdf and newizv.ru/news/2026-02-25/sovetskie-doma-ruhnut-cherez-10-let-kuda-uhodyat-dengi-na-kapremont-438832).

            Most of these aging buildings were erected in Soviet times with a projected lifespan of 25 to 30 years. But many have remained occupied for as much as 60 years and haven’t seen any major renovations for more than half a century. There simply isn’t enough money budgeted or being collected from residents to change that.

            And officials are hiding behind the law that they say prevents them from throwing good money after bad and requires that these aging housing blocks be torn down and replaced with new housing, something that isn’t happening rapidly enough to keep people from remaining in housing that is on the verge of collapse.

            One especially worrisome aspects of this problem is that elevators in multi-story housing in major cities are rapidly reaching the end of their lifetimes and aren’t replaced. In 2025, for example, 70,000 elevators in Russia reached the end of their working life, but the 2026 government plan calls for replacing only 19,000 to 21,000 of them.

            That means that the number of elevators likely to fail will continue to increase, making access to housing in the upper stories even more difficult than it is now for many Russians. 

‘Being Dark-Skinned in Today’s Russia Can Be Dangerous,’ Udmurt Now in Emigration Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 25 – The Horizontal Russia portal features its latest interview with a non-Russian about his experiences in Russia. This time it is with an Udmurt with Mari roots who grew up in his homeland, moved to Moscow and then emigrated and who says that “being dark-skinned in today’s Russia can be dangerous.”

            Artyom, aged 40, grew up in Izhevsk where he says he encouraged xenophobia “only during celebrations of the Day of the Great Fatherland War, but when he moved to Moscow, he came to feel that  being dark-skinned in Moscow could be dangerous because the police singled him out for harassment (semnasem.org/articles/2026/02/25/nerusskij-mir-kak-rossijskim-silovikam-ne-ugodil-cvet-kozhi-udmurta-artema).

Neither his parents nor his grandparents spoke with him in either Udmurt or Mari; but when he was a young child, his parents sent him to live for a time with his grandmother in a Mari El village. There he fell in love with Mari songs and dances and learned some of the language those who engaged in them used.

            But when it was time for him to enter school, his parents brought him back to Izhevask. In the first three classes, he studied Udmurt but then began using only Russian and forgot his native language because “to be from a village and to know his native language was considered ‘not prestigious’ and almost no one would speak with him in it.

            Artyom says he almost never encountered xenophobic attitudes in Izhevsky; but once he was attacked by some other boys who didn’t like him because he was dark-skinned. But the situation deteriorated after he moved to Moscow where both the police and ordinary people singled him out for mistreatment. But that led him to again study Udmurt.

            When he emigrated to the US with his family, he was surprised that no one singled  him out for mistreatment and that many were delighted to find that he was doing all he could to preserve the ethnic identity of himself and his children, teaching them the language he had learned only incompletely earlier.

            Artyom’s story calls attention to a distinction that is not often made by outside observers. Xenophobic attitudes and actions among Russians are not directed at all non-Russians but rather at those who look or speak differently. Those non-Russians who look like Russians and speak Russian generally escape such hostility.

            Thus, in many cases what is described as “merely” xenophobia is in fact openly racist and should be recognized and fought on that basis. For background on this phenomenon and the ways it is manifested in the Russian Federation, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/07/in-rf-members-of-nations-who-physically.html.

Etkind Sees a Dangerous Continuity in American ‘Russian Studies’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 26 – Aleksandr Etkind, a Russian cultural historian at Vienna’s Central European University, sees a dangerous and even self-defeating continuity in “Russian studies” in the United States since the end of World War II and one threatening to extend into the future as well.

            He makes this point by offering what he calls on his Facebook page “a brief history of American ‘Russian studies’” as that discipline responded or failed to respond to changes in the USSR, Russia and the post-Soviet world (echofm.online/opinions/kratkaya-istoriya-amerikanskoj-nauki-o-rossii).

            In the 1950s, during the Cold War, America’s Russianists said that “the people are wonderful, the Kremlin is to blame for everything, we will hold back, and no change is needed.”

            In the 1980s, at the time of perestroika, these US specialists said that “let them be angry but we won’t give them any money” and expressed hopes that the USSR would not break apart, again insisting “we will hold back and no change is needed.”

            In the 1990s, with the collapse of the USSR, many of these specialist said that this was “a pity,” but added that “let’s give them money and we’ll make some for ourselves.” But again underlying that, “we will hold back and no change is needed.”

            In the 2000s, many of these people said that it was “too bad” that they couldn’t earn money,” arguing that “’Russia is a normal country’” and insisting that “America is to blame for everything.” And then adding as always “we will hold back and no change is needed.

            In the 2010s, they said “it will be a pity if Russia doesn’t disintegrate; but then these specialists added “we must restrain ourselves and no change is needed.”

            In the 2020s, many of these experts expressed the wish that Ukraine not win, arguing that the current Russian regime is “no worse than others” and that things were “so good there when I was young … We will hold back and no change is needed.”

            And in the 2030s, Etkind predicts, these same people will be forced to acknowledge that Russia as broken up, although that is too bad because “it was the norm.” And they will again say: “let’s give them money and we’ll make money for ourselves,” adding only that “we will hold back and no change is needed.”

Small Business in Russia Suffering from Oligarchs ‘No Less’ than Wage Earners, Novichkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 25 – Russians are so used to thinking almost in Marxist terms about the clash between workers and capitalists that they are failing to notice that in Russia today, small businessmen are suffering from the actions of the oligarchs “no less” than are wage earners, according to economist Nikolay Novichkov.

            The Just Russia Duma deputy argues that it is critically important “not to confuse the capitalist and the entrepreneur,” given that the former seeks ties with the government and state capitalism while the latter seeks competition and the development of the market (mk.ru/economics/2026/02/25/predprinimateli-protiv-kapitalistov-kak-zashhitit-ot-oligarkhov-malyy-biznes.html).

            Novichkov points to the political divisions that this difference produced at the end of imperial Russia, and he cites the words of Chinese communist reformer Deng Xiaoping to the effect that “socialism is a market and competition while capitalism is monopolies and oligopolies.”

            In Russia today, “the role of small and mid-sized entrepreneurship in society is colossal,” the deputy says, involving some 25 million people and paying a large share of taxes. But the oligarchs work with the state against small business and nowhere more successfully than keeping other Russians from recognizing that small business suffers from the oligarchs as much as they.

            Unfortunately, Novichkov says, unlike in 1917 when the SRs did so, there is no Russian political party representing small business and the workers who benefit from that stratum of the economy; and consequently, the oligarchs combined with the state have almost a free hand to set the economic course in Putin’s Russia.

Draft Duma Law Bans All Face Coverings in Public – Except for Siloviki and Members of Russian Community

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 24 – A group of 20 KPRF deputies has introduced a draft law that would ban the wearing of wearing niqabs, balaclavas, and any other head coverings that prevent facial recognition but exempts from that restriction siloviki and members of the Russian Community organization that often works with the police.

            The proposal (rtvi.com/news/protiv-nikabonosczev-v-gosdumu-vnesli-zakonoproekt-o-zaprete-nosheniya-masok-na-ulicze/) is the latest Moscow effort to ban niqabs worn by many of Russia’s Muslim women, but its ban on all other head coverings by others while exempting the police and the Russian Community is certainly the more important.

             On the one hand, many Russians given the cold climate in which they live regularly wear balaclavas and won’t be happy about the adoption of such a ban; but on the other, those concerned about human rights and especially those of dissenters and minority groups will be alarmed, especially by the exemption for the Russian Community.

            That is because the Russian Community, which poses as a defender of the Russian legal system, often violates the law in doing so; and this new proposal even if it is not adopted – and the absence of United Russia backing makes that outcome likely – is a signal that the powers that be are quite interested in using masked men without official IDs to intimidate Russians.

            As such, what the KPRF deputies are proposing represents yet another step down in the direction of bully boy tactics against the opponents of the Kremlin and the further degradation of any pretense that the Russian Federation under Putin is a law-based state – even if the powers are using “laws” to achieve that end. 

Chechen Language Dying Out Despite Official Promises and Pompous Celebrations, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 24 – Ramzan Kadyrov has demanded that every Chechen know how to speak Chechen well and said that he will dismiss any official who can’t do so; and his government constantly stages pompous celebrations of the Chechen language at which officials dress in national dress and use Chechen words.

            But teachers in the republic and experts there and elsewhere say that none of this is preventing the rapid disappearance of Chechen as the language of the population and its replacement by Russian (kavkazr.com/a/mezhdu-ukazami-i-realjnostjyu-kak-ischezaet-chechenskiy-yazyk/33684085.html).

            Ever fewer children in kindergartens and schools in the republic speak Chechen, teachers there say; and experts suggest that this is not just because Russian is more widely used by their parents than is Chechen but because of a conscious policy of Russianization of the republic’s population, something that no celebrations suggesting otherwise can do anything to stop.

            Except for the very oldest Chechens, many Chechen adults can’t speak their national language well, according to informal surveys conducted on the streets of Grozny; and therefore the transmission of the language from one generation to another has been interrupted (facebook.com/reel/1549040205640316 and facebook.com/reel/223671560187621).

            Mikail Eldiyev, a philologist who lives in Norway, says that in view the decline of the use of Chechen reflects a conscious Moscow policy which seeks to convince Chechens and other non-Russians that their languages are useless and that Russian alone is the language they need to live and work in if they are to have a better future.

            At the same time, he says that he doesn’t consider the situation to be hopeless. The republic still has laws on the book supporting Chechen to which people there can appeal, and the situation among Chechens in the diaspora, while not without problems, is far better than in their homeland.

Siberia’s ‘Economically Accessible Resources’ Aren’t that Large, Verkhoturov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 26 – Those who talk about “Siberia’s plentiful resources” are engaged in “wishful thinking,” Dmitry Verkhoturov says, because while the geologically located resources there are in fact great, those that are “economically accessible “aren’t that large, already are being intensively exploited and include primarily energy resources like coal, oil and gas.”

            Most people who talk about Siberia confuse the two, the economic journalist says; but in fact, they are very different things, with geological resources including many things that no one can access because they are too deep or process because they are too far from any infrastructure that could allow them to reach markets (sibmix.com/?doc=20000).

            A clear example of an economic resource, Verkoturov says, is the Borodinsky open pit coal mine. It produces 24.8 million tons a year and has an estimated reserve of 650 million tons. Not only has it been explored in detail but it is connected to the rest of the world by roads and railways.

            An equally clear example of a geological resource is the Tunguska coal basin. It is estimated to contain as much a five trillion tons of coal, but this coal lies beneath 2000 meters of lava; there is no road, railway, or even reliable river pathway to reach them meaning that this enormous reserve can’t be used unless all those things are built.

            Given that Siberia’s boosters often include the latter with the former, many may be surprised to learn that the region’s “economically viable resources aren’t all that extensive;” and they aren’t likely to become so anytime soon as building the infrastructure to reach them is prohibitively expensive and difficult.

            “If we count the 50-kilometer strips on either side of the railroads where transport infrastructure exists or could be built relatively quickly – and there are approximately 13,000 km of railroads in the Siberian Federal District, then the area containing more or less economically reachable resources amounts to only 1.3 million square kilometers.”

            That is slightly less than 30 percent of the total area of the Siberian FD,” Verkhoturov says; and “the rest of the district’s resources are purely geological and economically inaccessible.” Everyone involved must recognize that “Siberia’s resource wealth exists only in the geological sense; but it isn’t yet possible to exploit it” – and likely won’t for decades.

Family Members of Russian Combat Victims Need Psychological Help Too, Adding to the Burdens on Russian Society and State, ‘Vyorstka’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 23 – The number of Russians who will need psychological help as a result of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine is larger than a significant fraction of the 700,000 veterans and includes the wives, mothers, family members and even friends of the more than 200,000 Russian soldiers who have died and the even greater number of those who have been injured.

            The total of those with psychological problems as a result of the war is already overwhelming the ability of the Russian medical system to cope and is likely to swamp it entirely in the coming months if and when the war ends, Vyorstka journalist Anna Ryzkkova says (verstka.media/zheny-i-materi-pogibshih-voennyh-nuzhdayutsya-v-psihologicheskoi-pomoshhi).

            Veterans groups, sometimes with the support of the government and sometimes independently, are trying to fill the gap; but they lack the resources to do so, Ryzhkova says; and the result is untold human suffering as she recounts on the basis of interviews with family members of the direct victims of Putin’s war among Russian forces.

            Such people rarely get the attention that veterans with PTSD do; but their numbers are so large and growing that they constitute a social and ultimately political problem even greater than the military one alone, yet another example of the collateral damage that Putin and his war have inflicted on the Russian Federation.

Many of 80,000 Russian Policemen who Left Their Positions in 2025 Joining Private Security Companies, Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 22 – That the Russian police force has been losing officers rapidly because of low pay, poor working conditions and problematic management has long been widely recognized (jamestown.org/war-against-ukraine-leaving-russian-police-state-without-enough-police/).

            But despite the resignation of some 80,000 officers last year, relatively little attention has gone to what new jobs they are taking, except for the widespread assumption that many of them are using their skills in the Russian army in Ukraine given how much higher pay there is (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/01/low-pay-attitudes-of-commanders-why.html).

            Now, however, independent Moscow expert Pashkin says that a large share of police who have quite are instead joining private security companies where they can do many of the same jobs they were doing but for higher pay and better benefits and without the risks of police work (svpressa.ru/society/article/503493/).

            What they are not doing, at least not in large numbers, is joining criminal gangs, he says. His interlocutors say that Russian gangsters are very strict about that now. “They don’t hire police officers because it is supposedly considered bad manners” for any gang leader to employ those who used to work against them.  

             That represents yet another privatization of state functions and the state monopoly on violence, a trend that could in the future prove very dangerous if the numbers of police in Russia continue to fall relative to the number of private firms who are armed and might under certain circumstances challenge them.  

Reopening of Moscow’s GULAG Museum as Museum of Memory Intended to Prevent Any Comparisons between Stalin’s Time and Putin’s, Sarkisyan Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 23—Nearly two years ago, the Russian government closed the Moscow GULAG Museum, supposedly for renovation; but now instead of reopening it, the powers have replaced it with a Museum of Memory, one with an entirely different purpose and an entirely different message, Dzhulietta Sarkisyan says. 

            The GULAG Museum had focused on Stalin’s crimes; but its replacement will, in the words of its new management, “be devoted to the memory of the victims of the genocide of the Soviet people” and its exhibits will trace “all stages of  the military crimes of the Nazis in the Great Fatherland War,” the journalist says (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/02/23/zabudte).

            More to the point, Sarkisyan continues, the replacement museum, which is now headed by a veteran of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, won’t devote any time or space to Stalin’s activities but only to those of the Nazis. The museum will send its holdings to the archives and dismiss those who made the museum such an important phenomenon.

            All this “creates the impression that talk about the mechanisms of terror – snitches, ‘enemies of the people,’ a punitive bureaucracy, closed courts and fear – is too easily viewed as a mirror of contemporary life and that those who too the decision about the closure of the museum understood this perfectly,” the journalist says.

            By this action, she continues, “the state is step by step changing not the details but the very conditions on which society is allowed to talk about repressions.” People will no longer be able to count on institutions like the GULAG Museum to help them recover their pasts but have to mouth whatever the decisions come down “’from above.’”

            And thus the closure of the museum is part of the process the Putin regime has launched to revisit and annul the rehabilitation of Stalin’s victims, a process intended to cast doubt on the entire narrative concerning Stalin’s crimes, and instead encourage Russians to conclude that they should blame all losses not on their own leaders but on foreign aggressors.

 

Moscow Fails to Publish Ethnic Composition of Compatriot Returnees and Russians are Upset, Shustov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 23 – Sometimes, the Putin regime’s choice to stop publishing data has an effect very different than the Kremlin intends: it leads Russians to make conclusions at odds with the ones their country’s leaders want them to draw and prompts them to question what their government is doing.

            That is what is happening now regarding the number of people coming to Russia under its compatriots program which seeks to have people with roots in Russia to return. This year, as the number fell (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/02/fewer-compatriots-returned-to-russia-in.html), Moscow highlighted the country of origin rather than the ethnicity of those doing so.

            Since most of those coming back now are returning to Russia from the countries of Central Asia, many Russians now assume that their country is being flooded with Muslim Central Asians, and they don’t like that at all, Aleksandr Shustov says (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-02-23--kakie-sootechestvenniki-pereseljajutsja-v-rossiju-86021).

            A careful examination of data from a variety of sources, the Rhythm of Eurasia commentator says, shows that most of those returning to Russia from Central Asia are in fact ethnic Russians not Muslims, just as has been true every year since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

            But by not publishing and highlighting that data on a regular basis, Shustov says, the government has gotten itself into trouble with many Russians who draw conclusions at odds with reality. And the invariable supporter of the Kremlin says that “the state has a simple means of dispelling the concerns of society” about what is going on.

            All it needs to do, he continues, is “to add in reports an indication of the nationality of those involved and regularly publish data in quarterly monitoring reports,” something Moscow used to do but in the last several years has stopped doing, a change that has not had the intended result.

            The problems the Russian authorities have landed themselves in by cutting back on the release of such data, of course, reflect not so much concerns about statistical transparency but an obsession about nationality among Russians and the way in which demographic change is leading to a decline in the percentage of the titular nationality in their country. 

Russia’s Forestry Industry has Collapsed, Driving Down Incomes and Wrecking Regional Budgets East of the Urals

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 23 – In 2025, Russia’s forestry industry “collapsed to a ten-year low,” erasing the gains of earlier years, simultaneously driving down incomes and wrecking the budgets of the governments of federal subjects east of the Urals, according to Russian government figures reported by the Voice of the Regions portal.

            Russian production in this sector fell to 176 million cubic meters, far below the 200 cubic meter mark that the authorities had assumed was the baseline. Indeed, the situation has become so dire that the portal entitles its report about this collapse “Taiga on the Brink” (regionvoice.ru/tayga-na-grani-lesnaya-otrasl-rossii-lesozagotovka/).

            The forestry industry is not just about harvesting trees. It is an enormous system involving everything from cutting down forests to processing the wood and moving it to both domestic and foreign customers. But, according to Voice of the Regions, “when demand falls, tensions arise at every stage.”

            The decline in foreign demand has not been compensated for by a rise in domestic demand, the portal says; and prices continue to rise for fuel, equipment, and infrastructure maintenance. As a result, incomes are falling and jobs disappearing all along this pathway. And regions where it is a dominant force are losing tax revenue and having to retrench. 

            If the current trends continue, not only will the forestry industry face more than “the temporary downturn” Moscow likes to talk about, but it and all who depend on it will have to adjust to “a more profound transformation of the development model” Russia’s forestry industry has long thought it could rely on. 

Bomb Lenin Laid Under Russian Nation ‘Continues to Tick’ and Could Explode at a Most Inopportune Time, Khramov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 4 – Russians must recognize that the bomb Lenin laid under the Russian nation “continues to tick” and could go off at some point if they do not take additional steps to overcome his legacy by eliminating the non-Russian republics and changing the national narrative they currently employ, Aleksandr Khramov says.

            The Moscow paleontologist and Russian nationalist argues that Lenin hated the Russian nation just as much as he hated capitalism and that he did everything he could to undermine the interests of the Russians and prevent them from forming their own nation state (apn.ru/index.php?newsid=49234).

            Indeed, Khramov continues, the main goal of the Bolshevik leader was to ensure that the Russians would never have their own “national home” but instead would “be consumed in the furnace of world revolution.” And he adds that Russian leaders have been fighting to overcome that legacy ever since, but there is a long way to go.

            That task must be completed, the commentator says, because “the bomb of national republics planted under Russia by Lenin has not yet been completely defused and continues to tick, biding its time” for when problems in the country as a whole will reach the point that such explosions will do the most harm.

The Yellow Wedge in the Volga Region: Where Ukrainians Identify as Khokhols and Must Ally with Other Non-Russians against Moscow

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 23 -- The places in what is now the Russian Federation where Ukrainians resettled at the end of imperial times are referred to as “wedges” (kliny). The largest and most famous of these are in the Far East (“the green wedge”) and in the Kuban (“the almond wedge”). But those are far from the only such wedges of this kind scattered across Russia.

(For more on the wedge issue in general, see jamestown.org/program/kyiv-raises-stakes-by-expanding-appeals-to-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/, jamestown.org/program/kremlin-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/  and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-real-wedge-issue-ukrainian-regions-in.html and especially the sources cited therein.)

            Russian officials typically argue that these regions are fully integrated and that those who were Ukrainian in the past have assimilated, but sometimes these officials express fears that Kyiv will succeed in exploiting these communities against Moscow, comments that suggest that even Moscow doesn’t fully believe its own claims.

            But lest these claims be challenged, Russian officials have done what they can to restrict investigations and reports about the wedges. And thus any reporting about them is precious, especially when it concerns wedges other than the green in the Far East and the almost in the Kuban which remain far better on.

            Among the wedges which have suffered from the least coverage are the Blue Wedge which is located in Omsk Oblast just north of the Russian border with Kazakhstan (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/a-rare-report-from-blue-wedge-ukrainian.html) and even more the Yellow (Zhovty klin) in the Volga valley.  

            But two articles by Ukrainian historian Borys Hunko (abn.org.ua/en/history/yellow-klyn-ukrainian-volga-region-the-history-of-the-struggle-for-freedom-and-language/ and abn.org.ua/en/history/yellow-klyn-ukrainian-volga-region-the-history-of-the-struggle-for-freedom-and-language/) provide details on a community few know about.

            The first describes the way in which this Ukrainian wedge came into existence and traces the rise of a Ukrainian national movement there in the 1920s and then again in the 1990s and the way in which Moscow suppressed that movement and sought to ensure that the Yellow Wedge would cease to exist as an organized structure. It is almost elegiac in tone.

            The second, however, describes the nature of identity among the population, an identity far more complicated than Moscow or many Ukrainians elsewhere suspect, and outlines the steps the residents of the Yellow Wedge need to take in alliance with other ethnic groups in that region to defeat Muscovite imperialism and thus have a chance for a better future.

            According to Hunko, Volga Ukrainians “clearly recognize their difference from the dominant ethnos, ‘the Muscovites’ but at the same time do not always identify themselves with Ukrainians in the general national sense of the word.” Instead, they “define themselves as ‘neither Russian nor Ukrainian.’”

            And that in turn means that “the term ‘khokhol,’ which in imperial discourse often has a pejorative meaning, within the community itself is devoid of negative meaning” and for many and on many occasions viewed positively, even though it is fragmented village by village with each seeing its identity as local rather than national.

            The appearance of an identity based on the survival of a home language and home practices was “not an internal ‘choice’ of the community but rather the direct result of Moscow’s colonial policy aimed at severing Ukrainians from their own historical and cultural roots” even as it did not immediately join them completely to the Russian nation.

            Because they are small in number and generally a minority in local populations, the Yellow Wedge “cannot act as an independent force,” he argues. Instead, “their path lies through an alliance with those forces which strive for the complete dismantling of the imperial system,” with Tatars, Chuvash, and others including regional Russians who want the same thing.

More than 30 of Russia’s Federal Subjects have Restored Sobering Up Centers

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 20 – Moscow oblast has decided to open sobering up stations to deal with the rising tide of drunkenness in that region, bringing to almost a third the number of federal subjects which have done so since the Russian government opened the way for such stations in 2021 after banning this longtime feature of Soviet and Russian life in 2011.

            Moscow Oblast will not build new facilities, however. Instead, it will establish sobering up sections in the region’s hospitals and man them with doctors and nurses already on staff rather than hiring anyone new (kommersant.ru/doc/8443564 and ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/20/v-podmoskove-vozrodyat-vitrezviteli-a187770).

            The Russian government earlier dispensed with such centers because it claimed that Moscow had made so much progress in fighting alcoholism and drunkenness, progress it argued was shown by official statistics showing declining consumption and less binge drinking of alcohol in Russia since the 1990s.

            The reopening of sobering up stations, independent Russian experts say, show that the Russian government’s claims are unwarranted and that the statistics it has offered as justification fail to capture the large share of the alcohol market, including unregistered and illegal production, that Russians are actually consuming in the same ways they did earlier. 

Moscow has Closed 22 Embassies and Consulates in Western Countries since 2022 but Opened Nine Embassies and Seven Consulates in Africa and Asia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 11 – Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has closed 22 embassies and consulates in Western countries at the demand of the governments of those countries and then in most cases shuttering Western diplomatic representations in the Russian Federation in response.

            But over the same period, the Russian foreign ministry says, Moscow has opened nine embassies and seven consulates in Africa and Asia. It has inaugurated embassies in Niger, Sierra Leone and South Sudan over the last 12 months and is slated to open such missions in the Gambia, Liberia, Togo and the Comoros Islands in the next (iz.ru/en/node/2040463).

            This turn to the east in diplomatic work means that in the West, Russian citizens often face difficulties in getting needed consular services and the Russian government is unable to use these missions for a variety of purposes while elsewhere, Moscow is gearing up both for more Russians needing consular assistance and for its embassies to ramp up Russian activities.

42 Percent of Well-Off Russians Live in Moscow, a City with Less than Ten Percent of that Country’s Populaiton, ‘To Be Precise’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 19 – Forty-two percent of Russians earning at least 276,000 rubles (3,000 US dollars) a month, the amount statisticians say forms the top one percent of earners in their country, live in Moscow, even though the city forms only about nine percent of the total Russian population, the To Be Precise portal says.

            At the same time, the investigative outlet continues, half of all the residents of the Russian Federation currently earn 45,000 rubles (600 US dollars) a month, a fifth of what those in the highest one percent who are concentrated in the Russian capital (tochno.st/materials/42-naibolee-obespecennyx-rossiian-moskvici).

            Moscow had always had more wealthy people than other regions, but over the last decade, its position first fell after the imposition of sanctions, declines in the price of oil and the devaluation of the ruble, but by 2024, the city had recovered its position – and for the first time, its share of Russia’s wealthiest exceeded the level that they had formed in 2013.

            However, To Be Precise says, if one considers the geographic distribution of Russians in the top ten percent of incomes, those making more than 119,000 rubles (1500 US dollars) a month, Moscow’s share of that group is only 23 percent, an indication that Russians in this category are more widely distributed. 

Putin’s War Leaving Russia with Several Hundred Thousand Russians Morally Debased, Threatening the Country for Decades Ahead, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 20 – Horrific reports about how a Russian general shared with his wife pictures of the ears of Ukrainian prisoners his men had cut off have led Vladimir Pastukhov to conclude that Putin’s war in Ukraine is leaving Russia with several hundred thousand morally debased people who can’t be easily cured and who will be a threat for decades.

            The London-based Russian commentator says that Russia is at risk of “ending up with several hundred thousand people as a result of this war, not just morally depraved or corrupted by bloodshed and murder but clinically incurable and irreversibly ill” (t.me/v_pastukhov/1827 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/v-konechnom-schete-vyyasnitsya-chto-odinakovo-bolny-i-voevavshie-i-ne-voevavshie).

            Such people, Pastukhov continues, “will pose a colossal threat” to the country, corroding all constructive social ties and relationships from family to political life, affecting public health in a way comparable to the impact of Novichok on the health of an individual. That is, they will block the transmission of social signals across all communication channels.”

            The Putin regime acts as if they can be brought back into society without any negative consequences because of its adaptation programs, but that is not the case. These people will continue to live and have an impact on society for decades until their deaths and after that because of the impact they will have on others who didn’t take part in the war.

            Of course, Pastukhov concedes, it is “naïve” to think that this is a consequence of Putin’s war alone. Its links to the events of the 1990s is “obvious.” But “it’s just that all the violence that presented itself as the norm in the first and second Chechen campaigns and before that in Afghanistan has been scaled up tens and hundreds of times in the current war.”

            And he concludes: “It took almost 40 years to bring society to this state, and it will take no less time to get society out of it.”

 

No Longer Able to Qualify for Loans, Russians Increasingly are Turning to Pawnshops and Selling Off Not Just Jewelry but Essentials

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 19 – There are many measures of economic hardship among the poor, but one of the most accurate and disturbing is when people cannot get small loans because banks have tightened the rules, they are forced sell off whatever they have in pawnshops in order to survive.

            That is what is happening in Russia, with the Bank of Russia reporting that in the first half of 2025, pawnbrokers extended 190 billion rubles (2.3 billion US dollars) to Russians who had nowhere else to turn (newizv.ru/news/2026-02-19/perforator-za-edu-kak-lombardy-v-2026-godu-stanovyatsya-edinstvennym-bankom-dlya-naroda-438823).

            But the situation is even worse than that massive figure suggests. Before 2025, 90 percent of pawnbroker loans involved jewelry, something most people could afford to live without; but last year, the share of jewelry as a percentage of all things traded to pawnbrokers for money fell to 40 percent with the difference including equipment that people need for work or their lives.

            And what is perhaps most disturbing, Russians are selling such essentials to pawnbrokers for 30 to 50 percent less than they paid for them and will have to pay again if these things are to be replaced, yet another way that the economic decline in Russia is pushing ever more people there into poverty and casting a dark shadow on their futures for years to come.

 

Russians Oppose Violent Overthrow of Dictators Abroad and at Home as Well, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 20 – Recent polls about events in Venezuela and Iran and older ones about the situation in Belarus in 2020 indicate that Russians side with the incumbents and oppose violent change abroad and likely oppose it at home as well, according to independent Russian commentator Sergey Shelin.

            Given that they live “under a dictator themselves,” he says, Russians would seem to have every reason to see the removal of a dictatorship in Venezuela and a popular challenge to one in Iran are developments they would support (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/20/rossiyanin-serednyak-sochuvstvuet-diktatoram-a-ne-tem-kto-protiv-nih-a187733).

            Bur recent polls in the Russian Federation show something else: they show that Russians support the regimes being challenged and oppose moves against them regardless of whether they are taken by a foreign power as in the case of Venezuela or by the population as in Iran – and indeed, in the latter case, they blame outside agitators for the actions of the Iranian people.

            Surveys taken at the same of the popular protests against the Lukashenka dictatorship in Belarus in 2020, protests that Russians paid far more attention to than they have to the events in Venezuela and Iran, show the same pattern of support for those in power and opposition to any violent challenge.

            “Four years of Putin’s escapades,” Shelin continues, “have not weakened Russians propensity to protect those in power or increased their interest in those trying to overthrow a dictatorship. On the contrary, their state of mind has become ever more depressing,” with ever fewer willing to express interest in or solidarity with those opposing dictatorships.

            This pattern should not be attributed to the Russian government’s media campaigns in support of its allies either, Shelin says. It is deeper than that and reflects a willingness to support dictators “no matter how vile” and “a refusal to see anything through the eyes of their opponents and victims.”

            And those attitudes toward foreign dictators parallel those they have to their own dictator, Shelin argues. Russians “don’t particularly adore him, but he can do anything” as “the masses see no replacement for him. They don’t even ask the Russian elite for a coup d’etat as they have no alternative social ideas at all.”

Declining Share of Ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan No Longer Primarily about Out-Migration than Instead Reflects Their Lower Birthrate and Higher Death Rate than Kazakhs

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb.20 – Since 1989, the share of the ethnic Russians in the population of Kazakhstan has declined from 38 percent to 14.6 percent, but the reason for that decline has changed. In the past, it largely reflected the out-migration of ethnic Kazakhs but more recently, it is a reflection of lower birthrates and higher death rates among Russians than among Kazakhs.

            Ethnic Russians, who left Kazakhstan by the tens of thousands in the 1990s, are still leaving; but the number of such departures is now so small – 16,000 in 2022 and 10,100 in 2023 – that it does not explain the continuing decline of the share ethnic Russians form in the Kazakhstan population (altyn-orda.kz/v-kazahstane-sokrashhaetsya-russkoe-naselenie/).

            Instead, the Altyn-Orda portal says on the basis of Kazakhstan government figures, “an ever-greater role is being played by demographic inertia,” a term which refers to the fact that ethnic Russians are on average older, have much lower birthrates and much higher death rates than do ethnic Kazakhs.

            These factors are unlikely to change anytime soon and mean that the share of ethnic Russians in the population of Kazakhstan is likely to continue to decline, possibly at an accelerating rate, even if outmigration falls to almost nothing or even is reversed because some ethnic Russians who left earlier may decide to return to Kazakhstan for their retirement. 

Share of Russian Pupils Studying in Second Shift has Risen Not Fallen Since Putin Pledged in 2018 to Do Away with This Practice by 2025, ‘To Be Precise’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 18 – In 2018, Vladimir Putin pledged to do away with the unpopular practice of having a significant share of pupils in Russian schools study in second shifts by 2025. But in fact, the share doing so over that period has risen from 13 percent to 15.8 percent, with much higher figures in some federal subjects, the To Be Precise portal says.

            That means that as of today, 2.54 million young Russians are inschool beginning in the afternoon and ending in the evening. In a few cases, there are schools which operate not just on the basis of two shifts but rather on the basis of three, although that practice was largely eliminated by 2021 (tochno.st/materials/kazdyi-sedmoi-skolnik-ucitsia-vo-vtoruiu-smenu).

            Parents have long been upset when their children have had to go to school not during their working hours but long after them, and polls showed that Russians were overwhelmingly pleased by Putin’s commitment to end this arrangement. That he hasn’t kept his promise undoubtedly is corroding support for the Kremlin leader.

            In a few federal subjects, there has been real progress. In Ingushetia, for example, the share of pupils in second shift schedules has fallen from 42 percent in 2016 to 14 percent in 2025; in Chechnya, from 43 percent to 24 percent; and in Adygeya, from 25 percent to 16 percent.

            But in 59 of the federal subjects, the situation has “either not changed or gotten worse” since Putin made his promise. In Tyva, for example, almost half of all students are attending via a second shift; and in Tyumen Oblast, the share doing so has risen from 18 percent in 2016 to 33 percent last year.

            These varying trends reflect both demography – where birthrates are higher, it has been harder for the authorities to end the practice of second shifts – and economics – regions and republics that are poorer have been unable to build schools, prevent the closure of others or even pay teachers in a timely fashion (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/02/18/shkoly-net-i-ne-budet).

            In particular, Putin’s optimization campaign intended to save money on education and social costs to have money for war has led to the closure of 861 schools since the start of his expanded war in Ukraine (nemoskva.net/2026/02/18/v-rossii-zakryli-bolee-860-selskih-shkol-s-2022-goda-prichiny-i-regiony-lidery/).

            And as regional governments have had to tighten their belts given budgetary stringencies which are the result of Moscow’s unfunded mandates, officials in ten regions have delayed paying their teachers in a timely fashion, leading many to quit and forcing others to  two shift work (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/19/uchitelyam-v-10-regionah-nachali-zaderzhivat-zarplati-iz-za-problem-byudzheta-a187646).

Amur Oblast Official Seeks to Calm Russians East of the Urals about China’s Rise

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb.16 – A senior official in Blagoveshechensk, a Russian city on the border with China and within sight of the much larger and more developed city on the other side of that line, says that the residents of Heihi are doing better than those in his own city because China is richer and has been committed to development far longer.

            But Boris Beloborodov, the business ombudsman for the Amur Oblast, continues, Russians in Blagoveshchensk and other regions east of the Urals need not be afraid of a mythical “yellow peril” and instead recognize that people on the Russian side of the border are catching up (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/02/16/kitaitsy-nachali-gorazdo-ranshe-i-ushli-vpered).

            He says that both Moscow and Russian regions have worked to tighten rules on foreign businesses, including Chinese, and that as a result, while trade between Russia and China has continued to expand, the operations of Chinese firms producing goods in the Russian Federation has declined over the last decade.

            What has happened, Beloborodov says, has been an effort to make the Russian production sphere more Russian with the chances for foreigners to penetrate it far more difficult. Given that, “no one should be speaking about any special preferences for Chinese business.” That may have been a problem earlier, but it isn’t now.

            Russians often compare the city of Blagoveshchensk with the Chinese metropolis of Heihi on the other side of the border. The latter has more skyscrapers and more modern housing but that is because China has more money than Russian does and has for a long time built up its urban centers especially along the border. 

            A major reason why Chinese success inside Russia has been so noticeable, the ombudsman says, is that Chinese businesses are concentrated in the highly visible service sector where they do well because of a Chinese commitment to the idea that the customer is always right, a commitment many Russians don’t share and thus fall behind. 

            Beloborodov also says that Russians are more interested in going to China than the Chinese are in going to Russia and that despite the appearance of ethnic Chinese in Russia east of the Urals, “there have always been more Chinese living permanently in Moscow than in any of the regions of the Far East.”

Fewer Compatriots Returned to Russia in 2025 than at Any Time in Last 15 Years

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 17 – Only 26,700 people took part in Moscow’s program to support the return of people with roots in Russia to their homeland in 2025, more than 16 percent fewer than the year before and the lowest number in the last 15 years, a trend that is only adding to Russia’s demographic difficulties.

            Moscow experts said that the decline reflected propaganda by other countries against this program at a time of Putin’s continuing war in Ukraine, economic difficulties in Russia itself, and language requirements that have been toughed. But most argue that the reason that fewer are returning is because those who wanted to already have (kommersant.ru/doc/8440619).

            Each of these factors certainly played a role in the decline: Coverage of Putin’s war has certainly discouraged some, information about Russia’s economdesiresy has discouraged others, and the risk that children of those returning will have to take Russian language tests has concerned others, prompting Putin to talk about dropping such requirements.

            Moreover, there likely is some truth in the assertion of Russian officials that those who want to return already have. But that is not completely the case as many who do want to claim compatriot status and return are being denied that opportunity because their language skills and ethnicity do not correspond to Moscow’s requirements.

            The most significant of these groups, of course, is the Circassian nation. There are more than seven million Circassians living abroad, and even if only 10 percent of them came back, Moscow could claim victory as far as the return of compatriots is concerned. But the return of Circassians would change the ethnic mix in the North Caucasus, something Moscow is against.

            In many respects, the most important aspect of the current decline in the return of compatriots is that they continue to come from the five countries of Central Asia. Their departure from that region and return to the Russian Federation may slow the decline of the ethnic Russians in that country’s population but it will reduce the influence of Russians in that region. 

Russia’s Nuclear Icebreaker Fleet More Overstretched and Thus Less Intimidating than Moscow Likes to Suggest

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 16 – Moscow officials and media outlets routinely celebrate the fact that Russia now has eight nuclear-powered icebreakers, far outpacing any other country and ensuring that the Russian government is in a position to dominate the Northern Sea Route and the Arctic well into the future.

            Such Russian claims are often picked up by Western media outlets who either adopt a defeatist attitude as far as the so-called “icebreaker race” in the Arctic is concerned or call for the rapid expansion of their own fleets of icebreakers, especially as China, Russia’s current ally, is building such ships at an ever more rapid rate.

            But such appeals, while certainly justified given the growing importance of the northern ocean, typically overstate Russia’s dominance in the region at least as far as its icebreaker fleet there is concerned. There are three major reasons for that conclusion, each of which has only grown in importance over the last several years.

            First of all, given the enormous length of the northern borders of the Russian Federation, its icebreaker fleet is responsible not only for keeping the Northern Sea Route open and projecting Russian power deeper into the Arctic but for a variety of other tasks as well, including keeping ports and even rivers flowing into that ocean open.

            To keep these riverine routes open, Moscow routinely has to shift icebreakers from the NSR to ports, Siberian rivers, and even the Gulf of Finland to keep those open, thus reducing the size of the Russian icebreaker fleet in the Arctic itself (thebarentsobserver.com/news/nuclear-icebreaker-makes-rare-midwinter-transfer-from-arctic-to-baltic-sea/445532,  thebarentsobserver.com/news/shadow-tanker-blocked-by-arctic-sea-icenbsp/442007, sibmix.com/?doc=19705  and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/12/russian-oil-companies-should-use.html).

            Second, global warming is changing the nature of the challenge in the Arctic. Many parts of it are now ice-free far longer, something that has increased the importance of ice-capable ships relative to icebreakers (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/western-sections-of-northern-sea-route.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/08/arctic-warming-far-faster-than-expected.html).

            And third – and this may prove to be the most important of all – Russia’s icebreaker fleet suffers from increasing problems with production and repair, problems that mean its fleet of this kind of ships isn’t expanding as planned and that many of its ships are in ill-repair or even confined to distant yards for servicing much of their lives.

            Despite Putin’s promises, Russia has built only one icebreaker since the start of his expanded war in Ukraine (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/09/russia-has-built-only-one-icebreaker.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/10/ukrainian-war-costs-forces-moscow-to.html).

            Its existing vessels suffer from outmoded electronic systems and have been suffering from one problem after another (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/moscow-facing-growing-problems-with-its.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/07/russias-much-ballyhooed-new-nuclear.html), problems that require its icebreakers to sail to distant ports for servicing there are no facilities on the Arctic (thebarentsobserver.com/news/nuclear-icebreaker-had-to-sail-all-to-st-petersburg-for-basic-hull-work-as-russias-lacks-northern-dock/432778).

            None of this means that Russia’s icebreaker fleet does not represent a challenge, but it does mean that those who analyze what is going on must recognize that Moscow has not created something that is beyond the capacity of others to challenge and contain given the problems its fleet continues to suffer.   

Russia’s Truck Drivers Demand that No Law Affecting Them be Adopted without Their Participation

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 15 – The Russian Truckdrivers Union has sent a letter to the president, prime minister and transportation minister arguing that no law affecting them should be adopted and that any laws on the books since 1991 should be reviewed and possibly repealed with the participation of the union’s membership.

            The letter, a copy of which has been acquired by the Svobodnaya pressa portal, documents a wide variety of steps Moscow has taken or is currently considering taking without listening to the truck drivers and insists that situation is unjust, unsustainable and must be changed (svpressa.ru/society/article/502720/).

            It is extremely unlikely that Russia’s top officials will agree to such an arrangement, but it is an intriguing one nonetheless because it is an example of how Putin’s de-institutionalization of Russian governance is leading at least some groups to push for a corporatist style of government, one in which powerful sectors would have at least a veto on what Moscow does.

            As such, the union action may be a bellwether of the ways in which the Russian government may function regarding at least some groups in the future, likely without much publicity except in cases where the group involved, as in this case with the truck drivers, feels excluded and decides it has no choice but to raise this to the level of public discussion. 

Under New Constitution, Kazakhstan will Break Free of Soviet Russian Past and Become Kazakh Eli

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 18 – For some time, activists and commentators in Central Asian countries have wanted to change the names of their countries now ending in “stan” because they see it as the imposition of a Soviet Russian definition of their states and one that leads many outsider to dismissively think about “the stans” as something exotic and filled with conflict.

            Now Kazakhstan is on the way to being the first of the five countries in Central Asia to make this change. Its draft constitution set to be approved next month identifies that country not as Kazakhstan but as Kazak ili, “the land of the Kazakhs” (altyn-orda.kz/ot-kazahstana-k-kazak-eli-simvolicheskij-razryv-s-epohoj-sovka/).

In a commentary welcoming this change the Altyn Orda portal says that “the name ‘Kazakhstan’ appeared in the Soviet system of coordinates,” designating a territory but not reflecting “the death of historical traditions. ‘Kazakh eli sounds different: it isn’t an administrative formula but is a name arising from the people and its history.”

“Translated,” the portal continues, “’Kazakh eli’ means ‘the State of the Kazakhs” and represents “a return to its own name without the Soviet superstructure and without the ideological links of the past.” As such, this move is “a symbolic break with the era of things Soviet; it is not a denial of history but a completion of the post-Soviet period.”

It is already the case, Altyn Orda says, that “the young generation does not think of itself in terms of ‘the post-Soviet space.’ Rather it thinks of itself in global terms, mobile and confident. Thus, the adoption of this new name is not some radical step but a logical continuation of ongoing processes.”

Importantly, the portal says, the term is not about exclusion but about the basis of the state. “The historic nucleus of statehood has been formed by the Kazakh people, but the present-day state remains a hope for all its citizens. The name fixes the cultural foundation but it is not about any limiting of rights.”

            There are at least two countries that are likely to be unhappy with this change: Russia, which will view it as yet another sign of Kazakhstan’s divorce from Moscow and the former Soviet space; and Turkey, which has become calling all of Central Asia Turkestan and thus may see the new name as distancing Kazakhstan from Ankara in some way.